I recently moved from a job where it was a half hour car drive home to one that is a 15 minute public transit commute - counting from the "I'm leaving the office now" text to my wife to unlocking the front door. It's been a huge quality of life improvement for me.
I took an internship in college that was an hour car drive and swore off car commutes before even graduating. Now I do 45 minute door-to-door with transit and I’m quite happy. I can only imagine how great a 15 minute transit commute would be, unfortunately most places that close to downtown are expensive as heck in Boston.
As a daily NJ Transit commuter... I'm very grateful to have easy access to one of the few commuter heavy rail systems in the country. I live in the suburbs and rail is so much nicer (and safer) than driving.
It is the Chicago region, not just the city. Examples are; Oakbrook (where McDonald's moved from), Downtown Naperville, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village, etc.
I sort of wanted them (NPR) to say "but how can you have a driveway moment on transit?". Listening to NPR is one of the very few redeeming features of driving to work.
Cities should take this to heart and really invest in creating seamless public transit experiences or they'll get left behind in attracting large companies that can bring jobs to their areas.
Yay transit, but it seems like this trend tends to make housing more expensive as businesses move to the hearts of already-crowded cities and make rents even worse. Wouldn't it be better for a company to move its headquarters to a new transit stop that's in an outlying area?
It makes land more expensive; if zoning allows housing doesn't have to be expensive. There may be a few years of lag because construction is not instantaneous, but supply can eventually catch up.
Seattle has started seeing sustained rent drops after a housing boom (and then oversupply) coinciding with the Amazon boom.
In my view, how well this can work depends on the extent to which the outlying areas are connected to one another by transit. Case in point, I could move a business to a suburb of Chicago that's on the Metra, but then everybody has to live in that suburb (and their spouse has to find a job there), or in one of the other towns along the same Metra line. Or do a reverse commute. But meanwhile, the transit stops in the outlying areas already have sky high rents, but maybe not sky high.
Is it transportation or just short commute/ease of commute?
I live in Minneapolis, for awhile I used to work in the southern suburbs. On a good day the drive was 30 minutes during rush hour. On a bad day you were talking 1-2 hours.
Now I live 10 minutes from work, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Even when I speak to recruiters I increase my salary ask and tell them it's for the commute. I get laughed at.
Meanwhile I talk to people that live 45-60 minutes away just so they could "get more house for the money" and constantly complain about their time to get to work/get home.
However, the earlier comment about job density is probably the most relevant thing I haven't thought of.
This is only news because of the historical anomaly of California (Silicon Valley and Hollywood). Everywhere else, "talent" flocks to big cities with transit (NY, Chicago, Boston, DC, etc in the US; I'm sure it's simila rin other nations), as transit is is part of how a city grows, and population growth is codependent with economic growth and the network effects of "talent" industries that generate wealth.
Except it is about Chicago, not Illinois. Chicago's overall population has stagnated since 1990, but is now the most-educated big city in the country. This implies that "talent" is indeed flocking to Chicago while it sheds it's industrial past.
"Combined with other data, the continuing tale-of-two-cities story suggests large numbers of lower-income African-Americans are fleeing Chicago while somewhat lesser numbers of better-educated and higher-earning whites, Asian-Americans and blacks are coming in. That's leaving the city better off in some ways than it was a decade ago, but smaller."
Dallas and Austin are absolutely booming with tech jobs, and we're about as non-transit-oriented as possible. And most of the tech growth is in the suburbs, not the cities.
Travel time to and from work is unpaid hours required for work. If it takes people 45 minutes to work that is an hour and a half every day that they get nothing for that is not voluntary.
> Rehouse people from single family houses into highrise appartments. Except many people find that high rises suck. What to let your little kids out front to ride their bikes? Go down the elevator, through a lobby, onto a very crowded sidewalk or the major road out front. In a house, I can have a backyard. Walking the dog doesn’t require 5 minutes of elevators and hallways. Kids can play outside. I am not opposed to high rises at all, but suggesting that people be “rehomed” is what I am objecting to. However else minariby arbitrary height restrictions would be a good start. Some people would like to live in greater density, but attempting a 40 story apartment in Mountain View would be by howls of protests from environmental groups. There is room for all sorts of housing to meet everyone’s lifestyle needs, the problem is that the regulation has become an albatross and it prevents a market response to increased demand. Try to build a mid rise in Palo Alto; people there would lose their minds.
