coCartesian fibrations and homotopy colimits

Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to show that the homotopy colimit of a diagram of quasi-categories and indexed by a small category is a localization of Lurie's higher Grothendieck construction of the diagram. We thereby generalize Thomason's classical result which states that the homotopy colimit of a diagram of categories has the homotopy type of (the classifying space of) the Grothendieck construction of the diagram of categories.