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