Agree. I bought a house an hour (one way) from the city and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t know I could work 50-100% from home even if I switch jobs. That is - not all jobs allow that but enough of them do that I don’t need to worry about it.
If I work just every other day in the office then my commute time per day is 30 minutes one way effectively. In that sense, my suburb is moving closer to the city.
I also think there is a wider periodic trend of moving from cities and closer to nature and vice versa, which has (at least in Europe) been in the from-the-city phase for several years now.
I live near a commuter rail line but going into a city office still ends up being almost 90 minutes door to door. (Driving at rush hour is just as bad.)
I did it maybe half the time for about a year and a half but it really wasn't sustainable long term. I don't work out of an office today but I really wouldn't mind going into our downtown office once a week or so.
I'd actually argue that one thing that has changed is that companies are much more amenable to at least part-time work from home. I agree the economic forces that have concentrated wealth and opportunity in cities hasn't and isn't changing, but I do think it will be much more viable for people to work at jobs where they only go in to the office, say, twice a week. In that situation I think a lot of people would be much more willing to live further out because traffic (a punishing factor in most cities) then becomes much less of an issue.