---
title: "Remote work and the hollowing of city centres"
description: "Remote and hybrid work appear on 53 recent papers across the economics and management journals, but only 12 of them carry a city, housing, commuting, office or rent keyword. Office vacancies are at record highs in many downtowns. Where did spending, rents and tax bases move, and are the shifts permanent?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/remote-work-and-city-centres
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/remote-work-and-city-centres.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "cities", "labor"]
keywords: ["remote work", "working from home"]
---

# Remote work and the hollowing of city centres

Remote and hybrid work appear on 53 recent papers across the economics and management journals, but only 12 of them carry a city, housing, commuting, office or rent keyword. Office vacancies are at record highs in many downtowns. Where did spending, rents and tax bases move, and are the shifts permanent?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 53 papers carry a remote-work, working-from-home, hybrid-work or telework keyword (25 in economics journals, 17 in management): "remote work" on 38, "working from home" on 18, "hybrid work" on 13. Only 12 of them also carry a city, urban, housing, commuting, downtown, office, rent or real-estate keyword.

## Questions

- How much of the fall in downtown spending moved to suburbs and how much disappeared, and did restaurants and shops follow the workers?
- Have office-to-residential conversions and rent falls in city centres brought residents back?
- What happens to city budgets that depend on office property taxes and commuter spending?

## Data that could help

Card transaction data by location, office vacancy and rent data, mobile phone mobility data, and municipal tax revenues.

## Next step

Compare the recovery of card spending in downtown and suburban areas across US cities by their share of remote-capable jobs, from 2020 to 2025.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| remote work | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6, 0, 3, 5, 1, 5, 2, 3, 5, 2, 4, 7, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 8, 4, 4, 4, 6, 5, 1 | 107 |
| working from home | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 4, 3, 1, 2, 0, 3, 3, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 0 | 43 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Remote work and the hollowing of city centres. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/remote-work-and-city-centres

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-remote-work-and-city-centres,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Remote work and the hollowing of city centres},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/remote-work-and-city-centres}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).