Summary: This study investigates the significant impact of remote work adoption, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, on the commercial office sector. It quantifies substantial shifts in lease revenues, office occupancy, renewal rates, lease durations, and market rents, leading to large effects on current and future cash flows for office buildings and altering their risk premium. The research revalues New York City commercial office buildings, finding a 45% decline in 2020 values and a 39% longer-run decline, representing $453 billion in value destruction, with higher quality buildings showing more resilience. These changes have implications for local public finances and financial sector stability.

Summary: This study analyzes the global polarization of remote work, using data from an online labor platform to understand its geographical distribution. It finds that remote work is concentrated in North America, Europe, and South Asia, with many Global South countries participating minimally. Furthermore, remote jobs are predominantly located in large cities, leaving rural areas behind, and are polarized by skill level, with high-skilled workers securing better-paying jobs. The findings suggest that agglomerative forces, such as the distribution of skills, human capital, and institutions, drive remote work towards metropolitan areas, particularly those focused on ICT, while locations lacking these attributes, often rural areas, are disadvantaged.

Summary: This note analyzes the divergence in commercial real estate (CRE) prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, using city-level data from major economies. It finds that pandemic-specific factors like containment measures and virus spread negatively impacted prices, while fiscal support and easy financial conditions cushioned the shock. Higher vaccination rates aided recovery, particularly in retail. Crucially, structural behavioral changes like teleworking and e-commerce are identified as having an impact on CRE prices in certain segments, contributing to regional and sectoral price divergence.

Summary: This study investigates the prevalence and determinants of teleworking in Canada before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding a significant increase from 12% pre-pandemic to a peak of 40% in early 2020, particularly among university-educated workers in ICT-intensive firms. The research highlights that these workers are often located in urban cores, leading to reduced commuting and lower occupancy in downtown office towers, suggesting a substantial decrease in demand for commercial real estate. The findings imply that landlords must prepare for lower demand as leases expire, and governments might consider promoting teleworking to manage travel demand and infrastructure costs.

Summary: This paper maps the spread of working from home across 30 European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting its lower uptake compared to the United States and its uneven distribution, primarily concentrated in cities and capital regions. Using a variance decomposition procedure, the study finds that the uneven distribution of remote jobs is largely due to composition effects, as cities historically hosted more workers in occupations and sectors amenable to remote work compared to intermediate-density and rural areas.

Summary: This article analyzes the behavior of commercial real estate prices across Europe in the post-COVID-19 era, examining ten countries and various property types using national and city-level data. Findings indicate that while industrial properties initially benefited, they declined in 2022, residential properties continued to rise, and retail real estate maintained its downward trend; office markets have not yet shown significant structural impact. The study also considers the influence of rising interest rates and geopolitical instability, assessing whether observed effects are temporary or long-lasting.

Summary: This study develops a quantitative spatial model to analyze the effects of telecommuting, where worker ability and propensity to work from home vary by education and industry. Applied to 4,502 U.S. locations, the model predicts that increased telework attractiveness leads to complex reallocations within and across cities, resulting in welfare gains for telecommuters and losses for non-telecommuters, while also reducing inequality across residential locations. The framework is validated by its ability to predict observed changes in residents and housing prices between 2019 and 2021.

Summary: This essay explores whether the COVID-19 pandemic will reverse the urban renaissance, drawing on literature about natural disaster impacts. It posits that while cities have historically shown resilience to physical destruction and plagues, economic and political shocks can be more damaging. The abstract suggests that COVID-19's significant impact on urban fortunes is contingent on accompanying major economic shifts, such as the widespread adoption of remote work, or political changes that cause businesses and affluent populations to relocate from urban centers, potentially leading to a recurrence of 1970s-era urban crises.

Summary: This paper offers a critical commentary on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities and metropolitan regions, analyzing its economic, fiscal, social, and political fallout. It assesses the pandemic's impact on urban economic geography at various scales, considering factors like social scarring, lockdowns, urban resilience, and changes in urban form. The authors argue that while the pandemic is unlikely to fundamentally alter the global city system's economic geography and spatial inequality at a macrogeographic level, it may induce short-term and some longer-term social changes in the structure of cities, suburbs, and metropolitan regions at a microgeographic level.

Summary: This edited volume explores the proliferation of new working spaces (NeWSps) like coworking spaces and coffee shops, examining their transformation and role in urban and regional development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach, situating the debate within the pandemic's context, repositioning NeWSps within socioeconomic and planning frameworks, and offering new directions for urban resilience. The book includes comparative studies from Europe and the US, contributing to the understanding of the multidisciplinary implications of NeWSps for society, economy, and planning.

Summary: This paper examines the potential territorial impacts of telework in Italy, focusing on transport networks and living geographies within the Italian national context. It identifies metropolitan areas with high concentrations of telework-prone economic sectors and explores how telework might influence housing preferences, particularly concerning tourist housing near metropolitan areas. The study aims to contribute to developing a framework for the Italian context to enhance telework's potential for environmental, social, and territorial sustainability, outlining possible scenarios for major metropolitan areas.

Summary: This study employs a spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) model to investigate how increased working from home (WFH) affects urban economies. It simulates shifts in labour supply towards WFH-intensive occupations, particularly benefiting business services, and alters residential choices, leading to longer but less frequent commutes and a preference for cheaper housing. The model predicts flatter residential density gradients, increased urban sprawl, and job centralization in larger cities, while smaller cities and towns may shrink unless they attract commuters from major centers.

Summary: This paper investigates the uneven spread of remote work across 30 European countries following the COVID-19 pandemic, using individual micro-data and regional characteristics. It establishes a systematic measurement for remote work and finds that cities and capital regions adopted it more rapidly than other areas. The primary driver identified for this uneven diffusion is the composition of the workforce, with cities hosting a higher proportion of workers in occupations and sectors more amenable to remote work.

Summary: This paper analyzes sectoral productivity shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic using the KLEMS dataset for OECD and Latin America/Caribbean countries. It employs panel vector autoregression to estimate the nature and size of these shocks, finding that the pandemic reduced economy-wide labor productivity by 4.9% in Latin America and 3.5% overall. The study suggests that significant productivity gains in infrastructure sectors, at least three times historical rates, would be necessary to offset these pandemic-induced productivity losses.

Summary: This chapter examines the unique characteristics of telework development, incidence, and effects within Europe, noting economic shifts towards service and knowledge-based jobs, increased demand for flexible work policies, and the influence of dual-earner households. It highlights the significance of the EU's 2002 framework agreement on telework and how telework can evolve differently across European countries based on their social and economic settings, using 2015 data from the European Working Conditions Survey and national expert reports from ten countries.

Summary: This study assesses the development of remote work within the European Union and Latvia, aiming to understand its effectiveness and long-term economic impact. It identifies potential benefits and challenges of remote work deployment in Latvia and proposes policy recommendations. The research utilizes theoretical analysis, deduction, and comparative methods to examine remote work's influence on economic transformation, noting its implications for urban spaces and congestion.