Is the 4-Day Work Week the Answer to Everything for Cities?
One more example of Tokyo leading the way
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You may have noticed that urbanists have been obsessed with Tokyo lately. Lots of people want to talk about Tokyo’s housing, its dense and narrow streets, its overall vibrancy and how this megacity could be a model for the U.S. (We can dream!)
Well, here’s one more reason to consider Tokyo the vanguard for cities.
In April, Japan’s largest employer, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, decided to tackle two interrelated issues – the country’s declining fertility rate and its ultra-intense work ethic – by testing out a new policy for its 160,000 government workers: the 4-day work week.
The hope is that once people have a better work-life balance they’ll start to form or grow their families. Japan’s birth rate hit a record low in 2024 after nearly a decade of decline.
Though the city isn’t cutting workers’ hours – it’s compressing 40 hours into four days per week – it will significantly reduce the amount of weekly commuting time. Tokyo’s average commutes exceed many of those in the U.S. at approximately one hour each way. And many people in Tokyo already work 10-hour days, so for them it will be like a full extra day off each week.
While most of Japan is back to in-person work, remote and hybrid work have remained popular with professional services industries, particularly in Tokyo. This policy could help Tokyo’s government attract and retain workers who might otherwise work for the private sector. But according to the government, that’s not the goal; for them, the best case scenario is that this move influences private sector employers to also adopt four-day work weeks.
Meanwhile in the United States, many city governments have adopted a strong back-to-the-office policy. Last summer, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker was the first head of a major city to successfully implement a full five days in person back in the office — in the middle of the summer.
Perhaps thinking this would be easy, San Francisco Mayor Dan Lurie called his city’s workers back to the office four days a week with one remote work day starting April 28th. But after receiving intense pushback from an employee union, he set a new start date in August for the policy.
These battles over in-person work reflect the conflicting priorities of individuals, local economies, and societies writ large.
Individuals struggle to find enough time to be fully engaged in both their work and their families and see remote work as a way to multitask across multiple domains, often at the same time. Yet, as a recent Gallup study suggests, often fully remote work is a sure path to a less thriving life.
Local economies still need people to take transit, go shopping, and eat out in order to survive.
And societies need people to work in person for more existential reasons – to maintain a shared reality where in-person connection fosters some degree of social cohesion.
For most mayors and CEOs, the easiest solution to this problem is to ask for everyone back in the office all the time. Cue the disgruntled workers, the lawsuits from workers, the resignations.
But instead of five days a week in the office, the four-day office work week might be the perfect compromise and one that allows everyone to get just enough of what they need to be satisfied.
Here are three good reasons why a four-day work-week is worth considering, particularly for local governments.