FW-HTF-P/Collaborative Research: Designing a Market-based Optimization Tool for the Future of Work: Balancing Remote Work and Community Vitality in Post-COVID American Cities

由于新冠肺炎疫情的爆发，远程工作实践已经大大加快，可能会在疫情爆发后的许多企业及其员工的工作和生活中发挥更大的作用。虽然远程工作对一些人来说是有好处的，但如果远程工作在很大程度上持续下去，它可能会导致“空心镇”，在那里，由于没有办公室工作人员，城市中心的人数会严重下降。这一趋势正在将美国的城市置于危险之中，并威胁到许多依赖于人们来到市中心工作、购物和开展业务的低收入服务工作者的生计。这一现象与大流行前的时代形成了鲜明对比，当时城市是创新和经济活动的中心，但也受到交通拥堵和车辆排放等负面外部性的影响。该项目将建设能力，以设计更令人满意的未来工作情景，其中熟练工人(即那些可以远程工作的人)的工作场所决策可以在公司之间进行协调，从而保持城市作为经济催化剂和创新中心的活力；当地企业和服务工作者蓬勃发展；并减少交通拥堵。如果成功，这个人类-技术前沿(FW-HTF)规划拨款项目的未来工作将通过帮助保留市中心的服务业工作岗位，创造再培训服务业工人的机会，并帮助保持美国城市作为经济活跃的创新集群的长期声誉，同时缓解困扰市中心数十年的负面外部效应，来促进国民福祉。该项目有三个方面：1)进行初步分析，以量化远程工作水平增加对当地经济和市中心服务业工人的影响；2)进行探索性工作，以了解公司对城市可能实施的替代政策选项的反应，以优化工人的存在；3)让利益攸关方评估政策的可行性，以及他们对使用技术优化办公室工作人员的态度和信任。该项目将重点放在西雅图和凤凰城，这两个城市的经济活动空间分布截然不同。通过利用行为经济学的知识以及神经网络和进化规划的方法，在现实但不确定的环境中对企业行为进行建模，将开发一个新的分层Stackelberg博弈框架。将调查城市中心可能被掏空的临界门槛和潜在的早期预警信号。该项目将为在运筹学、经济学、公共政策和交通运输的交叉领域产生新的方法和知识奠定基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Remote work practices, which have been greatly accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will likely play an increased role in post-pandemic work and life for many businesses and their employees. While there are benefits to remote work for some, if remote work persists to a significant degree, it may lead to “hollow towns” wherein city centers experience a serious decline in the absence of office workers. This trend is placing American cities in peril and threatening the livelihoods of many lower-income service workers who depend on people’s coming to the city core to work, shop, and conduct business. This phenomenon is in stark contrast to the pre-pandemic era when cities served as hubs of innovation and economic activities, but also suffered from negative externalities such as traffic congestion and vehicular emissions. This project will build capacity toward designing more desirable future of work scenarios where workplace decisions by skilled workers, i.e., those who can work remotely, can be coordinated across firms in such a manner that the vibrancy of the city as an economic catalyst and an innovation hub is maintained; local businesses and service workers thrive; and traffic congestion is reduced. If successful, this Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) Planning Grant project will advance the national well-being by helping to retain inner-city service jobs, generate opportunities to re-train service workers, and help maintain American cities' long-standing reputation as economically vibrant clusters of innovation, while mitigating the negative externalities that have plagued city centers for decades.The project has three thrusts: 1) conduct preliminary analyses to quantify the impacts of increasing levels of remote work on local economy and inner-city service workers; 2) perform exploratory work to understand firms’ responses to alternative policy options that cities may implement to optimize worker presence; and 3) engage stakeholders to assess policy feasibility and their attitudes towards and trust in using technologies to optimize worker presence in offices. The project will focus on Seattle and Phoenix, two cities with very different spatial distributions of economic activities. A novel hierarchical Stackelberg game framework will be developed by leveraging knowledge from behavioral economics, as well as methods in neural networks and evolutionary programming, to model firm behavior in a realistic but uncertain environment. Critical thresholds at which city centers may hollow out and potential early warning signals will be investigated. The project will lay the groundwork in generating new methods and knowledge at the intersection of operations research, economics, public policy, and transportation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.