A Zoom Christmas ornament. by Anthony Quintano licensed under Creative Commons.

Questioning assumptions about work-from-home trends. Has AirBnB evolved beyond the gig economy? Copenhagen pioneers climate-resilient design as a “sponge city.”

The changing geography of work from home: While there’s a perception that remote working options are leading people to move to rural areas and open spaces, most work from home is being done in large metropolitan areas where there were already a lot of jobs that could be done remotely. In places where people already live closer to work, like in Manhattan, work from home has waned. The result is a change from what we previously knew, and it may stick. (This article may be behind a paywall). (Justin Fox | Bloomberg/Washington Post)

AirBnB feels different now: When the short-term rental company AirBnB started, it was a way to create a personalized travel experience with local hosts and a good experience. But now, it’s moved towards something else: a big business with hosts that buy houses just to rent them out like hotel rooms. 30 percent of listings are by people or companies that own 21 properties or more, and while you can still get a place to stay for cheap, the host of other issues gets bigger. (This article may be behind a paywall). (Kate Lindsay | The Atlantic)

Copenhagen’s “sponge city” investments: To make sure extreme rain events don’t cause damage to the City of Copenhagen in Denmark, the city is investing 1.8 billion euros by 2035 in green infrastructure including catchment ponds, green spaces, adapted roads, and more. Most of the funding is coming from revenue collected from the water utility. After an extreme weather event that cost Copenhagen 800 million euros in 2011, the city has vowed to invest in strategies to absorb and slowly release water. (Jan Petter | Spiegel International)

Rethinking transportation outside of commutes: Researchers at Brookings took a deep dive into what the pandemic restructuring of transportation looks like, based on real-time transportation data. They found that reduced commuting has impacted the degree to which regions can look to a central transportation narrative with regional characteristics. These findings carry opportunities and risks, but ultimately each place has a chance to write a new future or get stuck in inertia. (Adie Tomer & Caroline George | Brookings)

AI invades urban planning with mixed results: There’s a wave of interest in using generative AI in architecture and urban planning. While some professionals believe that the main opportunity of generative AI is about creating compelling messaging, others wish to use it to help them create detailed designs that the technology is perhaps not quite ready to produce. For AI to be more useful, bigger datasets are needed, but there’s also a worry that too many boring and bad urban spaces and designs are being sampled into the models, as well as that the imagery may be used for political purposes. (Patrick Sisson | Bloomberg CityLab)

Quote of the Week

“Freedom is hard to take away from people once they’ve had a taste of it. Now requiring people to work in the office can lead to lower levels of engagement, higher burnout, and a lot of resentment.”

Jim Harter, psychologist and chief scientist of workplace management and wellbeing for analytics and consulting firm Gallup discusses the new work-from-home dynamics in Newsweek.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Zack Subin of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation and Ben Holland of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Ben and Zack join us to talk about their report, Urban Land Use Reform, on the importance of land use in reducing travel and emissions.