You have a wrong idea about highrise living, and in particular distinction in between main highrise classes.
I classify three that are well recognised around:
1. Standalone towers with chic small apartments - those are more oriented towards bachelor living for upper working class. Think of them in a "starbucks vs a restaurant" comparison.
2. Apartment complexes - these are city block sized developments, with more or less fully managed amenities, some times including daycare, playgrounds, mini-strip malls. These do avail for family living.
3. Shitty box apartments - for everybody else, the cheapest option.
> but attempting a 40 story apartment in Mountain View would be by howls of protests from environmental groups.
I think 40 storey's will not do it in such expensive neighbourhood. It can be economically feasible with 50 storey with modern construction technology, and 60 if you can make it look "high-end" enough.
That's a stereotype of highrise. Many residential highrise can have a small park or at least a leisure area built nearby. I'm living in a mid-rise in San Jose, the experience is way better than living in a common crappy SFH in Bay area.
Safely guarded by private patrol, zero break-in, no annoying solicitors. Dedicated locker for your Amazon packages and free coffee in the hallway. Utility bills are much lower too. Double gated garage. Located next to lightrail. And standard amenities such as pool, gym, lounge etc.
Talent wants to not be homeless. Transportation and housing are thus very much intertwined. Most people would gladly move closer to work, given the opportunity, but it's usually just too expensive.
>Rail and bus systems around the country have backlogs of repair and maintenance needs in the billions of dollars, and transit advocates say not only is more state and local funding needed for upgrades and to expand transit routes, but a big federal infrastructure investment is needed, too. Without it, they fear the nation's economic growth could suffer. But they note such funding may be hard to to get out of a federal administration that seems at times hostile to transit, and instead seems to want to invest more in highways.
We have two big crises: people can't afford to live near jobs (with insufficient new housing being built in top cities), and transit infrastructure near jobs is crumbling, neglected, or nonexistent, depending on the city.
Local municipalities don't want to build more housing because, in the grand scheme of things, a single municipality can't fix the housing crisis, but allowing new construction in inner-city neighborhoods or low-cost-but-desirably-located towns is a guaranteed path to gentrification, so most choose to opt out. Richer neighborhoods don't want new housing because it would damage their picture-perfect neighborhood character, affect their schools and infrastructure, etc. So, neighborhoods near the city stay frozen in place, save a few luxury developments at the prime locations in the city because these developments can bankroll getting past municipal blockades.
The federal government can fix both of these by cooperating with states. Offer money earmarked for public transit to states that meet guidelines promoting large-scale (and, hopefully, equitable across rich & poor neighborhoods) upzoning efforts near their job centers. Subsidize transit-friendly dense developments on a large scale, instead of subsidizing suburbs as we have since WWII.
The good & bad would probably be:
-Good for the environment, as suburban sprawl is greatly damaging to the environment (and necessitates a car-centered lifestyle).
-Good for companies that can more easily attract workers to their headquarters in cities.
-Good for workers who wanted to live in the city but couldn't afford it, or workers who spend a large percentage of their budget on housing because they have a job in the city.
-Good for government budget in the long run (probably) because the cost of infrastructure per capita is cheaper in city than in sprawl
-Good for the economy in the long run? No one really knows on this one, but I would argue current trends show cities are going to be big on capitalizing on 21st century economic opportunities (hence why companies want to relocate near transit).
-Bad for current suburban homeowners, one may expect suburban homes to decrease in price.
-Good or bad, depending on location, for current urban property owners. Urban home prices will (by design) go down with this policy thanks to an influx of housing, but landowners may still make a big profit (for example, if you own a single family home or duplex near a transit line, and it gets upzoned, you could sell it at a premium to a developer who wants to build a midrise or highrise on the land. On the other hand if you own a condo in an existing highrise, it will probably go down in value with a glut of new housing on the market)
why not just make work be a state more than a place....
Working from home has so many benefits, including reduction of costs to both employee and employer.
Urban development will be one of the biggest challenges of 21st century.
This issue deserves both more money, and talent being directed to solving it.
And Californian people, your issues are truly severe. I met Chinese people who ventured to SF and Silicon Valley, and called it an urban hell.