Photo: Silje Bergum Kinsten / norden.org
Introduction
Since the pandemic, remote work has become more integrated into work-life culture in the Nordic Region. Surveys showed that a high percentage of employees in Europe (78%) who had experienced remote work during the pandemic were interested in continuing at least occasionally after restrictions were lifted (Eurofound, 2020). In 2022, Randall et al. reported on the status of remote work within the Nordic Region, highlighting the effects of new working patterns on urban and regional development. Since then, employers and employees alike have adjusted their ways of working, with hybrid work being more common than always working from home. While these changes influence things like quality of life in the work environment, tax systems, and the labour market, these alternative working practices have also changed the way people move, where people live and work, and what they expect from their city or region.
This is the sixth and final report in the research project Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic
This report, and others linked to the project, have used the term city to refer to municipalities with large populations (relatively speaking in the Nordic context), and the term town to refer to municipalities with smaller population sizes. However, it is not always the case that the academic literature follows suit. Ideas around “city centres” or the “15-minute city” may also apply to smaller scales.
Established in 2019, the Nordic Vision sets the goal for the Nordic Region to become green, competitive, and socially sustainable by 2030; read more at https://www.norden.org/sv/declaration/var-vision-2030
As of 2024, the phenomenon of remote work is at a unique phase. While the effects of remote work practices are already being felt spatially, planners and policymakers may yet have the possibility to steer remote work in a way that benefits both urban and rural areas in the Nordic Region. This report provides discussion for how actors might think strategically about remote work in order to guide the region towards social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
The state of remote work in the Nordic Region
Despite the undeniable changes that remote work has inspired in recent years, it is important to keep in mind that, prior to the pandemic, a relatively high percentage of the populations in Nordic countries worked remotely. In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden, over 27% of the population reported sometimes or usually working from home already in 2018, compared to the EU average of 13.6% in the same year (Figure 1). Over the pandemic years, the proportion of employees who sometimes or usually work from home grew in all Nordic countries as well as across the EU. According to data from the European Labour Force Survey, around 58% of employed persons in the Nordic countries report never working from home in 2023, compared to about 73% in 2017. Norway saw the most dramatic changes between 2017 and 2023 (10.4% sometimes or usually worked remotely in 2017 compared to 41.8% in 2023).
Figure 1. Percent of employed persons sometimes or usually working from home: EU compared to Nordic countries, 2017-2023.
Source: European Labour Force Survey (Eurostat, 2024-a)
*No data available for Iceland in 2021 or Sweden in 2020
Source: European Labour Force Survey (Eurostat, 2024-a)
*No data available for Iceland in 2021 or Sweden in 2020
In 2021, Eurofound predicted that at least 20% of European employees would continue teleworking practices after the pandemic, a forecast that has thus far been proven true. As of 2023, 13.3% of employed persons in the EU sometimes work from home, and another 8.9% report usually working from home (Eurostat, 2024). While numbers of people working remotely have remained steady since the pandemic, there is some variation in the proportion of people sometimes compared to usually working from home (Figure 2). Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all saw an increase in people usually working remotely between 2019 and 2021. However, while the proportion of people reporting usually working remotely decreased in all four of these countries by 2023, the proportion of people reporting sometimes working remotely increased after 2021. The results highlight the normalisation of hybrid work over full-time working from home.
Figure 2. Percent of employed persons usually, sometimes, and never working from home in the Nordic countries, 2019, 2021, and 2023.
Source: European Labour Force Survey (Eurostat, 2024-a). * No data available for Iceland in 2021
Source: European Labour Force Survey (Eurostat, 2024-a). * No data available for Iceland in 2021
While the data in Figures 1 and 2 show national-level figures, other reports provide distinctions of remote work proportions based on municipal typology. Across Europe, capital areas tend to have higher rates of people working remotely compared to other regions, and cities have higher rates than towns or suburbs: “the pandemic shifted the balance of telework in favour of cities compared to other areas; it increased the share of urbanites teleworking, and the frequency of this practice” (Sostero et al., 2024, 14).
