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The need for an interdisciplinary approach to remote work and urban policy

Nature Cities volume 1, pages 547–554 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The unexpectedly rapid rise of remote work in recent years has presented a major challenge for cities across the globe. Evidence-based urban policies are needed to harness the many benefits of widespread remote work while mitigating negative externalities. Existing remote work research, although providing a range of valuable and interesting findings, can be challenging to translate into urban policy due to a discipline-specific focus or conflicting results from seemingly similar studies. We propose a new conceptual approach to remote work research that promotes deeper collaboration across disciplines to inform robust and comprehensive remote work policy.

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Fig. 1: Remote work hours by location.
Fig. 2: Remote work stakeholders and their relationships.
Fig. 3: Conceptual actor–setting framework for remote work research.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Aloisi, B. Atluri, X. Guo and J. Moavenzadeh for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This research was supported by funding from the MIT Mobility Initiative and the MIT Energy Initiative. This research is partially supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme as part of the Mens, Manus and Machina (M3S) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) centre.

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Nicholas S. Caros

  2. Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jinhua Zhao

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  1. Nicholas S. Caros
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  2. Jinhua Zhao
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Both authors contributed equally to conceiving, writing and revising this piece.

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Correspondence to Nicholas S. Caros.

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Caros, N.S., Zhao, J. The need for an interdisciplinary approach to remote work and urban policy. Nat Cities 1, 547–554 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00103-y

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