Reasons behind RTO have NOTHING to do about productivity. I've identify two kind of reasons:

- giant's needs for slaves. That's is. I know many do dislike such strong term but again that's damn is. Take a look at https://youtu.be/MJBz66H5QIU than see what happen around the world, from Jakarta "will be abandoned" for Nusantara, Cairo for "New Administrative Capital", Iran recent announce they'll count moving the capital in a to-be-built new smart city, failed Saudi's Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, ... everywhere current ruling class knows well we need to built new settlements and infra because we can't evolve/keep the existing ones for long. Why smart cities? Because they are the best way to enslave people keeping them amused at least formally, while keeping them owning nothing. Let's say you own an apartment, what you really own? A portion of a building, no more, and most in cities do not own but rent. Cloud+mobile, the modern mainframe, what to you own, a thin client/endpoint practically managed by the OEM and nothing else? Current fintech, where instead of giving signed transactions via APIs (like here in EU, OpenBank, de jure since 2017 but not down to the customers) the substantial owner gives next to nothing, some banks nowadays do not even gives pdfs receipts for most operations? What else? In cities people under-utilize large buildings for less than 12h/day, commuting between them like a ritual every day, just to consume collective transport, privately owned by someone, ready made food, fast fashion and fast tech (really, if you WFO you do not buy much dress or wearable devices) for what? In the '80s most factories have flee the city, only offices remains to keep the economy running and we all know there is no needs for offices, the only who need people in cities, so offices too keep them there, are the giants;

- ruling class, more and more a kleptocracy, who need to been able to surveil and controls slaves, again, in a city you easy surveil anyone and locking some access networks with very little forces you control many people, especially if they do own nothing, like they do not have cars to move, large food stock, water from natural sources, way to heat in winter and cool in summer autonomously and so on;

- needs to keep people moving without thinking about the world and the society, because cities are essentially artificial environments easy to hide the rest of the world with panem et circense model, as long as the dictatorship could withstand them.

These are the reasons for RTO at the high level. The the reasons many follow the trend: fear of change and personal ignorance of the modern world. Most CEO do know next to nothing about IT, so most middle man and so on, including many at the bottom of the social pyramid, all of them fear to being alien in a modern society because they do not know it. They know how to confront with a human in an office, they do not know what to do with mails, calls and so on.

That's is. However reading hear and there it's clear all these pushes end up in nothing, they might hold for a moment but not more. Especially when we talk about resilience and the war loom, resources might became scarce and so on, because while most do not even think about having a blackout or some food supply issues, sooner or later they'll start thinking and they'll realize in cities there is no possible resilience. There is no room for p.v. and storage on the upper end, there is no nearby wood to source for emergency stove-based heating and cooking, no natural water sources, way too many people to nourish/relocate and no one who actually produce food etc. Skyrocketing prices to impoverish people for the sake of 2030's Agenda, looming service availability/stability issues, climate change, natural infra aging will kill any will to be in cities. And so will kill offices anyway.