As many office workers adapt to remote work, cities may undergo fundamental change if offices remain under-utilized. Who will benefit if working from home becomes the norm?

        Employers argue they make considerable savings on real estate when workers shift from office to home work. However, these savings result from passing costs on to workers.

       Unless employees are fully compensated, this could become a variant of parasitic (寄生的) capitalism, whereby corporate profits increasingly rely on extracting value from the public—and now personal—realm, rather than on generating new value.

        Though employers are backed by a chorus of remote work advocates, others note the loneliness, reduced productivity and inefficiencies of extended remote work.

        If working from home becomes permanent, employees will have to dedicate part of their private space to work. This requires purchasing desks, chairs and office equipment.

       It also means having private space dedicated to work: the space must be heated, cleaned, maintained and paid for. That depends on many things, but for purposes of illustration, I have run some estimates for Montréal. The exercise is simple but important, since it brings these costs out of the realm of speculation into the realm of meaningful discussion.

        Rough calculations show that the savings made by employers when their staff works from home are of similar value to the compensation workers should receive for setting up offices at home.

       What does this mean for offices in cities? One of two things may happen: Employers pass these costs onto employees. This would be a form of expropriation (侵占), with employees absorbing production costs that have traditionally been paid by the employer. This represents a considerable transfer of value from employees to employers.

        When employees are properly compensated, employer’s real estate savings will be modest. If savings are modest, then the many advantages of working in offices—such as lively atmosphere, rapidity of communication, team-building and acclimatization (适应环境) of new employees—will encourage employers to shelve the idea of remote work and, like Yahoo in 2013, encourage employees to work most of the time from corporate office space.

解析：C。根据题干中的working from home和题文同序原则可定位至文章前几段。第一段末尾提到，如果在家工作（working from home）成为常态，谁会受益？接着在第二段给出答案，雇主称，工作人员从办公室转到家中工作时，他们在房地产方面节省了大量资金。接着作者发表自己的观点：然而，这些节省下来的费用是由于将成本转嫁给了工作人员。C项符合题意，其中It benefits employers对应第二段第二句的these savings，即节省下来的房地产方面的费用，at the expense of employees对应第段第二句中的passing costs on to workers，故C项为正确答案。

错项排除：A项利用第一段第二句中的becomes the norm进行干扰，但原文是在说一种假设（if），并不是说在家工作迟早会变成常态，故排除A项。B项利用第一段开头的adapt进行干扰，但原文是描述一个事实（As），并不是说在家工作要求员工迅速适应，故B项错误。D项利用第一段中的cities进行干扰，但原文是说如果办公室仍然没有得到充分利用，城市可能会发生根本性的变化，并没有说城市会改造其基础设施，故D项排除。