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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

"There are risks, of course: People might be more open to a longer daily commute, leading to even more urban sprawl."

Gotta love the NYTimes for the tendentious moralizing. People having more choice, and exercising it, is a risk! Attempts to have a backyard or extra bedrooms, or just pay less for real estate, are dangerous and wrong. Worse, if you can buy extra bedrooms you might be tempted to have kids and we wouldn't want any of those consuming the Earth's precious resources would we :P

(Not that there isn't anything to be said in support of that point. But it's tendentious and moralizing all the same.)

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The problem is that the costs of sprawl aren't effectively conveyed to the commuter. The increased costs of infrastructure, road maintenance, etc aren't remotely made up for in vehicle, property or fuel taxes.

In which case, yes, it's a risk if it continues. Hell, it's a risk if it doesn't decline as the US approaches a GDP-growth situation not-unlike Japan's.

(Where per-capita GDP may continue growing, but net GDP barely moves due an aging populace and declining birth-rate.)

"People exercising their choice" sounds nice, but there will always be limits imposed by the society. You cannot "exercise your choice" to commute in a school bus today.

Zoning restrictions in the cities exist for the same reason: people just don't respect each other enough to trust them with their choices. Personally I cannot stand HOAs, yet another level of bureaucracy and taxation to deal with, but I will not argue with the fact that HOA buildings/neighborhoods are nicer than "free" ones.

"Nicer" is relative.

I don't know about you, but my neighbor with the 5 beat-up old jalopies in his yard is a bit of a fucking eyesore.

If we're going to be all hyperbole, my old HOA president who had someone booted from their home over the wrong shade of white exterior paint should be dragged out of his home by an angry mob.

Show me someone who has an eyesore, and I'll show you some asshole who is abusing their power.

Urban sprawl is bad from an energy (and consequently environmental) perspective because people and supplies require longer trips.

"There are [environmental] risks, of course"

I think what they're getting at is the environmental risks and not implying that the benefits you described are anything bad.

Decentralization is horrible from environmental standpoint. It also makes cities much less pleasant, it hurts the ability to create useful schools, it horribly limits the pool in which those kids you mentioned can find friends. It makes it almost impossible to provide good public transportation (which is the sensible way to achieve things from this article, see my fav snark at electric cars as well: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=552497834771072&set=...). Backyards? We have parks! Bedrooms? Unless you're in Paris or a teenager stuck up on living in the Pijp, you will get bedrooms. Together with places to go out into, for example.

It would only increase choice for people who can afford a car, the cost of operating a car, and the extra travel time. For people who cannot, urban sprawl is a severe limit to their choice.

Dramatic urban sprawl is generally considered a bad thing by almost everyone, not just NYTimes.

That being said, if someone can make an extra 40k/year by commuting 4 hours a day, it may very well be worth it to them. The difference in earning potential between commuting to the local city and not can be dramatic.

That's the problem. On an individual basis it makes sense, but nobody likes the ultimate result when everyone makes that choice.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-com...

Exactly.

Economists have actually tried to calculate this. It's pretty dramatic.

"a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office."

http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20544/1/dp1278.pdf

If you honestly think that urban sprawl is anything other than an inefficient allocation of fixed resources, you aren't looking at the big picture.

Having a backyard is not needed if you have lots and parks to play in and walk dogs; the American suburb idea of a little villa for each person is stupid and wasteful and wouldn't confer any advantages if you fixed the underlying insecurities people had about the hospitality of their own community.

If I could snooze in my driverless car overnight, I would ride instead of subjecting myself to the current flying experience for any such trip of 10 hours or less.

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