Steven Bond-Smith | 🇳🇿 🇦🇺 HI 🤙🏻

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Counterintuitive but makes sense: wfh doesn’t encourage a “work from anywhere” world, rather it reinforces large cities bc long commute times become less of a disutility

Shadows and Donuts: The Work‐From‐Home Revolution and The Performance of Cities In this article, we set out the relationships between the behavioral and spatial responses to working from home. The analytical framework centres explicitly on the choice of commuting frequency as th...

What does that mean for your town or city?

Check out the paper and have a think:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 11/

Work-From-Home, Relocation, and Shadow Effects: Evidence from Sweden - The Productivity Institute A Working Paper exploring new and significant economic geography features of the work-from-home revolution.

Steven Bond-Smith | 🇳🇿 🇦🇺 HI 🤙🏻
In fact, isolated places may lose out. They can’t offer the same benefits to hybrid work as big, well-connected cities. We found this in Sweden: People in WFH-compatible jobs move closer to the big cities
productivity.ac.uk/research/wor... @productivity.bsky.social 10/

That means WFH probably reinforces the dominance of large cities.
Not decentralization. Not a “work from anywhere” world. 9/

If you’re in a small town, WFH doesn’t help much—you’re already close.
But maybe you now take a job in a bigger city.
If you’re in a big city, you might move to the edge and save on rent.

Either way: gains are bigger in big cities. 8/

So, unlike what many people think, working from home doesn’t make small towns more attractive.
It makes big cities more attractive.
(Or at least, their metro areas.) 7/

When we let remote work vary by location, the donut effect gets stronger in larger cities.
Bigger cities = bigger traffic/time costs = more benefit from working from home. 6/

But then people start moving to take advantage of this flexibility.
Further away = cheaper rent + fewer commutes. That’s the donut effect.
This is well known. But… 5/

often they commute.
People further from work… commute less. People closer in… commute more. Makes sense. 4/

You’d probably consider jobs a bit further away than today.
Even if the occasional commute is annoying, remote work (and perhaps a bigger salary) makes it worth it.
That’s the starting point for our model. 3/

If you live far away or traffic is awful, you probably avoid commuting as much as possible.
If you live nearby, working from home doesn’t change much.
Now ask:
Where would you take a job if it only required the occasional commute? 2/

Shadows and Donuts: The Work‐From‐Home Revolution and The Performance of Cities In this article, we set out the relationships between the behavioral and spatial responses to working from home. The analytical framework centres explicitly on the choice of commuting frequency as th...

How often do you work from home?
Probably depends on where you live and where your job is.
But if everyone thinks like that, what does it mean for cities and regions?
🚨New research🚨 What types of places benefit most from remote and hybrid work? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 1/

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