I can indeed see a world where working from home might in the short term infuse some life in local life, from neighbors to associations etc.. So maybe it's actually a positive change!
The shift from doing lunch with your coworkers to doing lunch around your neighbors seems really positive to me.
It's really strange and I sometimes feel like an outsider. But everyone's going on hikes on the weekend and going to movies together. I'm not going back into the office at this point and one thing that appeals to me about remote distributed work is that it's separate from the rest of my life. When I walk away from my laptop, it's just gone.
Ultimately, people are more of a pain to deal with than a pleasure until you really get to know them. I suspect this is the same reason suburbs seem to be more appealing and costly than condos.
I'm pretty sure a large part of the reason why Americans are so lonely compared to the rest of the world is that the suburban bedroom community model physically divides us and makes it much more difficult to get to know one's neighbors. By the time you get home from work at 6:30 in the evening, it's time to cook dinner, and, once you're done cleaning up, there's not much time for anything aside from watching a bit of TV before you go to bed.
And then the weekend rolls around, and your time is dominated by catching up on all the housework and errands you didn't have time to do during the week because of your long commute. So you're not really getting to know your neighbors then, either.