In just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the mandate to work from home, has drastically altered people’s perceptions of city living, recent research from Citrix finds. As many job roles become virtual, location has become less critical to career success and opportunities than ever before, and this trend could be a permanent one.

We recently surveyed 2,000 US knowledge workers on the subject to see how their perceptions of large cities such as New York have changed in the wake of COVID-19. A highlight was that one in four respondents have already relocated (some away from big cities) or plan to relocate because of permanent remote working due to the pandemic. Of these, 44 percent say the move will be a permanent one, and 49 percent expect it will be temporary. While the most common reason for moving is because their job role is now totally remote and will be permanently (cited by 37 percent), 25 percent say they now only need to go into the office once a week. Additionally, 22 percent say the pandemic has proved they can do their job from anywhere — a view that their employer also supports.

Major Cities No Longer Perceived as Vital to Career

Historically, big city or urban living has been perceived as advantageous to career success; but with many offices currently closed and their futures uncertain, this sentiment is understandably in a state of flux. Our survey finds that 69 percent of U.S. knowledge workers believe big city living is no longer beneficial to career success. Only 21 percent feel an urban location is still important for their job prospects, compared with 46 percent of respondents who believe that, before COVID-19, living in a large city had a positive effect on career. Interestingly, when the same question was asked in 2019, prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, more than half of respondents (54 percent) felt big city living was beneficial to career progression.

Amid this constantly shifting landscape of work, people are being exposed to new and more flexible ways of working, creating an opportunity for them to reconnect with their home lives and reflect on what really matters. Not only has the situation been a catalyst for change, placing employee experience front and center, but it has proved that productivity is possible from anywhere, often delivering a healthier work/life balance. Seen in this context, it is not so surprising that 28 percent of knowledge workers now think living in a city can hurt a person’s career. When we asked this question in 2019, a mere 8 percent of respondents shared this view.

Is Permanent Remote Work the Future?

Almost half of survey respondents (49 percent) say there is no need for them to be in a city anymore because their job has now become a remote role (28 percent) or their company has reduced or closed its office space (21 percent). It seems possible that in the future, a hybrid model of work using intelligent technologies could emerge, where work is split between home and the office, making it less essential to live close to a big city. Indeed, almost a third of respondents (31 percent) believe that many workers will move away from cities because they will no longer physically need to go to the office. Furthermore, 57 percent of knowledge workers say they would consider relocating out of a city to a suburb if they could continue to work as normal, without needing to commute, and 47 percent would consider relocating to a rural area.

To thrive amid an uncertain and disruptive future, organizations must cultivate a workforce that is empowered to adapt to changing conditions. While the “death of the office” may not have arrived quite yet, the pandemic has pushed many U.S. knowledge workers to more readily embrace remote work. Our survey finds that, currently, 88 percent of respondents can or are working remotely, while just 11 percent are choosing not to, but could if they wished to. In 2019, when we asked the same question, just 33 percent were working remotely, while 62 percent admitted that they could but were choosing not to. This year has been an extreme experiment in working from home, and we’ve seen many beneficial outcomes. In fact, 44 percent of our survey respondents believe companies will scale back their office space in cities because of the pandemic, and 16 percent believe companies will close office space in cities completely.

“It’s been an absolute perfect storm of changes in 2020 when it comes to the shift away from city life,” says Dion Hinchcliffe, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. “First, COVID-19 with its quarantines/lockdowns and the resulting social/economic unrest which is shift pricing and risk expectations in virtually all demographics. Even younger people who are famously attracted to cities are moving elsewhere, many permanently. The next major impact to city living will be the new satellite megaconstellations, which will bring professional-class connectivity to every remote location on earth beginning at the end of this year with SpaceX’s launch of Starlink. This will make living inexpensively on mountainsides and on sailboats as commonplace as suburban living for many. City life will evolve and become a place people visit more for cultural reasons, as digital technologies make a far more geographically diverse, varied, and safer lifestyle more appealing.”

The past few months have stirred up a desire for a more flexible future, where workers feel less under pressure to work from an office, or to live in a city. As the long-term impact of COVID-19 is felt, densely populated urban areas may permanently become a less appealing place to live, although it is worth noting that 29 percent of respondents feel 2020 could be a reset for city living, helping to drive down the cost of accommodation and office space.

It will be a while before we see the true, long-term impact of the pandemic on cities, but our research indicates strongly that many knowledge workers are reluctant to go back to things as they were. In fact, 32 percent of knowledge workers would be willing to accept a pay cut in return for a 100 percent remote role they could do from anywhere. Whatever the outcome, the future of cities hangs in the balance, and the benefits of city living may ultimately be outweighed by the alternative ways of working that COVID-19 has helped to shine a light on.

Learn more about flexible work, and see how Citrix helps organizations unlock people’s full potential.

Methodology

Citrix commissioned a survey of 2,000 U.S. office workers that hold positions which could be carried out remotely. These are most likely to be knowledge workers who effectively think for a living. The research was conducted online by polling company OnePoll (www.onepoll.com) in September 2020.