Remote work is gutting downtowns

But why don't these people consider where that money is now being spent? Perhaps it should be rephrased as residents saved $453 billion due to remote work

There isn’t a mechanism to “force” anyone. With few exceptions, companies lease their office space. A few companies may try to force employees to sit in a leased office to feed the sunk cost fallacy, but that won’t last. Only the most incompetent management will renew leases to support employees who don’t want to be there in the first place.

The actual solution is large scale conversion of commercial real estate to residential. Some people like being downtown, with population density, ability to walk to lots of restaurants, etc. And converting ~60% of office space to residential will drive costs down, reducing financial motivations to move out of the city.

Property owners are fucked, and will see much lower returns than they expected. Some will go bankrupt. Buildings financed by banks may see foreclosure/auction, and some banks will lose money. That’s what interest is for.

But eventually these buildings will have new owners that bought them at appropriate prices, and new purposes as residences, and downtown will probably be an even better place to live, with a population that doesn’t go home to the suburbs every night.

tl;dr: probably a good thing for downtown; invest in office-to-apartment conversion companies.

I used to get the bus to work about 10 years ago because parking in the city became so expensive (I stopped long before Covid hit).

The thing I don't miss is that I got sick every single Winter. All it takes is one inconsiderate person to not cover their mouth and everyone is getting ill. And it happened all the time.

I had a commute time that ranged between one and two hours over that stretch as I'd lived in a couple of different places, but that wasn't even extreme. I knew people with 2+ hour commutes each way which they did for years on end.

I understand there are a lot of people who need a place to work away from their home, but who is going to voluntarily return to an office when they don't need to just to prop up your portfolio and obsolete businesses? Why should they?

It's like the argument that people should support local businesses instead of buying from Amazon. If Amazon is cheaper and more convenient, why would someone buy anything elsewhere? (It's not like those businesses are going to help with your rent or food costs).