So many folks think COVID is a "game changer" for remote work and urban population decline, I think one thing we need to discuss is,

what, exactly, is a city - and why?

This mythology that technology/remote work will overcome *the reason cities exist* is kind of garbage, IMO

Like sure, there will always be some slice of the population who dislike urban living and have figured out how to use technology to make Big Tech money from Idaho Falls, or wherever

ask me about all the World Wide Web developers who showed up in Colorado in the 1990s

But reality that ~ 0.01% of humans want to stare at mountains & do Zoom calls between hot laps up Left Hand Canyon does not translate - does not even bear a relationship to - the fact that cities are an *emergent feature of human evolution*

IOW, Asimov wrote science *fiction*

Cities aren't choices we make. They're *who we are becoming as a species.*

The "choice" to be rural or remote is the outlier, and it's declining, not ascending.

Go ahead, look it up. American suburbs are getting *more densely populated.*

So no, getting broadband in your cabin in Kalispell will not lead to population decline in Seattle, but you should know the debate about "imminent decline of cities" is perennial and largely advanced by right-wing/oil/sprawl advocates, not the tech sector or its workers, per se