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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Historically, probably more people had to work in cities and many of those people had a preference for not having a long commute. Those dynamics have doubtless changed to some degree. But, if I had to commute daily to the nearest large city, I'd seriously consider living there. But I don't have to so I live rurally/exurban or whatever you want to call it.

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For me it's as much culture as it is work. In fact I live in the capital city of my country, even though my work has not always been here. I live here because it has world class restaurants, bars, museums, architecture, parks, gyms, a dozen public swimming pools and a million amenities you wouldn't even think of but are fun to do once or twice, like there's dedicated restaurants where you can play jeux de boules.

And most importantly there's a million people here, statistically there's a good chance you run into people who're in the top 5% of whatever their field is in. Whether it's musicians, engineers, athletes, philosophers, there's a good chance you'll run into a lot of interesting ones.

My friend lives in a village and he has 1 pizzeria and 1 italian and 1 chinese restaurant. There's no gym. There's a very basic park with grass and some trees. There's no museums, architecture is all the same. There's no nightlife whatsoever. There's no real amenities, not even a library. There's a few shops with the basics, with very limited opening hours. There's as much nature nearby as there is for me. Tere's also no real way to make friends, and there's a few hundred people to meet at most, statistically most of them aren't very interesting to you (not 'not interesting in general', but 'to you'. It's easier to find 'your tribe' if you can select from a million vs a hundred).

So it's really the 'commute' or I should say proximity to culture, i.e. people, their thoughts and their creations, that sells the city for me, not the proximity to the company I happen to work for, which is sometimes in another city.

I guess.

I have a season ticket to a theater about an hour away. There are also local concerts/theater out where I live. I see theater when I travel. I actually have decent restaurants out where I live but don't use them much.

I guess I'm also not sure how this running into philosophers and musicians works. Maybe if I were actively involved with a university which I actually am to some degree.

Of course, different people have different preferences.

Rural vs suburban vs urban life will always be a matter of personal preference. There are people who would die of boredom outside of a city, and people who would die of anxiety in a city. Beware of anyone saying there is one "correct" environment to live in.

Totally. I'm not going to go to a gym, not going to go to the pool, I might get some more takeout if it were a 5 minute walk away. But I'm not going to the theater once a week. I've actually lived in Manhattan and it just wouldn't be for me.

> Historically, probably more people had to work in cities and many of those people had a preference for not having a long commute.

Commute time has been 30 minutes for a large portion of human history:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant

It's just as technology has developed different means of transportation (from walking to rail, automobiles) the distances involved have gotten greater because speeds have increased.

I don't really disagree. One hour each way starts to seem like a lot. 30 minutes isn't walking next door or downstairs but seems pretty doable in general. Even within a large city with decent public transit, it's not hard to get up to close to a half-hour commute to get into an office. Most people who don't work from home don't live a 5 minute walk from their workplace.

A 30 minute commute by foot, where one passes interesting architecture, parks, is under the shade of trees, can pop into the corner store to get extra milk on the way home (2 minute detour), etc is far more pleasant than a 30 minute commute by car, surrounded by other cars on a seven lane highway with billboards.

Quality matters just as much as quantity, and often more when they're close together. (I would of course prefer a 10 minute drive to a 90 minute walk, for example).

Tell that to the folks that have built most of America in the post-WW2 era.

Historically people had to work on a farm! The vast majority of the historical population lived close enough to their fields to walk to it every day. Sure Rome had a million people 2000 years ago, but that was only possible because many many millions of people (often slaves and thus not seen much in history) who didn't live in Rome and produced a surplus of food.

Farms were always placed as close to the city as much as possible, because it is impractical to transport food from a distance. An ox-drawn cart isn't faster than walking speed, so farmers still had to live a walkable distance from the city market.

Historic cities and castles are almost always wrongly depicted in movies. They are always placed in a grace field in the middle of nowhere, but there should be farmland everywhere.

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