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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Wrong in both counts. The largest US cities are among the cheapest large cities in the developed world: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4758/38890153315_bb29ac1b6c_b.....

Commutes are also shorter. Average commutes in London is 74 minutes (round trip): https://www.thekingsferry.co.uk/industry-news/article/commut.... Houston and Dallas are 20-25 minutes less: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/.... DC is the second worst in the US, and still about 10 minutes shorter than London: https://wtop.com/traffic/2017/04/dc-area-has-2nd-longest-ave...

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Those are comparing metro areas to cities, though. The DC one, for example, includes exurban areas and literal farmland in its definition of the DC metro area (which comes from the Census). This is the kind of stuff it includes: https://maps.app.goo.gl/kbfrPLDvBaUn7tzo8

I don't think it's quite a fair comparison to compare that vs. Hong Kong or Singapore, especially when the London exurbs are called out separately.

I'd guess that NYC is in the same ballpark of unaffordability and congestion as London, but the deeper suburbs / exurbs of NYC are cheaper than their British equivalents.

I'd also wager that DC proper is cheaper than both NYC and London, both via absolute terms and income relative terms.

>Those are comparing metro areas to cities, though. The DC one, for example, includes exurban areas and literal farmland in its definition of the DC metro area

So if anything average commute should be longer because of all the people dragging their butts inside/out of the beltway every morning/evening.

Possibly, but keep in mind not everyone living in suburbs or exurbs has their job in the city.

"Median house price"

1. Does that actually mean median 'house' price, or does it mean median 'home' price?

2. Is that price to buy, or rent, or what?

So, I think there's a few factors here. One is that recent booming usually leads to higher home prices, as the amount of building going on usually trails the number of jobs and income increases. It catches up eventually, but not until the boom stops.

The other is that it's true that sprawling out can decrease home prices. However, that tends to also increase transportation prices, since you're further out now. Americans spend a LOT on transportation because of the car dependency. Quick googling and math indicate annual household transportation spending of 9.7k for the US, 6.3k for Germany, 5k for Japan.

That's cheapest compared to median income, which is a valid thing to measure but probably not what GP meant.

And also it's only comparing very large cities in ~8 selected countries (no Paris or Rhine–Ruhr, for example).

(Source of your data, 2019 edition since I couldn't find 2017: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf)

How else do you define “high cost of living” except relative to median incomes?

I guess you could compare it between cities but as Mark Twain demonstrated in A Connecticut yankee in King Arthur's court that would be extremely silly.

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