The era of industrialization set many of the workplace standards–and conflicts–that linger today. More than 100 years later, many of those practices are gradually evolving, but some believe that enabling new forms of work could ultimately solve some of the U.S.’s most pressing economic issues.

“A lot of the growth in jobs has been knowledge work, and this idea that people need to work from nine to five, in one specific place, for one employer, doesn’t make as much sense,” suggests Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, a global freelancing platform.

At the turn of the century, when manufacturing was the primary driver of the U.S. economy, it was necessary for large groups of people to arrive to work at the same location and work the same hours. As a result, towns and cities sprung up around these manufacturing hubs.

Cities and towns that were initially built around factories and plants have since gone in one of two directions: They declined when manufacturing jobs started to disappear, or they evolved into major cities, where the cost of living today is reaching unsustainable levels.

“If you look at the last 40 years or so, GDP has become more concentrated in a smaller number of cities,” says Kasriel. “There are about 100 cities in the world that do about 50% of the world’s GDP.” As a result, most cities in the U.S. today are either in decline or booming at an unsustainable rate.

One clear indicator of this is the price of housing. In Arkansas, for example, you can find a spacious six-bedroom, five-bathroom home for $300,000, whereas that same budget would hardly cover a 304-square-foot studio in Los Angeles.

One potential solution for both the rapidly declining and unsustainably growing U.S. cities, suggests Kasriel, is by enabling more remote and freelance work. “A lot of people who live [in cities like San Francisco and New York] live there because the job demands it,” he says. “If you, as an employer, could relax that constraint and say, ‘You can work from anywhere around the country, either as a freelancer or an employee,'” he explains, “you’d see a lot of people move out.”