But then you need to reassess why cities are better for the environment.
I'd gather most is due to saving the commute by car to work, which is already failing in many US cities, but holds pretty well in the rest of the world.
If you move to the countryside and don't commute to work, is that really worse for the environment?
Especially since cities are overbooked in terms of space anyway. Every family that moves to the countryside frees up apartments for those that have to commute to work and can then live in the city instead.
I think remote changes a lot of these calculations.
People are not moving to the countryside to be subsistence farmers, they are moving to the suburbs and exurbs where they are living in massive houses, making far trips to get groceries, etc.
This is the case in poor countries where rural populations have a minuscule carbon footprint, and city dwellers have a greater one.
It is absolutely not the case here in developed countries. A city dweller who bikes to work is not equivalent to a suburbanite driving around their SUV just to pick up bananas from the grocery store.
Suburbs are, in my opinion at least, urban areas and part of cities; at least when looking at statements concerning human migration from rural non urban areas to urban areas.
FWiW I have mostly always lived and worked in rural | remote areas and where I currently live most people walk to the local shop and are almost all eating the bulk of their food from sources in the surrounding area.
It's small town that was once a first inland european settlement point in Australia - lot of large scale farmers with big town lots that have old fruiting trees, food plots, chickens, etc.
Lots of meticulously restored, maintained, and used cars from the 1920s - 1960s, and a surprising amount of bleeding edge tech.
Regardless of your personal definition, suburbs and urban areas are a very meaningful distinction. With regards to both human migration due to covid, and waste/consumption patterns.
