Not long ago, during the early days of the Covid pandemic, pundits predicted the death of great global cities. Expensive hubs such as New York and London, which were hard hit by the pandemic’s earliest waves, were called out in particular, as the residents who were able retreated to suburbs and small towns to work remotely.

But far from being eclipsed, global cities are being reinvented in new and more powerful ways. As with so much else in our fast-moving world, their physical and virtual identities are becoming blurred, and the notion of place has become increasingly paradoxical.

Historically, cities essentially provided everything for their residents — jobs and economic opportunities on the one hand, and housing, schools, and quality-of-life amenities on the other. But with the rise of digital technology and remote work, the places where we work and live have essentially become unbundled. Today, for the first time in history, a sizeable fraction of the workforce can participate in the economic life of a city without actually living there. A few examples illustrate this point:

• In England, Maddy and her husband, Mark, moved to Bristol from London but kept their jobs in the capitol. Their commute is two hours door-to-door. But because they do their jobs remotely, they make the trip to London for meetings just two or three times per month.
• Ibrahim is an Egyptian businessman whose company is based in Dubai but does significant business in Saudi Arabia. Since the pandemic, he has worked remotely from Cairo, where he lives near his family and friends. He commutes regularly to Dubai to connect with his colleagues and to Riyadh to meet clients. Thanks to new visa regulations and the fact that he is paid in Dubai and banks there, he is considered to be a resident of the UAE.
• Paula is a Colombian graphic designer who works for a Silicon Valley startup. Instead of living in the Bay Area, she works remotely from her hometown of Medellín. She is paid significantly above the local market rate in Medellín but less than the rate in the Bay Area, a win-win for Paula and her employer.

Maddy, Mark, Ibrahim, and Paula are all participants in a new, expanded form of city we dub the “Meta City” ­— a web of cities that operate as a distinct unit and are attached to a major — often global — economic hub. The various communities that make up the Meta City may be in different time zones and noncontiguous locations, but they function together as a coherent network with a distinct structure and logic. The Meta City combines physical and virtual agglomeration, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics, making it possible to occupy more than one space at the same time. As a result, urban areas within the Meta City network can share economic and social functions.

Viewed from this perspective, labor markets and talent pools did not randomly disperse across countries and the globe over the past three years but rather did so according to clear patterns. As workers spread out from major cities, they often followed others in their professions, creating clear ties between major hubs and smaller satellite cities. Think: finance workers leaving New York for Miami; tech workers leaving the Bay Area for Austin, Texas; workers in London decamping for Portugal or Spain. Mapping these connections and talent flows across the Meta City — between the hub and the satellite locations that comprise it — provides a powerful new lens to view our evolving economic geography and the future of corporate location.

Business leaders need to respond to the Meta City — and how they do so will dictate their ability to attract and retain talent. Employees’ moves are not ad hoc decisions, or simply about real estate cost cutting. Navigating this shift requires a more sophisticated frame than “work from the office versus work from home.” Companies must change how they think about their headquarters, innovation centers, satellite offices, home offices, and more. This new era of location strategy entails selecting and managing across a portfolio of locations for various functions. Here’s what CEOs and corporate managers need to know.