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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Many of those problems could also be solved by adjusting zoning laws to increase density. Suburbs have a lot of problems aside from just commute times that can be solved by working from home.

The maintenance costs associated with the spread-out infrastructure required to support everyone having their own personal 1/4 acre of land cannot be supported by the tax base available in such a low density population. Most US cities could be much denser than they are with a higher quality of life and lower pollution if people could be located within walking distance of most of the places they need to go.

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I'm not sure why you think commute times are only a problem in the suburbs. My wife and I are looking to buy a house and we can't afford anything near the office, which is in the middle of a large metropolitan area (the 2nd largest in the nation). If we buy further out, where we can afford, I'll have a very long commute, 100% of which will be within the city.

I never said long commute times are only a problem in the suburbs.

If you're staying within the city proper and still have a "very long commute" (which to me is 1+ hours, I'm not sure what the means to you) it sounds like the city is still insufficiently dense.

In my experience, the vast majority of people with long commutes are commuting from suburbs/exurbs into a city center. I'm sure there are some cities that are so spread out that one could have a long commute while still staying within the city limits, but that would imply that there are people even further out with even longer commutes from the suburbs.

The problem would vanish if we moved from city living to small town living. We only have city living because everyone needs to get to their office which created high density housing near the city centre and urban sprawl everywhere else; both of those things would not be a problem if we moved away from city living and focussed on smaller towns instead; that way we could still have services centralised to a local community that works for everyone rather than having millions of people in one place which cause extreme mental distress for many people (see the mental health crisis).

I commute through the city, if one person crashes their car it impacts thousands of people getting home on time to see their kids before bedtime, how is that a nice way to live?

That's exactly my point point. Nobody should be driving their car through a city.

As for mental health issues, some people like cities, some don't. Without the traffic it would probably be a lot more pleasant.

It's tough to have a successful small town without it growing into a city.

Agree - I've been thinking about what the city would be like if all cars (except taxis) were banned during rush hour. I'm struggling to see how it would lead to anything but a better public transport network and a better standard of living for most people that need to commute during busy hours.

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