Several decades ago, I lived for a while in a small town in north Georgia, a mill town in years past. As in many such towns, most of the jobs had moved elsewhere, often to other countries. Fortunately, the town was close enough to Atlanta to experience growth from that urban area, offsetting loss of mill jobs. In fact, the mill village that had housed former workers was seeing some revitalization as a cluster of both historic and affordable housing.

When the mills first came to the town, the mill housing was not as separated from the jobs and commercial sections as in later suburban housing in larger cities. Nationally, this newer separation of work and housing became more pronounced after World War II. Many Americans bought houses in suburbs away from city centers, commuting in then affordable automobiles using cheap gas.

Rising costs of commuting as well as the Covid pandemic may have changed these housing patterns, at least temporarily. First came “the great resignation.” Secondly, some workers who were able to work from home via their computers have resisted a return to pre pandemic work customs.

Some workers resigned because of difficulties in finding child care when the pandemic was spreading. Another reason for resignation appears to be a new level of job dissatisfaction with commuting. A surprising number of workers have resisted returning to the old nine-to-five office presence once the pandemic became more manageable.

For several centuries, we in the western world have accepted increasing separation of home and work. Factories, then offices, became the standard place of work. Cities became employment centers while workers lived elsewhere, increasingly in suburbs, increasingly further from city centers.

Throughout recorded history, however, until the industrial revolution, work and home were physically close. Will the work/job separation caused by the industrial revolution continue or will computers now make possible workers returning to more historic norms?