this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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I'd argue that it's much the opposite actually.
Remote working enables people to live far (even very far) from where they're working, from their colleagues, and potentially any community at all. You can spend your whole day, entire weeks even, never leaving the house, never interacting with a person, and this model can actually support car culture, since there's nothing driving you to live near work or other people at all.
I switched to remote work when the pandemic started and I hate it. I live in Cambridge UK, and my office is in London. By many standards, this is barely remote work at all, since I do regularly see my colleagues in London about twice a month, and yet I find it hopelessly isolating.
If solarpunk is about community, about the abandonment of car culture in favour of sustainable models, then I'd say that in most cases, (fully) remote work contradicts that model. I'm not saying that it's bad and we shouldn't have it (there are many reasons why certain people can't/won't ever be comfortable working in direct contact with others) but I don't think we should embrace it as the way things should be done.
I'll counter that with the community being the people you want it to be and not the forced work place culture. You can have the same community for years while changing jobs in the meantime. I don't understand your argument regarding cars. Fully remote allows one to orchestrate his own live to never have to drive. If you have no commute and you have access to things near you, why would you drive? I understand that it depends on the person and live conditions. But from strictly flexibility perspective you are more able to decide how you live than the alternative.
I think much of it comes from the fact that many assume that "commute == driving". I gave up my car 20 years ago and quite happily commuted to an office for most of that time either by transit or by bike. This is something you can do in places that are close together like cities. Remote work on the other hand allows people to live further away from each other, which tends to work against efforts around transit and cycling. In the end, you may not drive to work anymore, but you typically still need a car to do anything else. This to me is a bad model to reach for.
I think that's a bit of leap to say that because people can live further away from everyone else they will. And will go to places where everything must be done by car. I think most will just stay away from the bigger city centers, which tend to be the only places where transit has enough coverage. At least as far as I'm used to, don't know about the UK, maybe you have great transit systems. I can say something about everybody I know who works remotely (partially and completely), at the end of the day most are much more likely to want to be with friends and family and exercise, mostly because they don't feel so drained by travel and work culture.