Remote work as an “urban” trend is thought to be due to employment structures in metropolitan areas – in other words, areas with a higher proportion of white-collar jobs are more likely to accommodate remote work. However, as Granath Hansson & Guðmundsdóttir (2024) point out, remote work can be a two-way street, enabling remote workers to hold employment in urban areas while living outside of urban areas, or to hold employment outside of urban areas while living in urban areas. The manifestation of this (and whether it will contribute to higher proportions of remote workers in small towns or rural areas) is not yet clear. Eurofound has reported a growing gap between the rate of teleworking in cities compared to towns and suburbs and rural areas (Sostero et al., 2024). The situation raises questions as to whether remote work will act as a powerful factor in attracting or retaining people. There remains some uncertainty around how municipalities can use remote work practices as a planning tool and which areas may have greater opportunities to see benefits (Bogason et al., 2024-a). The situation also provokes some question as to how strongly employment steers people to settle in one location versus another – or to split time across multiple localities. Importantly, while remote work opportunities may enable some segment of the population to decouple their municipality of residence from their municipality of employment, whether people actually do so – and how many – depends on a number of complex and individual factors.
Finally, it is important to remember that remote work is not an opportunity provided equally to all people in the Nordic Region; it remains dependent on the kind of job and the agreements made between employers and their employees. A recent Eurofound report warns that “hybrid working is often a privilege that high earners in more senior positions have access to, while employees lower in the hierarchy are excluded. Hybrid working thus has the potential to become a new source of inequality in the workplace” (Eurofound, 2024, 26). Simultaneously, local and national surveys show conflicting perceptions of whether working from home is an advantage or disadvantage for employees who are granted the option (e.g., see Haunstrup Christensen et al., 2024).
Overall, it is evident that remote work has changed how people live and work. Therefore, research is needed to understand how such changes may influence urban and regional development. Furthermore, planners and policymakers have the opportunity to guide remote work to ensure it aligns with sustainable development goals for the city or region in which they work.
Outline of the report
This report is organised into three parts. First, we provide a synthesis of key findings from the previous reports developed within the Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic project
Box 1 reviews several key terms within the ever-expanding lexicon of remote work. Additional terms, such as urban attractiveness or third spaces, are highlighted in relation to the sections below that explore these ideas in more detail (see Boxes 2 and 7).
In the Nordic countries, a variety of words are used to describe the phenomenon of working wholly or partly from a place other than the main workplace. Words used can be translated into remote work, working from home, and work without specified location (Randall et al., 2022-a). In this report, we use the term remote work based on the meaning presented by Statistics Finland:
Remote work refers to gainful employment that, in line with an agreement with the employer, is carried out outside the actual workplace (e.g., at home or at a summer cottage, or on a train), often with the use of information technology equipment. Remote work is work of the kind that could also be carried out at the workplace […]. A characteristic feature of remote work is that work arrangements are not tied to a specific time or place […] (Statistics Finland, n.d.).
Related terminology around remote work in the Nordic languages include distancearbejde or hjemmearbejde in Danish; distansarbete, hemartbete, and flexibelt arbete in Swedish; fjernarbeid, hjemmearbeid, and stedsuavhengig arbeid in Norwegian; fjarvinna and störf án staðsetningar in Icelandic; and etätyö, monipaikkaisuus, and paikkariippumaton työ in Finnish (see Randall et al., 2022-a).
Hybrid work
Hybrid work refers to the situation when an employee works part-time at his or her permanent workplace and part-time remotely. As expressed by Gurstein (2023, 345): “Hybrid work is a flexible work model that supports a blend of in-office, remote, and on-the-go workers. It offers employees the autonomy to choose to work wherever and however they are most productive.” As hybrid solutions are the most common, compared to full-time remote positions, and hybrid arrangements have different implications for spatial patterns than full-time remote work, it is important to distinguish between these two different phenomena. Several labour surveys in the Nordic countries during the pandemic (2020-2021) highlighted that both employees and employers desired to continue remote work opportunities at least 2-3 days per week after restrictions were lifted (Randall et al., 2022-a). In the Nordic countries, collective agreements help to regulate such hybrid work.
