Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Turns out that we've been building cities wrong for the last 100 years. Whoopsie.

It took a pandemic to get people to realize that the status quo of hopping in their car and sitting in traffic twice a day to get to work and back every day is a hugely frustrating waste of time.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can build more housing near where people work. We can build bike lanes and public transit. It's entirely possible to have small and easy carless commutes to work.

> urban areas where people live closer to work have a higher return-to-office rate

No surprise here. I'll be coming back to work often I expect, but I live a 15 minute bike ride from my office. It'll be a nice change of pace for me to go to the office, and effectively an effortless shift.

We need the political will to change and stop repeating the same failed mistakes of the last 100 years that mires us in car dependency. Stop protecting SFH areas from any and all new housing development. Stop building new highways. Start creating new housing everywhere. Start creating transportation alternatives.

Having lived in both city and non-city for equal portions of my life, I don't care how "efficient" the commute is (or how inefficient its alternatives are forced to become by those who dislike cars), city life is horrendous. I can't understand why, especially after covid, anyone thinks it's a good idea to lived packed like mice in a concrete box, with only a few trees you don't own and have to share with everyone. No thanks. Never again.

> city life is horrendous

You find it that way, but obviously others love it. Rather than declaring it, it would be interesting to know what you found to be good and bad about city life.

The things that have made me a better, healthier person are either prohibitively expensive or impossible inside of a city. The things that make me a worse person are often required inside of a city.

Perhaps it's to some extent personal preference, but those preferences grew out of having experienced both settings under discussion. One thing that you can't get around though: getting sick is much easier inside of a city -- this is why I can't understand how many of the same individuals who often are very fond of cities can still be after also being those who are most concerned about pandemics. Research also has shown that ideal human groups are no larger than around 200. Extrapolate that to get an idea of how pathological a city-based culture can become.

If you absorb the full picture painted by the famous "mouse utopia" experiment, you can get some further insight into what, over the course of decades, built my own understanding and perspective on different living modes, especially as both relate to city life. Its goal was to talk about overpopulation, but it more accurately could comment on over-concentrated population.

I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning. So it is never going to be an option for a lot of people.

In general, working from home makes cities and public transit a lot less relevant. There isn't a strong reason for everyone to get on a train to the big city, if they can just sit at home and work. When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better.

> I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning.

Out of curiosity, could you put the kids in one of those child trailers, or on a cargo bicycle?

> When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better.

This reads like (though I don't know the parent at all) the argument of someone who doesn't spend time in cities or who just doesn't value what cities offer.

Crime rates are pretty low in cities (despite the media campaign trying to say how dangerous they are); pollution is mostly non-existent in most cities in economically advanced countries. Cities have services and experiences that are not available anywhere else. Where else can you find the food, music, arts, etc. that are in NY? The people? The public beauty such as the architecture?

My point was that commuting causes pollution, not that cities are always polluted.

That is a good point. Sorry that I leapt to the other interpretation.

That's exactly what the Soviet era was. Say you work in a hospital, you would be living within 10 minutes walk away from your office. You will eat in the hospital cafeteria. Your kids will go to the hospital-sponsored schools. Unsurprisingly, your neighbors will be your coworkers. Your kids' friends will be your coworkers' kids. Life is simple and efficient but there some other downsides that's probably not relevant here.

The Soviet era? You mean in the USSR? How is that relevant here? And are you really claiming that everyone in the USSR had a 10 minute commute? That would be some incredible planning!

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