Smart and Inclusive Built Environment: Is Remote Work the Key?

Abstract

This paper discusses the contribution of remote work to metropolitan areas’ resilience, sustainability, inclusion, and equity. These premises are the support of smart and 15-minute city models. The traditional model of idealization, planning, and living in metropolitan areas is based on the automobile, in the commuting movements, and in a dependent relationship between city centre and suburbs. The pandemic context exposed, in practice, the choice and the need for a human centred design model for metropolitan areas planning. The disrupted reality experienced in the last two years exposed the need to change traditional practices to guarantee global, and local sustainability. Remote work impacts commuting as well as the interactions between individuals and their home environs. To support this statement, the case studies of Paris and Barcelona, are both examples of 15-minute city model implementation. In the end, some questions: Why insist on unsustainable commuting centred planning? If the remote work experience along the lockdown was positively perceived, why its adoption is so difficult, almost impossible?