The Framework Agreement on Telework defines telework as:
A form of organising and/or performing work, using information technology, in the context of an employment contract/relationship, where work, which could also be performed at the employer’s premises, is carried out away from those premises on a regular basis (European Trade Union Confederation, 2002).
This definition continues to be the point of reference for remote work agreements in the Nordic countries. Referring to Huws et al. (1990) and Mokhtarian (1991), Gurstein (2023) explains how telework was originally conceptualised as decoupling work from its dependence on transportation. Telecommuting highlights this by linguistically indicating the practice as a form of mobility. However, Gurstein clarifies that “telework is not just working from home, as satellite office or neighbourhood telework centres close to employees’ homes can substitute for the commute to a centralised office” (Gurstein, 2023, 345). Based on this nuance, telework itself may still involve some kind of commute, albeit to somewhere other than the primary office space. While telework or telecommuting were the more popular terms at the advent of ICT-dependent work practices, these terms have been replaced by “remote work,” “work from home,” and “hybrid work,” with minor conceptual variations. However, telework is still often used in academic literature depending on the study and the concepts used by statistical offices.
In academic literature, remote work, work from home (WFH), and telework are all used with various frequencies. The discourse also includes references to remote work or telecommuting “practices” (Budnitz et al., 2021; Currie et al., 2021), flexible working “patterns” (Budnitz et al., 2020), and work-from-home “arrangements” (Thulin et al., 2023; Elldér, 2020), indicating the repeated exercise of these working methods, the complexity and variations involved when discussing such methods, and their emergence as a way of life (of solving the life puzzle, or livspusslet). These arrangements are highly individual, and are potentially irregular, depending on the week, day, or even hour since, depending on the flexible arrangement, employees may split their work tasks across time and space within a single day. These fragmented practices make remote work a particularly complex field to study.
Simply put, multi-locality is about having some definitive link to more than one place. However, the concept is far more complicated, both theoretically and practically (see Lapintie, 2022; Weichart, 2015). Weichart (2015) explores several theories for understanding residential multi-locality as “a social practice … [in which] at least one household member moves from one place to another at (predominantly) regular intervals” (387). However, the phenomenon, as Weichart and others argue, is highly complex and involves the study of space, time, and identity. It also suggests that there are clear boundaries of what constitutes “home” compared to other spaces, which is not always clear cut. While the idea of multi-locality is not new, Lapintie (2022) points out that our “state-epistemology” still does not account for it. He brings to light the distinction between living and residing, pointing out how statistical databases fail to account for the multi-local individual who may be both urban and rural but can only be permanently registered in a single municipality. For the purposes of this report, we consider remote work as one kind of multi-locality in that it affords some individuals with the ability to rearrange their living and working activities across multiple locations.
Though not always the case, ICTs are often the backbone of remote work opportunities (Sostero et al., 2024). The term encompasses “all technical means used to handle information and aid communication,” including “both computer and network hardware, as well as their software” (Eurostat, 2023). While much of the Nordic Region enjoys a high level of quality internet connectivity (for example, more than 92% of Danish municipalities offer connections to “superfast” broadband), there remain some discrepancies between urban and rural municipalities (Penje, 2022). That being said, Sostero et al. (2024) suggest that “rural internet speeds in the EU are now likely enough to support telework” and therefore, “high internet speeds are no longer significant predictors of higher levels of regional rates of telework” (2). In this report, we use both ICT and digital infrastructure to discuss the services and systems required for performing most remote work tasks.
Photo: Eythor Arnason/norden.org
Methods
The aim of this work was to put the Nordic-based research from the Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic project
These reports include Randall et al. (2022-a), Randall et al. (2022-b), Ormstrup Vestergård (2022), Stjernberg et al. (2024), Granath Hansson and Guðmundsdóttir (2024), and Bogason et al. (2024-a); see “Synthesis of the research project Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic” below.
