Remote Working as an Alternative Approach to Reduce Car Dependency in Cities

Abstract

Following the advent of the automobile and the subsequent expansion of cities beyond its municipal boundaries, cities and city planners have been grappling with the environmental challenge of reducing car dependency and decreasing congestion in urban areas. Mainstream concepts such as transit orientated development, compact city forms, and urban densification, have been introduced to re-establish the relationship between land use and transport and create walkable cities. While there are a few cities that have managed to reduce car dependency, the growth of post-modern urban forms and its creation of edge cities, gated communities, peripheries, etc. has become a major challenge that faces urban areas across the globe in the creation of a car-dependent cities. However, more recently, planners have been learning about remote working, following the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to lockdown regulations, movement was restricted, and this required people to stay-at-home and find alternative ways to continue working and studying. In the post pandemic era, a large percentage of businesses (public and private) and institutions (from pre-primary to tertiary) continue to encourage remote working. The broader impact of this is that certain sectors of society have become less car dependent. In relation to this shift, this paper looks at the impacts of remote working on mobility in urban areas, in order to understand if remote working could form part of an alternative approach for redefining mainstream visions of urban change and its morphology towards sustainable environmental development of urban areas.