To me, remote work makes cities a <i>more</i> attractive place live than the suburbs. A family doesn’t need 2 or 3 cars anymore. You can live and work in a walkable neighborhood and get most of your errands done during the week, avoiding times of congestion. Work from a cafe or park instead of a basement or garage.
The Suburbs are great, and what does it mean if the cities are only sustained by forcing individuals/parents to come into them 5 times a week for their livelihoods? Why aren't workers eager to live in densely packed urban environments if presented this alternative, that has been traditionally disparaged by so many?
Maybe remote work means that suburbanites will stop preventing cities from being nice places to live? (because of regional politics, suburban drivers have a say in things like how much highways and parking a city ends up having to maintain)
The single largest advantage of remote work is being able to live in a lower cost of living area with more land.<p>Even if you're in the office 2 days that opens up a commutable area that's far far larger than before.
Allow me an european point-of-view (most EU and USA people would disagree): I read in comments various positions, but actually all of you are talking about the "Riviera model" witch means a densely but not to dense area populated by homes instead of multi-families/high rise buildings.<p>That's IMO is the best form of city in the actual level of tech and social evolutionary stage: cities with big buildings are simply too dense to evolve, buildings get old but can't be really replaced because it's too costly and it's too complicated relocating many families, makes different owners of parts of them to rebuilt etc => dense cities can't evolve, they are too dense.<p>Far less dense areas do not have the density benefits for culture, economics, generic human social life. The middle ground is the Riviera, where some works "in the office" but at a short commuting range, in small buildings spread between homes, some works remotely. Today that's good enough for local services too exists, good enough for remote workers, good for EVs since almost all have personal garages, place for p.v. in the vast areas of the world where it's meaningful, sustainable for logistics (retail and so on), it's new in most places so we can start over aging but not-much-replaceable infra, for tomorrow drone delivery it's possible, flying cars as well if we really reach this step soon enough in decades terms.<p>There is only a but IMO: those who profit from many other humans dislike such model: it's centered on a distributed economy where all can earn a bit without excesses so poor's live far better, rich earn far less and a strong middle class rule by mere numbers and effective decision power and awareness. And that's IMO why so many "high in the pyramid" want RTO and many "low in the pyramid" fear the future of dense cities as new kind of labor camps/ghettos.
Decentralization of office work will have effects that ripple out for decades to come. There's nothing inherently superior to urban, suburban, or rural living. Everything is a tradeoff. We'd all be better off if more costs of infrastructure were more directly connected to those utilizing them.
Living in a big city would be great, except its ridiculously expensive. Real estate prices are considerably different pre-covid and post-covid.<p>An entire generation of young people are growing up who will never be able to afford a house/apartment in a major city.
Once they start renovating office buildings into housing everyone will flock to the cities. Most people don't want to live in suburbs. Even many of the people who think they do would be happier in a small town surrounded by farmland or nature.