[rm999]

>high density housing, pollution

Low density housing and sprawl are actually worse for the environment btw. You have a clear bias against urban living. That's your opinion and that's totally ok, but the cultural trend is definitely back towards higher density urban living.

I'm a fan of periodic, 1-2 days a week remote work. But I don't like working on fully remote teams, and I've worked with managers who are very experienced and enthusiastic about it. Yes, remote working CAN improve quality of life, but it harms collaboration and communication and shifts a lot of burden onto the managers. This isn't cultural, it's simply what happens when you put people further apart.

To be clear, I dream of a day where collaboration remotely works really well. I'd like to live in a smaller city one day where I don't always have to worry about finding a job.

[notmything]

Like I said, cultural changes required. Urban sprawl is currently worse for the environment than high density because people can't work from home. Urban sprawl happens around cities because people want a house and want to be as near as possible to work.

Imagine if we moved from having large cities that people lived around to a series of smaller towns. The urban sprawl that we currently have would not be a problem.

You need to stop thinking in terms of how things currently are and look at how they could be. Your social centre could be your town, your work would mostly be remote, no more urban sprawl just so everyone can be as near as possible to one square mile of central business district.

If I didn't have to work in the city, I wouldn't be living anywhere near the city, I'd pick a nice town in the north near to some excellent surf breaks; why would I even be living within the urban sprawl if I didn't need to be in the city? We're killing our planet, destroying our families and ruining our mental health. Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?

[dave2000]

" Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?"

London exists as it does today for historical factors, such as importing, manufacture etc. Only recently has it been possible for more than a tiny fraction of the population to work remotely, and even today that proportion is so low it would make no difference overall.

[notmything]

cultural change required. London is busy and expensive because people need to be there, if they didn't it wouldn't be!