The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-cost to have additional offices, to the point where it might actually be cheaper when you weigh the fixed overhead of each location against the cheaper office space outside NYC/SF.

I live in Baltimore now, and before that in Wilmington, and I'm astonished that more companies don't have offices in those cities. Both cities have a lot less traffic than D.C. and Philadelphia, respectively, and are well-served by rail. I'd imagine there would be a lot of talented people who would sign up at offices in those cities so long as they weren't backoffice locations and they could still do frontline work.