Well said. During the span of my career, the office went from being a perfectly fine place to get work done; then degraded to a cube farm environment which was worse, but you you could work around it and get stuff done anyway; then to an open office environment which was hellish enough that it got me to quit my job and vow to never work in such an environment again.

Commute is certainly an important aspect, too, but when I worked in the place that adopted an open office layout, I lived a literal 10 minute walk away. Having such a trivial (and pleasant) commute in no way made up for having to work in those conditions.