The Ripple Effects of Remote Work

In a piece for Bloomberg CityLab, David Zipper outlines key ways that the rapid shift to remote work during and after the Covid-19 pandemic has altered U.S. cities.

Transit ridership has dropped and rush-hour gridlock has softened, while mid-day traffic has grown. Population patterns shifted as “Zoom towns” outside of major cities swelled with digital nomads who abandoned big-city business districts where highways and transit lines historically converge.

While some companies are taking a stricter stance on returning to the office, many workers are happy to keep working from home, making downtown offices largely obsolete. According to researcher Patricia Mokhtarian, who predicts that the remote work rate will continue to hover around 15 percent of U.S. workers, Covid has had a much longer-lasting impact on telework than prior disruptive events she’s studied, in part because new technologies allow more people to effectively do their jobs from outside the office. 

Mokhtarian notes that while remote work can reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), its impacts on transit and air travel are less clear. “[I]t’s possible that people working from home are moving further outside the city. That can reduce transit use, and they might buy bigger homes that have more embedded carbon and require more energy to heat and cool.”