Grabar: Despite all the talk about the resurgence of cities before the pandemic, suburbanization has never really gone away. In most cities it’s as much a part of the big-city life cycle as ever. If the families moving out now are the same ones who would’ve moved out next year or the year after that, then what’s happening right now might not be so significant. But what is new is remote work.

Hurley: If that becomes very widespread, that would be enough of a push factor, I think, to actually accelerate suburbanization. If you have families where you used to have two people commuting to jobs, two adults commuting to jobs, and one or more children commuting to school, and now everybody’s at home and this becomes a long-term or medium-term situation, I think that the spatial strain at that point would be enough to push people to say finally, OK, we just need more space.

Moore: The commuter rail line here [in Chicago] is concerned because the suburbanites, many of them come to the central business district, but they’re not living in the city. So will that transit line or system be able to sustain itself if you have all of these workers staying home? I do think that the short-term thing to look at is office buildings and space. I think we can see some clear things there right now about how they’re being retrofitted, how people aren’t coming back, buildings that are vacant or have vacancies probably won’t be able to be filled, and what does that mean for the commuter? It’s not always just city versus suburb, but how are we connected to a region.