To explore the latest remote work discourse in relation to spatial planning, a systematic literature review was conducted between March and May of 2024. The researcher made various keyword searches on the Scopus peer-reviewed literature database using a combination of remote work-related terms (e.g., remote work, hybrid work, multilocality, work from home) and urban planning-related terms (e.g., spatial, planning, geography, urban, rural, city). To account for shifts in the discourse during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the literature search was limited to articles published from 2018 to 2024. Search results were filtered by relevant subject areas (e.g., social sciences). A total of 63 articles were initially curated on the spatial planning implications of remote work. To complement these articles, a further 8 articles were included through an additional Google Scholar search on remote work and work from home in relation to spatial planning. In the review process, researchers excluded several articles that were deemed irrelevant to the theme of spatial implications—for example, articles focussing on management processes of remote work. Several additional articles cross-referenced in the selected literature led the researchers to add 17 academic articles to the total number of articles reviewed. This was especially important for collecting additional, Nordic-based studies that did not initially emerge in the Scopus database searches.
The researchers made a thematic coding analysis of the articles, tagging them first according to time period (pre-, during, or post-pandemic) and geographical scope of the article, and then sorting them according to common emerging themes (e.g., land use planning, urban design, urban-rural linkages, housing, transportation, co-working spaces). The researchers synthesised these themes into six main categories, which are reflected in the six sections of the spatial dimensions of remote work used in this report. Then, the Nordic-based research from the Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic project was reviewed, with research findings tagged according to the themes from the international academic literature.
Complementary to the academic literature review, researchers also reviewed a limited selection of recent documents and non-academic articles on the defined themes related to remote work and spatial planning, specifically from media outlets and agencies from the Nordic countries. These included reports on surveys in various regions within the Nordics as well as European and international reports on the spatial implications of remote work (e.g., Eurofound and OECD).
Going forward, it would be useful to expand the document study in this fast-moving research field, especially as the academic literature tends to be published at a slower pace due to peer-review processes. Moreover, document studies in the Nordic context, where academic literature is sparse, might uncover perspectives not found in the academic literature. In this project, surveys made by regions are examples of that.
The literature review gathered a broad spectrum of information from a wide variety of geographical contexts, including many international studies from cultural, geographic, and institutional contexts different to that of the Nordic countries. Despite these distinctions, many international studies remained relevant as a starting point for understanding the spatial implications felt worldwide during and after the pandemic. Moreover, it helped to identify interesting research questions and provided insights on data and methods used to assess remote work, thereby highlighting gaps and areas that warrant deeper investigation.
Photo: Melker Dahlstrand / imagebank.sweden.se
Synthesis of the research project Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic
The project Remote work and multilocality post-pandemic was established by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2021, with project management and research activities conducted by Nordregio. Since the start of the project, researchers have published five reports and a policy brief:
- In 2022, an initial literature review was published (Remote work: Effects on Nordic people, places and planning; see Randall et al., 2022-a), followed by a quantitative study on various Nordic geographies (Local and regional experiences of remote work and multilocality; see Randall et al., 2022-b). The policy brief, Strengthening Nordic cooperation on remote work and multilocality (see Ormstrup Vestergård, 2022), summarises the findings of the two first reports and provides input to policy.
- In 2024, two reports on remote work in smaller towns (Remote work in smaller towns: Possibilities and uncertainties; see Granath Hansson and Guðmundsdóttir, 2024) and rural areas (Remote work in rural areas: Possibilities and uncertainties; see Bogason et al., 2024-a), as well as one report on the Nordic territorial typology developed within the project (Towards a grid-based Nordic territorial typology: A new tool for analysis across the urban-rural continuum; see Stjernberg et al., 2024), were presented.
This report marks the conclusion of the project (Figure 3). In the appendix, the main findings of the five previous reports are presented in chronological order.
A comprehensive summary of the project, as well as all published reports and policy briefs, can be found on the project website.
