The Zoom city: working from home, urban productivity and land use

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of working from home (WFH) on the emergence and structure of monocentric cities. In the long run, WFH raises urban productivity only in sufficiently large cities. Business land rents fall while residential land rents decrease near the business district. Workers have incentives to adopt inefficiently high WFH schemes. In the short run, WFH yields mixed benefits for commuters and firms, which corroborates the low WFH adoption before the pandemic. Advances in digital technology increase the welfare benefits of WFH. Calibration exercises on European capital cities shed light on the quantitative impact of WFH.

Keywords

Working from home; urban structure; commuting; remote work; land use; R12; R14; R21; R49; J81

Published in

Journal of Economic Geography
2023, volume: 23, number: 6, pages: 1397-1437
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS

SLU Authors

• Kyriakopoulou, Efthymia

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB)

Global goals (SDG)

SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities

UKÄ Subject classification

Economic Geography

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbad025

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/126789