A prominent aspect of many people's experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a practice known as telecommuting, which typically involves working from home. Telecommuting has been a key response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has translated into an increasingly and explicitly expressed desire to move out of cities and into nonmetropolitan areas where housing is less dense and infection rates are lower. This interest in counterurbanisation is an understandable response to self-isolation. However, many postpandemic telecommuters are likely to be knowledge workers for whom some presence in the office during the working week may be required, and that may limit their counterurban moves to metropolitan hinterlands and regions. Commuter-based population growth in metropolitan-proximate and peri-urban settlements may then lead to urban sprawl—that is, to disconnected and widespread suburbanisation. This article addresses emergent policy challenges for governments as they respond to the growing propensity for nonmetropolitan and particularly peri-urban relocations that appears to be an outcome of the pandemic. Specific attention is paid to the distribution of employment and need to consider the variegated nature of population and demographic trajectories in nonmetropolitan Australia.

中文翻译：

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远程办公的局限性：作为大流行应对措施的逆城市化的政策挑战

许多人在 COVID-19 大流行中经历的一个突出方面是一种称为远程办公的做法，通常涉及在家工作。远程办公一直是对 COVID-19 大流行的关键反应，它已转化为越来越明确地表达了搬出城市并进入住房密度较低且感染率较低的非大都市地区的愿望。这种对逆城市化的兴趣是对自我隔离的一种可以理解的反应。但是，许多大流行后的远程办公人员可能是知识型工作者，他们可能需要在工作周内在办公室里呆一段时间，这可能会限制他们向大城市腹地和地区的反城市迁移。大都市区和城郊定居点中以通勤为基础的人口增长可能会导致城市扩张——即，脱节和广泛的郊区化。本文讨论了政府在应对似乎是大流行的结果的非大都市特别是城市周边地区搬迁的日益增长的倾向时，政府面临的紧急政策挑战。特别关注就业分布，并需要考虑澳大利亚非大城市人口的多样化性质和人口发展轨迹。