Is Remote Work a Good Thing for Cities?
I want your opinions!
Hi,
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Today is a conversation - I want your opinion on this question: “Is remote work good for cities?” Drop your thoughts in the comments!
A big part of the remote work discussion is how people can finally leave expensive, crowded, dirty cities for the picturesque ridges of the world - and small towns are catching on. In the media and on Twitter we see headlines about the big city exodus and all the beauty that awaits people in the country (mansions for under $300,000, to start).
But… is this actually the end for cities? I want to hear your opinions in the comments.
A few questions came to mind that I am genuinely curious to hear your thoughts on:
Will the exodus from cities continue or is it just a pandemic thing?
Would you consider leaving the city for a country life if you could work remotely?
Would you consider moving into the city to take advantage of plummeting rents and city amenities?
I’ll start with my opinion: Yes, ish.
Share your opinions in the comments!
Here’s why I think it’s a good thing.
Choice: as I wrote in Remote Work Can Heal America, there used to be well-paying manufacturing jobs in the country and well-paying knowledge jobs in the city. However, those jobs in the country disappeared slowly and the city became a place you had to be if you wanted a decent job. Tech only exacerbated this problem, with some hubs becoming wildly unaffordable but the tech salaries just grew to match.
With remote work, being in the city is a choice - I think that’s a huge win in terms of getting people who self-select into being a city dweller and choose to engage in city life.
Walkability: I love walking and can’t really see myself becoming 100% car dependent. Smaller cities and towns might have walkable cores, but I love that in my home city (Toronto), I can walk anywhere - and be in completely different communities within 15 minutes. That’s a huge draw for remote workers, in my opinion, who don’t have built in social lives from the office and want options.
Diversity: It’s easier to be who you want to be in the city and there’s a real fear that you won’t be accepted in a small town. With remote work, I see an opportunity for cities to become even more diverse.
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Existing infrastructure: Admittedly, this is a short-term benefit as other areas build up their internet capabilities, but having good, reliable internet and a host of community opportunities makes cities attractive to remote workers.
The city exodus might finally make real estate affordable: Cities will always be more expensive in the city than the country, relatively speaking. However, an exodus of people who were only here because they were forced to be (in tiny apartments, to boot) means that rental prices will drop (as they already are in some major cities). This shift in who is coming to the city - and why - could lead to cities being built not like sardine cans but actual, livable places.
Lower rents means more entrepreneurship: New cafes, restaurants, community spaces - it’s possible when upstart entrepreneurs aren’t priced out of the rental market. Who knows, it could become a remote workers paradise.
So what do you think?
Do you agree with me? Disagree? Think I forgot something? Have your own opinion to add?
I’d love to start a conversation. Leave a comment below - I promise I’ll respond.
No, it hallows them out. Cities' input are people, their output are a network effect of collaboration/creativity/productivity.
The remote work and allowing out of cities should bring price balance to real estate markets, allows for diversity with affordable housing, and allows for more flexibility for its former residents that immigrate to suburbs and smaller towns. But if the output of cities or towns or villages are network effect of collaboration/creativity/productivity, then cities as entities suffer.
But also sadly, there is probably not enough network created in smaller towns to create a vibrant collaboration over the long-term as infrastructure and suburban/urban design takes many years to implement. Vibrant towns are not just created overnight, they need to be developed. These towns might get more expensive as well, more crowded - I'm thinking Lake Tahoe as an example - and thus less rewarding to live. Arguably this has happened already in many places within driving distance of larger urban cities.
I think there are a few American examples of cities that are shells of themselves from the 1900s. St. Louis, Detroit, and Cleveland come to mind. They might be rebounding now, 50-100 years later, but can we argue that large populations leaving these cities was anything but bad for the cities wholistically?
Yes-ish? I think it's early to tell. If the positive effects are going to happen, they are going to happen over a long period of time, through accumulation of national+local policies and personal choices.
It's about choices, really, both at the political and personal level. And about trade-offs. I've been living in Milan, Italy for the past 10 years, but, like most of the people living in Milan, I grew up in a countryside village.
Came for the job, stayed for the job, but now, like many, I'm reconsidering my choices.
It's not straightforward though. As much as I long for lower rents, green hills, milder summers, Milan is a quintessential business-centric city. Money is here. Big fish clients are here. Also: the city visibly improved during the past few years. I don't own a car in Milan, and that's a big plus in terms of quality of life — coming from a village in the middle of nowhere, I know what does it mean to need a car to go anywhere.
As and independent consultant, I can twist and turn the way I do business to adapt to smaller clients who don't care if I work remotely, allowing me to expand to international clients too. But that's not for everybody, I would argue that there's a very tiny percentage of people that could even think about the choices and opportunities I could think about.
For most people coming from countryside villages or smaller cities, "living in the big city" is the peak of their life, they are not going to leave. I know a lot of people that wouldn't leave Milan even if it was burning down.
So I think it will be a good thing for some specific aspects of the city life (less load on the public transportation system on peak hours, more investments on micromobility, more walkable areas) even in the short terms, but I don't expect drastic changes on the big stuff (I don't believe rents will lower significantly, unless there a political intervention, which I doubt will ever happen — historically, at least in Milan, landlords prefer keeping a house empty to lowering the rent).