Figure 3. Overview of the contents of the six project publications
This project has taken the form of explorative research as it started during the COVID-19 pandemic and was carried out in its direct aftermath as a new normal unfolded and new working habits developed. During the pandemic when the research agenda was set, there was only limited knowledge on remote work and its potential spatial implications. To discover more, the project set out to explore how remote work and multilocality could be understood in this new context of work-from-home regulations and later optional remote and hybrid work arrangements. As of autumn 2024, when this report is being written, negotiations between Nordic employers and their employees are still underway; hence, it is still an open question what shape remote and hybrid work will take long-term in different Nordic geographies. However, as this report will show, we can begin to identify how remote work may influence and be influenced by the built and natural environment. Below, we provide a synthesis of the main results from the first five reports. In the chapter Spatial dimensions of remote work, we report more detailed research results linked to the highlighted themes.
Hybrid work is the new normal for a share of the population
Already before the pandemic, Nordic labour markets were characterised by high levels of trust and flexibility, as well as digitalisation, allowing higher levels of remote work. Post-pandemic, hybrid work, with work hours spent both at the workplace and at home or elsewhere, has emerged as the new normal for a share of the population that is characterised by higher education and self-employment levels. This has entailed new work arrangements in offices and homes as well as new mobility patterns. As will be outlined below, hybrid work—rather than fully remote work—has distinct spatial implications. Concurrently, the majority of the work force does not work remotely, which has varying implications for employers’ remote work policies, including social impacts related to, for example, control, trust, and equal treatment.
Remote and hybrid work can be a tool in regional development policies
Remote work and multilocality are already on the regional policy agenda in Nordic countries, as remote work has been considered a tool in regional development for some time. Finland and Iceland had regional policies related to remote work and multilocality already before the pandemic, and these policies were given momentum during and after the pandemic.
In Iceland, the majority of jobs are concentrated in the greater capital region. To counter this imbalance, the “jobs without specified location” initiative was launched in 2018 as part of the Strategic Regional Plan 2018-24. This initiative is intended to promote remote work from rural co-working spaces with the aim that staff selection shall not be influenced by place of residence. In the Regional Development Policy 2022-36, the initiative was further underlined as all state jobs are now considered “site-less” unless the work is specifically tied to a certain location.
Against a backdrop of population decline in some regions, Finnish policy supporting a balanced regional development has been on the agenda for a longer time. Remote work and multilocality, based on technology and location-independent norms, is generally seen as a partial solution.
In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, links between regional policy and remote work are less clear. The preconditions for increased remote work are present, however, and fit well into broader regional development goals. In Norway, there is also an ambition to have a balanced distribution of government workplaces throughout the country, and a pilot project creating local public sector co-working hubs in four municipalities has been implemented.
The regional policy initiatives above are mainly focused on public jobs and co-working premises. The rural and urban case studies conducted within the project also pointed to the importance of including remote work in policies on transportation and digital infrastructure, including needs created by private employment. In cases when municipal interests need to be balanced, town centre development and housing might also be included in regional development dialogues. Emerging policy recognition of remote work impacts in regional planning are also noted (e.g. ÖMS 2023; Di Marino et al., 2024 on the Helsinki and Oslo regions; Regional Council of North Savo, 2024).
Remote work practices lead to new residential preferences and mobility patterns
Migration data from the pandemic showed that migration mainly took place to municipalities surrounding the capital areas and smaller towns or rural areas within commuting distance of larger cities. This was supported by a study on Copenhagen for the years 2018-2021 conducted within this project. However, case studies of smaller towns showed that there is a limit in terms of distances and the level of attractiveness where smaller towns and rural areas are not able to attract larger numbers of remote workers. The dominance of hybrid work arrangements and the resulting need to travel regularly to a workplace entail that the zone around cities and larger towns that has the potential to attract hybrid workers will have its limits and be strongly linked to attractiveness and time and ease of travel.
Some rural areas that witnessed population decline before the pandemic experienced a slowing or reversing population development, as well as an increased demand for second homes during the pandemic. The extent to which these trends persist post-pandemic, in what areas, and how these trends are related to remote work, has yet to be studied in more depth throughout the Nordics. Meanwhile, the project results have shown that also smaller shares of in-migration might have distinct effects in less populated areas.
