When my children were very small, I was fortunate that I could work from home. That’s because my vocation was free-lance writing.

Of course, for generations almost everyone, both men and women, worked from home. Our work was there—farms, woodlands, preparing food. Our work activities were in our homes or close by.

The industrial revolution changed the location of jobs in developed countries and led to a larger separation between home and work. Some factories produced unhealthy waste. Businesses searched for efficiency and created job centers for workers only.

For those who could afford it, the men mostly worked at paying jobs in the cities while more women and children moved further out into the suburbs. Women no longer were a significant part of providing income or producing goods for the family.

Gradually, women came back into the labor force, but children generally were taken care of elsewhere—sometimes adequately, sometimes not. The birth rate lowered as some adults solved the problem of childcare by not having children at all.

The ability of some to work remotely through computers raised the possibility of more work done at home—if our office culture could adjust to this practice. The Covid pandemic, of course, quickened the amount of work done remotely.

Questions are still debated: Did this reduction of shared office space affect the quality of work done? Restrict needed worker interaction?

But what about our city centers and the jobs seemingly dependent on a work force spending five days a week there? Or can city centers reinvent themselves to be family friendly? Places where families can live as well as work and go to school?

How can we connect social need for close relationships with economic need for work places?