Beyond the core: residential distribution and growth of work-from-home-capable employment in German city-regions

The normalisation of working from home (WFH), understood as a home-based form of remote work, is associated with changing residential patterns within metropolitan regions, yet its spatial implications remain insufficiently understood. This paper examines the residential distribution of occupations with high-WFH-capacity across German city-regions from 2012 to 2023. The study combines two complementary analytical steps. Cluster analysis is used to identify structural municipal contexts characterised by differences of high-WFH capable employment, housing-market conditions, accessibility, local service provision and household structure. Multivariate regression modelling is then used to examine period-specific changes in high-WFH-capacity employment at the place of residence and to assess whether these changes are associated with period effects and selected structural municipal characteristics.Employment in occupations with high-WFH-capacity remains concentrated in urban cores and selected peri-urban municipalities, while growth increasingly extends to more distant parts of city-regions. This points to moderate intra-regional decentralisation and increasing polycentricity rather than a uniform urban-to-rural shift. Both period effects and structural municipal characteristics are associated with these developments. In particular, positive migration balances, higher housing costs, family-oriented household structures and longer travel times to metropolitan cores within functionally defined city-regions are associated with above-average growth in high-WFH-capacity employment. Overall, the findings suggest that WFH-capacity does not dissolve existing metropolitan structures, but remains embedded in them in selective ways. The expansion of WFH-capacity employment is associated with a more differentiated residential geography within German city-regions, with selected peri-urban and more distant municipalities gaining relevance while metropolitan cores remain central reference points.