In the urban case study, researchers suggested that hybrid workers could be viewed as a sub-group of commuters that spend more time locally and therefore might increase demand for local goods and services. Although this is a simplified way of viewing hybrid workers, it may assist planners in getting a clear understanding of how new working habits influence spatial planning. In a similar way, some interviewees in the regional and rural case studies mentioned “part-time dwellers” and second homeowners as a sub-group that comes with its own sets of possibilities as well as challenges when it comes to planning.
Remote work has been associated with environmental sustainability if it reduces the need for travel. However, the lifestyle choices remote work enables may be accompanied by negative environmental impacts such as increased resource use and travelling longer distances through less environmentally friendly means. Moreover, lower demand for public transport has proven to impact service availability and cost in some areas.
Remote work opportunities are one of several potential ways to increase attractiveness
In regional policy, increased remote work opportunities are often expected to make smaller towns and rural areas more attractive and thus create opportunities for regional development. New skill sets, more innovative business environments, and improved public and private services could assist in countering out-migration and improve quality of life. Many municipalities and regions already worked around such strategies before the pandemic, trying to attract remote workers (Kull et al, 2020). Post-pandemic, despite the persistence of remote and hybrid work, there has not been general evidence for such a development. However, some places have reported a long-term effect, typically those that already were attractive and were able to build on those foundations. This calls for an active policy by municipalities and regions that wish to harness remote work as a catalyst for development. As expressed by municipalities interviewed in this study (and touched upon in the section Available data and methods below), there are considerable challenges to collect reliable data upon which planners and policymakers can build strategies. The case study municipalities in the research by Granath Hansson and Guðmundsdóttir (2024) and Bogason et al. (2024-a) did not have explicit policies for remote workers; instead, they opted for including remote workers in their general strategies to increase attractiveness.
The case studies made on smaller towns (Granath Hansson & Guðmundsdóttir, 2024) and rural areas (Bogason et al., 2024-a) pointed to the centrality of attractiveness and quality of life for sustaining or increasing population in less populated areas (see Box 2). In their work to increase attractiveness, municipalities regarded remote workers as part of a larger population they wished to retain or attract, including persons with roots in the society and skilled workers needed for economic vitality. Attractiveness was not conceptualised distinctly differently for remote workers compared to other existing and potential new residents. However, attractive housing, swift and comfortable mobility solutions as well as good digital infrastructure were mentioned as especially important for remote workers. Access to quality digital infrastructure was underlined in the rural case studies where such services were not taken for granted in all geographies. Here, good connections from co-working areas might have special relevance. Public and private co-working spaces were deemed a central tool to increase attractiveness in the studied rural areas. In the smaller towns, however, such spaces existed but were not used much by remote workers. The researchers hypothesise that remote workers in rural areas might have larger remote work allowances creating more demand for serviced space (e.g., co-working spaces providing resources like printers and meeting rooms) as well as general social interaction, networking, and cooperation. By contrast, standard hybrid work with some days every week in the office is more common in smaller towns; therefore, the need for office space outside of the home is in less demand.
An increase in population might entail larger demand for local goods and services, as well as infrastructure, which might have both positive and negative effects on existing populations, land use, and economic vitality. Municipalities and local public and private actors need to consider the prerequisites of a socially sustainable development where the needs of newcomers, temporary residents, and the existing population are balanced. In relation to multilocal populations, taxation regulations that provide striving municipalities with income to finance increasing service costs and needed development measures from those part-time inhabitants is a point of discussion.
The terms retention and attraction of populations describe the various factors that encourage people to either remain in or relocate to these geographical areas. These terms are not straightforward– critically, geographers have challenged the notion of attractiveness in urban planning discourse by highlighting its subjectivity and its tendency to characterise cities predominantly as entities competing for capital in the form of its citizenry (Hidman, 2018). However, the term can also provide planners and policymakers with a better understanding of the macro flows of migration as they seek to identify the many complex push and pull factors that may contribute to individuals’ decisions and/or capacities to move or remain in place.
