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Comment by fireattack | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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> 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.

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.

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