At some point in time, life will return to normal and people will go back to their office. But when they do, things might look different. Some firms might shrink the size of their main headquarters and lease smaller spaces in the suburbs, called spokes, which would welcome employees that didn't want to commute into the central hub.

But urban planner Christopher Rhie, an associate principal with the Los Angeles office of global firm Buro Happold, doesn't think hub-and-spoke is for everyone.

"I think that [hub and spoke]  is highly, highly dependent on the sector," Rhie says. "I think in places like Silicon Valley where housing prices are just completely out of control and it's relatively easy to work remotely, there are strong factors where a lot of the workforce don't need to be in the main office," he says. "But we'll see a little bit more of a distribution in other sectors."