The concept of urban attractiveness in smaller Nordic towns is the theme of a related research project at Nordregio which evaluates characteristics of attraction and retention, specifically public space, housing, and connectivity.
The publications in this project are found on the project website: https://nordregio.org/research/small-town-attractiveness/
Remote work enables work force exchange between settlement areas
The urban and rural case studies showed that municipalities see remote or hybrid work as a two-way exchange which both has the potential to attract new permanent or seasonal populations, but also creates opportunities to recruit highly qualified personnel not living in the area. Many municipalities struggle to find qualified staff and possibilities to recruit well-qualified and experienced staff working remotely or hybrid might assist in maintaining important functions and services that benefit the permanent population and hence make towns more attractive. The case studies showed that remote and hybrid recruitments were made in smaller towns and rural areas already before the pandemic, but that this practice has gained momentum based on experiences during the pandemic. This two-way exchange might also mean that local residents compete with remote or hybrid workers living elsewhere for local jobs, or that local employers lose employees living locally as they seek new opportunities in other areas based on remote or hybrid work arrangements. Moreover, recruitment was said to be facilitated when the future employee’s spouse had the opportunity to work remotely, as this could make the relocation decision easier and also allow for a greater amount of alternative employment opportunities.
There is a lack of available data and methods for studying the nuances of remote work
This research project has explored various quantitative and qualitative methods to better understand the spatial implications of remote work and multilocality. However, available statistical data turned out to be a major constraint as it could not explain the drivers and effects of remote work in a reliable way. The shortage of data was echoed by municipalities taking part in interviews in the case studies. The lack of data was said to prevent municipalities from taking action in relation to new working trends as they could not fully identify potential new populations and understand their local impact and/or needs. Further, response rates to the survey limited generalisability of answers. Selected interviews and document studies generated rich data, which was limited to specific spatial contexts. Going forward, new statistical data customised to catch remote work patterns would be valuable as a basis for further research. Moreover, theory and methods need to be developed and customised to data limitations. Here, national agencies and regions could take a front seat along with academic researchers.
Future studies could utilise the urban-rural typology developed within the project to better understand the implications of remote work. The Nordic typology categorises all urban and rural areas into seven groups (inner urban areas to sparsely populated rural areas) on a detailed grid level. Users can then add selected statistical data to reveal geographical patterns. This enables users to compare, for example, population trends and settlement patterns between different types of areas in different countries. The detail of the typology greatly improves results and analysis for the Nordic Region compared to commonly used tools (Figure 4). The EU is financing the development of a similar typology for Europe, and Nordregio takes part in this work through the research project GRANULAR (Box 3).
The Nordic urban-rural typology
Nordregio is also taking part in the European research project GRANULAR
Figure 4. Comparison of how territories are classified in the Nordic urban–rural typology and in the DEGURBA classification.
Nordic policymakers can capitalise on emerging remote work trends by hosting knowledge-sharing events, establishing a taskforce on the topic, and developing partnerships among local and regional stakeholders
Remote work has the potential to impact society in a variety of ways, but the project revealed a considerable uncertainty as to what remote work opportunities will bring long term. Simultaneously, there is a window of opportunity to shape remote work policy in a way that supports outcomes in line with the Nordic Vision. Therefore, remote work-related developments need to be followed and scrutinised by both policymakers and researchers going forward.
The policy recommendations from this project have thus far emphasised knowledge exchange between the Nordic countries showcasing good practices and elucidating common challenges. Input gained could inform national level responses and prevent Nordic actors from “reinventing the wheel,” so to speak, or working in isolation. As the most notable differences between the countries are their regional policy responses, the greatest potential for Nordic added value might be found in that area.
In the project’s previously published policy brief (Ormstrup-Vestergård, 2023), the Nordic Council of Ministers was recommended to: (1) host a Nordic knowledge-sharing event aimed a national policymakers and senior officials, (2) establish a Nordic taskforce on multilocality, and (3) develop a partnership program aimed at supporting knowledge exchange between local and regional stakeholders in the Nordic countries.