Work from home was potentially a way to reverse this as people no longer would have needed to live close to the office and could instead live anywhere.
But RTO mandates are reversing this and I suspect that the covid WFH era was a one-off blip that will eventually be reversed.
I’d said the same, that if I moved to my village I’d be adding not just my spending but plenty more that’s needed to the place. My friends said that if many people with “city” jobs do this they will soon start demanding soymilk cheese and bluefin tuna instead of braised billy goat and spit roast hog…
Home office is not enough to make nowherikon sexy imho…
It’s funny because they picked the worst place to build. 
Gentrification is bad but you can solve the Wien-way (most buildings belong to the city) or the Zurich way (genossenschaften). I don’t know if there is another way for a city. Sooner or later buildings will belong to companies (or persons) that want to improve. Or you let the cycle continue and hope it works.
The idea is not to make it sexy, but to be able to live somewhere that doesn’t cost 2 million to buy or 5000 to rent.
And also avoid a ton of wasted commuting time. Reduce emissions and reduce load on public transport.
It’s usually the opposite way, but here’s a word that poetically shines in German while it’s just borderline bland technocratically descriptive in English.
Everyone repeat after me: Zimtschnecken (“cinnamon snails”)
(The French make it sound nice – brioches à la cannelle – but it’s actually worse than English: technocratic and non-descriptive. Soh-rri, eet ahd too bee zed.)
You overestimate them Googlers. Or underestimate them, depending on how you want to look at things …
I can count the Googlers I know who would eat out expensive on one hand.[★] They would rather miss dinner with the family to eat at the (free) cafeteria in the office three times a day.
There were also those who would pack the cafeteria dinner into disposable boxes (supplied by Google) to take dinner home. Some would fill several boxes …
When the lockdown took place in 2020, it only took a week or two until employees asked management whether they could expense take-out meals at home within the limits of Google’s travel policy which then had an allowance of CHF 60 or 70 per day or so.
No seasonal pumpkin spice add-on for CHF 5?
Not even a at least thimble sized cup of lactose-free whipped cream for CHF 4.50?
I’m slightly disappointed …
The correct spelling is Neu-Wetzikon.[W]
★ One, an Italian from Milan, was a “test eater” for Guide Michelin or Gault&Millau, I forget which. I think I learned from him that as one of those always anonymous testers you pay by yourself for your meals.
Another one, an American and very early Googler with a truckload of pre-IPO stock, was a trophy hunter and would just cross expensive exclusive restaurants off from his bucket list.
In his defense, he wasn’t a snob and more of a connaisseur who would also eat dirt cheap as long as it was, well, something rare (figuratively or literarilly, see below) and I guess somewhat exclusive.
I remember him mentioning The French Laundry as fancy while at the same time saying that the fresh oysters we were savoring in some midscale restaurant on Castro Street in Mountain View (Google’s headquarter city) were much tastier than anything he’d ever had in The French Laundry.
W Apogies in advance to anyone living in Wetzikon. I hear it’s actually a nice place.
(Please confirm?)
Thanks.
I googled to see what’s happening over there.
A lot.
So we were discussing Basel, BS, in the first place.
Is Pendlerdorf, BL, anything better than ZH suburb? Apart from not finding Dubai style cinnamon rolls? I kind of like Basel city myself (much more than Zurich fwiw).
Location of this hunting lodge for those who might be interested 
what’s there to hunt on that island? seagulls? 
EDIT: close: puffins - great video:
