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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

I'd love being able to walk to work. On the one hand it's very medieval -pre industrial revolution kind of thing, on the other hand you're right next to work... I don't want to be a five or ten minute walk away from work when someone thinks I'd be the ideal option to come in on off hours b/c I'm so close by.

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I walked to work over 10+ years over the course of 3 jobs (10-30 minutes, depending) - I remember when I started thinking that would be a problem, but it really wasn't. Over that time there was maybe once or twice where I got called because I was close (and it was a true emergency, so I didn't mind). I found the benefits of having co-workers over for barbeques/drinks/etc. made me very popular in the office and outweighed any other drawbacks from being close.

The 10-minute walks were also nice for unwinding mental state from work. It's just a lot more calming to walk (even on a busy sidewalk) than to cram in mass transit or sit in traffic.

Not only does that likely happen a lot less than you think, but you'd probably still be off the clock more if you count your commute drive time.

If you're beginning to wonder about this sort of thing, I'd strongly recommend reading up on Really Narrow Streets, on the New World Economics website. The author has more or less managed to quantify what makes Old World cities so liveable, and he's beginning to get some traction among urban planners.

You might also find his discussion of the Industrial Revolution spirit -- what he calls Heroic Materialism -- interesting; I think he makes a strong case that the pre-industrial shouldn't automatically carry negative connotations.

I think I agree with that. By pre-industrial I meant that for many people where they lived and where they worked were geographically either identical or close enough (baker baked in their house, butcher slaughtered in the back yard, spinner spun in the house, serf worked at a nearby lord's land, etc.) I think there are some negative connotations simply because serious disease was untreatable and incomes were meager among other things (like power inequality and very low education).

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