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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

The common wisdom is that it will lead to more dispersion. (In fact, this will probably be true even before full hands-off door-to-door systems are available.) To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier. Of course, if a lot of people think that way, traffic probably becomes more congested.

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> To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier

IDK if those people exist in high numbers within city centers. Those folks are all clustered along transit lines just outside of city city centers, right?

You may be right at least for cities with decent commuter rail systems. I'm most familiar with Boston and, if someone is working in town and doesn't want to live downtown, there are quite a few nice inner suburbs that aren't that far away along a rail line.

The rise of dual-income households has put a premium on commute time (as it now impacts both parents). I believe this has helped drive the 50% outperformance of city-center real estate cited in the article. Autonomous vehicles would likely slow that trend, not sure it would eliminate or reverse it all together.

I don't think the timing really supports that theory. If you look at the percentage of dual income households, it pretty much peaked in 1990 (and plateaued). [1] Yet, 1990 was really just around the beginning of the current interest in certain--mostly coastal--cities. For example, I think Boston was still losing population in the early 1990s.

[1]

Your link isn't working for me, but if it is the same PEW data I found it only measures households with kids.[1] My initial post did say "parents", but what about the rising share of the population that is Dual-Income, No Kids (DINK)?

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-20...

Yes, that was the link. I have trouble believing it makes a huge difference.

I suppose you could hypothesize that the increased propensity for mostly college-educated millennials to live in certain cities comes about partly because they're marrying later and/or are having fewer kids. But, in that case, I think the common thread is that they're not moving out to the suburbs for the schools and the yard--not that they're two-income households.

I'm certainly willing to believe that the urbanization trend seemingly being strongest among a demographic having fewer and later kids may well not be a coincidence.

This data shows "city center" with the largest increases. So it isn't just that they are focused in the "city", but the actual center of cities where jobs tend to be more plentiful, commute times tend to be lower and real estate values tend to be higher. This implies they aren't simply choosing to avoid the suburbs, but to live in the most expensive part of town.

That said, I am having a hard time verifying what they are using to delineate the different distance tiers.

If you get granular enough, the focus of jobs (e.g. the financial center of a number of cities) isn't really where most people choose to live. Neither Wall Street nor Midtown are the preferred residence addresses in Manhattan for the most part. Same thing with Boston and Cambridge for the corresponding areas.

==Neither Wall Street nor Midtown are the preferred residence addresses in Manhattan for the most part. Same thing with Boston and Cambridge for the corresponding areas.==

Do actual home values back up this assumption? Seems to me those are all very expensive places to live, which implies they are highly desirable.

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