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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

As a European, I don't like living in the same house as 5 other families, whose sleep schedule doesn't necessarily align with mine. The acoustic isolation is probably a lot better than in typical US houses, but not perfect either.

However I do like living 3 minutes from the next supermarket, and 20 minutes from the city center with all the shop, and 25 minutes from my work (all distances by foot).

I would love to have all the advantages without any of the disadvantages, but at least around here most people prefer living closer together over commuting longer distances.

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I feel like this is more an issue with cheap construction (and what people will pay for) than anything else. I've stayed in people's apartments in the UK where the light fittings rattle if upstairs is running a wash. These flats aren't cheap either, in the South East they're eye-wateringly expensive for the build quality (eg 250k for an "entry" two bed flat in a commuter town). Having lived up north for a few years in a detached house with a garden, it would be extremely difficult to go back to a flat (especially one in London that costs double the price for half the space). There is a massive supermarket five minutes down the road from our house and town is 15 mins drive. These places absolutely exist for reasonable prices.

When/if we finally buy, we're looking at a rural, passive self-build where we can work remotely. The cost is about the same as a town house these days.

There isn't any technical reason why you couldn't put in proper isolation between floors or walls, aside from the fact it would slow down construction and be expensive. Proper insulation (both acoustic and thermal) also makes rooms smaller in a given footprint which is an issue for marketing.

>25 minutes from my work

This is definitely ideal, but is it achievable (in average, not for any individual) in larger cities even if they are built for walk/public transit?

I don't have much experience in Europe, but I knew in Tokyo, which probably has the best public transit in the world, the average commute time is one hour. This is obviously an extreme example as Tokyo is a megacity, but I think majority of people cannot live 25 minutes from their work for any cities that have 1M+ populations, regardless how the city is built.

The parent comment said their 25 minutes was "by foot". I've grown up and lived for most of my life in a large German city. I know very few people who can walk 25 minutes or less to get to their work.

Most people use public transportation, and that's usually a 5-10 minute walk to/from the station on each side, and changing trains once or twice. Among my peers, it's usually 30-45 minutes with public transportation. Half that by car, if they don't work in the inner city.

> I think majority of people cannot live 25 minutes from their work for any cities that have 1M+ populations

I generally agree, though in cities like Paris you can get close. But 1M+ is very big by European standards. There are only 34 cities on the entire continent that fit that description [1], and there are multiple capitals [2] half that size (Dublin and Lisbon each have around half a million inhabitants).

Once you get down to ~300k or fewer citizens commute times drop a lot. That's really how the vast majority of the population lives.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_cities_by_pop...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...

Reading your comment made me interested into looking into some figures to compare cities in Europe and the USA.

If you look at the population of agglomerations (some cities in Europe have ridiculously small limits - Paris is fifteen times smaller than London), you see than London (14,800,000) and Paris (11,400,000) are a bit less populated than the the biggest US cities New York (22,100,000) and Los Angeles (17,700,000) but slightly more than the third Chicago (9,750,000).

The next biggest agglomerations in Europe, Madrid (6,550,000) and Milan (6,200,000) can be compared to Houston (6,750,000), a bit less populated than San Fransisco (7,850,000).

Then you have Berlin (4,725,000) which is close to Seattle (4,425,000) or Phoenix (4,700,000).

Metro populations are very different than center city populations. In the US, the center city is often crippled financially and politically by burbs around them that don't pay to use infrastructure. Most large cities (Houston being a notable exception) are unable to annex surrounding municipalities.

If you work in the city, don't you have to pay city taxes? That's how it works with states.

For a reasonable price one can have _either_ a single-family house, _or_ an apartment close to the city centre in most European towns. Having both usually is possible for an exorbitant price.

"Reasonable" by San Francisco standards, or normal human beings'?

The Bay Area is mostly an outlier compared to most other places. (And the Bay Area is a bit unusual in that, if you're commuting, it's hard to reasonably commute out of expensive housing because the South Bay, Marin, Berkeley, are also hugely expensive not just the city.

In the East Bay you can start to approach reasonable but if you're working in the South Bay, your commute won't be reasonable and access to the city for recreation may not be great either.

Have they finished Warm Springs station already?

Depends on the city. With the exception of Paris, London, Geneva I’d say normal standards.

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