In 2021, a considerable number of urban commentators declared the death of the city. Office vacancy rates in New York, London, and San Francisco were at historic highs. Transit ridership had collapsed. The restaurants and dry cleaners and coffee shops that existed to serve commuters were closing in large numbers. The conclusion seemed obvious: if people could work from anywhere, they would leave, and the dense urban environments that had been the engines of economic growth and cultural production for two centuries would hollow out into expensive ghost towns.

Five years on, the picture is more interesting than either the catastrophists or the triumphalists predicted. Some cities have genuinely struggled: San Francisco's downtown has not recovered its pre-pandemic commercial density, and may not. Detroit, Cleveland, and several mid-sized post-industrial cities that were already losing population have lost more. But other cities — including some that were already expensive and some that were not — have grown, densified, and become more rather than less economically vital.

What distinguishes the cities that have thrived from those that have not is not primarily office policy. It is liveability. The cities where people have chosen to be — with or without a daily commute obligation — are the ones with walkable neighbourhoods, good schools, cultural institutions, parks, restaurants, and enough housing supply that young people and families can afford to live in them. The cities that have struggled are the ones whose density was primarily a function of job concentration rather than genuine quality of life — places people went to because that was where the work was, not because they wanted to be there.

This is, I think, genuinely good news, if we choose to read it correctly. It means that cities have an incentive structure they previously lacked — a competitive pressure to be places people actually want to inhabit rather than merely places people are obligated to commute to. The cities that are responding to this pressure by investing in housing supply, public space, transit, and local institutions are the ones that will matter in twenty years. The ones that are responding by mandating return-to-office policies and hoping the problem goes away are not engaging with the question that remote work has actually posed.

The question is not: how do we get people back to the office? The question is: what are we offering that is worth being present for? That is a harder question. It is also the right one.