Jack M. Mintz: Home work will flatten urban bubbles but it will also flatten taxes too

OpenText, one of Canada’s premier hi-tech companies, drew attention last week when it announced that it plans to close half of its offices worldwide, as about 2,000 of its employees switch to working from home on a permanent basis. OpenText is not alone. Morgan Stanley, Twitter, Facebook and Google have all indicated they will shift towards work-at-home models for many of their employees.

That said, there are significant benefits from not travelling to work. People living in suburbs far from their downtown workplace can save from one to three hours of daily commuting time that can be better used either for work or leisure. Every day they don’t travel also means less spending for gas or electricity, parking, depreciation on a car or transit fares, as well as less risk of traffic accidents and lower insurance costs.

Besides, today’s tech companies like Apple and Google will soon figure out how to make communication technology even better so people can work at home more seamlessly. As a result, cities will find it harder to pursue urban planning based on densification strategies that crowd people into large, high-rise apartment buildings or smaller homes. Why? People who dislike that type of lifestyle will no longer be bound to downtown by work.

fpcomment 'Climate crisis, false hyperbole, mitigated by moving out of dense ugly core to 'greener', cooler rural. Urban heat effect well documented (contributor to most of slight warming). Hipster 'dream', trapped in cement jungle, toast. Humans never meant to live as such. Green acres!

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