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Comment by rr888 | Hacker News Reader

I live in a small apartment a short train ride from the office. It isn't big enough to work from home. If I worked from home I'd get a big house in the suburbs, and buy a car to get around. My environmental footprint would be much bigger.

Edit - if I didn't have kids I'd totally have a beach house and a mountain house to live in. Maybe in different countries too.

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If I'm reading this correctly, you choose to live in a small apartment, suffer the commute on a train, and work in an office you'd prefer not to be in, just so you don't have to move to a big house in the suburbs with your kids.

You are reading a lot into the OP's statement. A dense city has a much smaller environmental footprint than a sprawling suburb. The statement is just about the relative environmental impact of the two options nothing more.

I doubt the footprint difference would be in any way significant. Depends on the city layout maybe, even with the additional logistical difficulties. For many it is well worth it to escape the noise of high-density residential areas, especially with kids or for people that just like nature.

Your footprint is probably > 95% consumption anyway. I don't understand how high-density living seems to be so attractive to many here.

Because the land use is that much more productive. High density cities pay for suburbs which are a net-drain on city finances and are terrible for the environment. The numbers in North America are pretty staggering.

There are plenty of examples around the world where dense urban living can be rather pleasant. You can walk to get your food, kids can cycle around town, and you can sit and gather in public places that are designed for people instead of moving traffic.

That can always be an argument. You could place all humans in Great Britain easily. Would perhaps be more productive as well. Imagine all the biotopes that could strive again. But it isn't a question about productivity and I believe the vast majority live in high density setups for utility. At least I do. It is nice enough but it remains a compromise.

Not from the US, but expect this story about high density areas paying for the others is a stupendous political argument to get people angry at those suburbians and not too much else. The distribution of funds is probably unjust, but the solution is certainly not to bring everyone into high density living.

The solution is to enable more mixed-use zoning and enable more dense development. The situation in North America is that we can only build low-productivity, high-cost, environmentally damaging suburbs. Which, in turn, leads to noisy, polluted cities with high levels of traffic congestion, collisions, and massive amounts of unproductive parking lots.

Plenty of European and Asian cities are good examples of how one can transform modern cities to be better balanced and pleasant for humans to live in.

US cities don’t do well without the suburbs, it’s a symbiotic relationship, you can’t separate the suburb cost from cities, suburban residents go to the cities to work where they register their economic value.

How is it symbiotic? The developed, urban areas generate enough revenue to subsidize suburbs. Without those urban zones suburbs cannot generate enough revenue to provide the infrastructure and services they use.

If the suburbs were to be re-zoned for more dense development and mix-use zoning I don't think the urban areas would see any drop in revenue. They would probably see an increase.

It absolutely is not, it's a parasitic relationship. Enough suburbs are aware of this dynamic that their local leadership tries really hard to annex their suburb into the city so that suburbanites can vote to change policies in the urban area. Suburbs strong arming cities into annexation is a common theme in the US and Canada.

Consumption goes up when things are more spaced out. Electricity needs to travel farther on lossy lines. Water needs to be pumped over longer distances. Deliveries need to be sent to farther and farther points. Heating needs to cover a wider surface area. Unfortunately all of these relationship grow as a power law of density so your consumption must increase by a substantial amount with a more and more spacious development plan. A quick look at the CO2 emissions per capita of high standard of living countries quickly shows that expansive countries like Canada, Australia or the United States have much higher energy consumption than dense ones like the United Kingdom, Sweden or Japan.

Yes I like my apartment. The commute is just a few stops. I like the office, prefer to WFH. I like the suburbs but wife would rather be in the city, I'm happy here too. The main point is that living in a city and commuting probably has a smaller environmental impact than WFH, which is the opposite of what OP is saying.

Why not living in the city in a sufficiently big apartment and working from home?

That's cost prohibitive for the amount of space you'd need as compared with moving to suburban/rural locations.

Possible? Yes, but not necessarily the best financial decision when cities seem to be allergic to increasing population density.

The message of the original post appears to be that all other things being equal the poster would rather live in the suburbs in a larger home with a more carbon-intensive lifestyle. However, the misery of the commute from the suburbs to the office overwhelms that preference resulting in the decision to live in the city.

i.e. the assumption that the reduction in commuting would not be offset by changes in other areas is unjustified.

There are very few 3-4 bedroom apartments around but a townhouse or similar could work. Maybe I'm just stuck in a rut, I like my lifestyle right now and happy to continue. If I was WFH every day it just feels like it is artificially expensive to live in a big city and I should move. It opens a lot of alternatives which could be very good but I automatically ignore them because I'm happy right now. And the wife probably doesn't want that log cabin in the woods - so its easier not to think about it. :)

No, you're reading it wrong. They choose to live in a smaller apartment in the city, it's a *short commute* to office and don't have to drive 20-30 minutes for basic errands. Also, not every has/wants kids.

You are interpreting a lot into a very short comment, presumably based on your own preferences. Some people don't mind commuting or even enjoy it, some people prefer living in a decently sized apartment in a city instead of a single family home in the suburbs. It is a matter of preference and personally, I can see the appeal in the approach posted by OP

The GP wrote: <<a short train ride from the office>>

You then transformed it into <<suffer the commute on a train>>

I'm confused about that.

Thanks for putting this concisely.

I used to live in a small apartment and walk to work. Then when my wife and I both had to work from home, we ended up renting a big house because we still needed offices to work. Maybe there are some jobs & personal situations that allow one to wfh without additional space and costs - really though it's just shifting space around, often very inefficiently.

I mean, just bigger apartment is also solution that doesn't have that much of an environmental impact (the space "wasted" is saved by less office buildings).

Additional space in a city is significantly more expensive than the same space in the suburbs because each square foot is in much higher demand.

Some people like the suburban lifestyle, but the reason even people who prefer the amenities of cities move out is that it's the only affordable way to get a lot of space.

The solution is vastly more urban construction to meet demand, but development and regulatory changes have been slow.

I completely agree. Ever since WFH started I'm feeling this gravitational pull away from the city center because of cost of living and space considerations. If salary takes a nosedive this will become untenable for many.

Mountains of research show that this will increase total emissions. It would be one thing if the U.S. was developing medium density suburban cores, but that seems to be on the table in very, very few places.

That seems more a US thing though because of how things are laid out? I picked my multiple places of living (EU) to have everything walking distance and I managed that for the past 30 years with wfh, city or not. We don't touch the car (or anything else) for weeks on end.

Definitely USA and Europe are built differently. I'd class most European city centers are medium-high density where smaller towns are still quite dense. Compare this to NYC where I am and Manhattan is higher density, but 2 hours drive away its normal to have a 4+ bedroom house on a big piece of land with bears and deer roaming around for a quarter of the price.

Walkable places are the exception in the US. Most old small towns were walkable at some point, and a handful of them have a walkable core preserved or restored, but otherwise it's something you'd only find in the downtown area of a major city. The overwhelming majority of housing is car dependent.

If you could 100% WFH moving to just smaller city (instead of to suburbs of a bigger city) is always an option.

U.S.A. really doesn't have walkable smaller cities outside of college campuses. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them.

And that's fantastic for you, and I'm happy for you, but your WFH footprint will remain small and on average the total environmental footprint will go down because you aren't the average person. You happen to be an anomaly and we can't throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.

Also, working from home would reduce the demand for the train routes. This in turn would mean that the route would be scheduled more sparsely, or even discontinued*. Which would force more people to use a car.

*And this is why management and operation of public utilities should be policy-driven rather than profit-driven.

If they're not commuting, they're also using the car less.

Yes, but those who can't WFH and used to commute by train may find themselves having to use a car again. Not to mention that this will force the use of cars for everything else, in addition to work commute.

FWIW, commuter demand has sort of a complicated effect on train routes.

Commuters generally want heavy rail to get them from where their housing dollar goes farthest to where the highest wage is, and back, riding twice a day, usually over a significant distance. Fast trains, stops widely-spaced so they can hit top speed.

This is at odds with local service for residents, who want trains with tightly-spaced stops and care more about frequency than speed. I live in a dense city with largely non-functional rail transit (Baltimore), and IMO part of the problem is that our public transit options can't decide if they want to be commuter rail or local service and wind up being terrible for both (too slow for commuters because it's light rail, too infrequent for local traffic because of the cost of running a bunch of trains out to the burbs).

> If I worked from home I'd get a big house in the suburbs, and buy a car to get around. My environmental footprint would be much bigger.

For me, WFH means I can walk/bike/drive to the local coffee shop or public library to work, but still live in a cramped studio apartment.

The amount of productivity I lose when trying to work this way, hunched over my laptop screen in a public place, is immense. An office, downtown or at home, is absolutely necessary. Are you a software engineer?

I am SWE and Engineering Manager. I find open offices to be way more distracting b/c people discuss topics relevant to me (project work or even good morning hellos).

Public libraries are quieter than my office and coffee shop noise is background noise.

Lack of external monitors is a fair concern, but I found external monitors to be too distracting. I only need to look at one thing at a time. I don't want random things popping up on the screen next to me.

It's not the external monitor I'm looking for. It's single monitor larger than a laptop screen and a usable keyboard. I fold my laptop screen closed.

Also, I want to be around for relevant conversations. Context switching is not an issue for me as long it's not unrelated to work (or something unobtrusive like "hello").

To each their own I suppose.

I carry around a Roost laptop stand and external keyboard and mouse, but setting them up and tearing them down every day is a bit annoying.

Perhaps it doesn't apply to you, but it's natural for many (most?) to require larger or smaller places as needs of immediate family evolve. I don't know that larger places are necessarily optional or environmentally worse.

> I don't know that larger places are necessarily optional

Dogs are optional, and I hear people cite them as a reason to move to a bigger place all the time. It also seems like "get a dog" is the first thing a lot of people do when they get into a WFH situation.

Don't you simply need an apartment with an extra room? That's what I am doing and it works very well. WFH wouldn't even be in my list of reasons as to why I should move to a house.

There must be ample apartments near train stops that take you to all the jobs so you’re right.

Your alternative sounds a little bit weird, given that you only need 5-8 sq.m. of extra space to work from home, maybe one more room. It doesn’t sound like a small apartment vs big house plus car alternative, instead it sounds like „WFH is a privilege and I want to live like privileged class then“.

It does not seem that weird. He is saying the bigger home away from the hustle and bustle is his preference, but accepts a smaller home in the city because he is prioritizing his career in that location. If the career was mobile, there would be no reason to make that tradeoff.

If you can work from home, you have plenty of lifestyle choices that do not lead to a higher environmental impact.

Choosing the one that will damage environment more is a luxury choice. It does sound weird to me that this is considered as the only alternative.

There was no suggestion of it being the only alternative, just the choice he would choose if his career was no longer location bound. Someone else in the same situation may choose differently, but there was also no attempt to speak on behalf of others, only himself. There is nothing weird about people having preferences.

Note the edit "if I didn't have kids" - being able to go to work can be an advantage there, because even if the kids are mostly at school or well behaved, you still are home and they'd know it.

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