The cost of commuting is just the tip, honestly.
The biggest expense is having to live near your employer, typically centrally-located in big cities with a high cost of living.
Also lost time commuting (especially if you can’t afford to live nearby).
And also increased emissions, not only from driving yourself but a collective increase by way of traffic congestion.
Also allowing employees to work remotely massively increases the pool of employees to pull from.
It may not be a 1:1 but the costs (financial and time) are largely offset.
I live in a city, I don’t own a car, I walk and ride a bike, and use public transportation and ride sharing. Granted, the convenience and cost savings can greatly depend on the city, how well it values pedestrians and public transportation, and if the housing market isn’t stupid. I mean, I’m not talking about SF or NYC here.
The more people move back to cities, the more human-friendly they become. The more that people stay and spread further into the suburbs, the more they rely on private transportation and commuting for something like a quarter of their lives. Relative to a suburban life that relies on driving everywhere, my life is very low on stress and high on comfort. “Comfort”, certainly, is relative. I can walk or take public transportation no more than twenty minutes to get to work or anywhere else.
City life can take a little more effort than stepping out of your front door into your car and dealing with traffic and spending money on gas and car insurance. But, aside from a decent pair of shoes and “comfort”, it doesn’t cost me anything to walk 10 minutes to my local market to spend $80 on a week’s worth of food.
I do fully agree that remote work increases the employee pool and benefits employers. I’m just arguing on behalf of city life being more affordable and convenient than it’s given credit for.
I’d also argue that the loss of office workers is having a very real impact on small businesses. Some of my favorite and dearly beloved businesses have closed in the past couple years because of the loss of office workers.
I think remote workers should be given a bonus, either by the state or their employer, for living in the city their company is based in. Ironically and with immense frustration, here in Philadelphia, our city actually taxes us for living AND/OR working here. Still, I would never move back to frustration of suburban life.
Seems people are angry that you like a walkable city while they prefer to live in the suburbs. Or perhaps they are bitter that you get to live there and they don’t.
I wasn’t raised in the city. I grew up in a very Normal Rockwell painting suburb. I certainly had a different impression about city life as a kid before I moved here. What’s strange is that people do seem to have this anger and bitterness. I don’t know where it comes from. Fear of the unknown? Media bias?
In part, I think a large number of Americans believe in ultimate freedom and individuality in spite of all else - the country was basically founded (in my city) on this premise. So as soon as you suggest that people consider living in closer quarters and give up a personal vehicle in favor of relying on others for transportation, you’re breaking the brainwashing they’ve gown up with. I just find it ironic because humans are a social species that benefit from communication and cooperation. For me, my brain breaks when people fight so strongly in favor of suburban and rural living. I get that technology can bridge this gap but there’s still far more benefits to city life than anything else, in my opinion. I mean, I hate people but I could never live in isolation either.
I spent my childhood in a very rural area. I couldn’t wait to get away. I went to college and moved to a small-to-medium sized US city where I’ve now resided in the downtown area for over ten years.
The public transit is limited and the bus system is poor. Riding a bus to my job would take two hours each way, when driving takes 20 minutes. The jobs in my field are concentrated in the suburbs so I have no choice but to own a vehicle. Owning a vehicle in the city costs significantly more than in the suburbs or rural areas. I am unable to perform vehicle maintenance myself due to the unaffordability of homes here with garages or even off-street parking. My vehicle has been broken into multiple times. My insurance is higher and the cost to repair glass is a huge dent in one’s monthly income.
I have homeless people who jump the fence into a shared courtyard for my condominium and setup camp, leaving trash and other dangerous objects behind. The police come hours late if at all for these issues. My girlfriend gets catcalled and harassed by men who seem to spend all day propped against a building at the nearest street corner.
The most difficult thing for me to come to terms with is the fact that I’ve always dreamed of starting a business. My expertise is in physical industries. The kind where having a workshop or some land to keep equipment on goes a long way toward your success. Living in a city longterm would make that dream impossible.
Nothing in the city is free. It is impossible to exist here without each and every activity costing you something. Having everyone live in cities and use public transit is a wonderful thought, but it isn’t perfect.
I’m moving back to a rural area in a few years and building a house. It’ll be nice to walk outside, look up at the sky, have some peace and quiet, and just exist without being charged for it.
This is a really good point regarding money. At some point I stopped ever going outside in the city because it just costs money no matter what.
You’re either rich as fuck or live in a dump you go out of every night to spend as little time there as possible and spend the rest of your money.
Fuck off, never going back to a city.
London is hell on earth. I live an hour away and rent my own 1-bed that I leave as little as possible. Life is amazing.
EDIT: pretty hotheaded comment, sorry I was insulting, but basically what it comes down to is that city housing is small and expensive in the UK, so it makes sense to leave to a suburb/town and I would never come back, maybe not so in the US.
Your experience is not universal.
I’m not rich as fuck nor do I live in a dump. I don’t go out every night spending my money.
I can’t speak to London since I’ve never been there, but living in Brooklyn has been better on every metric I care about than living in the suburbs. It’s walkable. There’s stuff I want to do. There’s people.
If you’re an anti social hermit who never leaves their house then sure I guess you can live wherever. But that sounds unhealthy.
American suburbs are extra hellish tbf. I don’t own a car or even have a driver’s license, my suburban area is a small walkable town with tons of restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores, all on one street thats pedestrianized most of the day. It’s not crowded and easy to avoid people.
I think housing in the US is generally better, but in the UK when I last lived in a city a family of three moved into an attic with a prison style shower I lived in for £1k PCM, except they paid £1300 for the privilege. I now rent my own 1-bed for less and can save money.
If anything honestly living in a city is actually factually unhealthy, people weren’t meant to be around that many people, not to mention the pollution. Being a good amount of space away from any other people is the best feeling tbh.
Each to their own though I respect you for having a well formed take. Most city people like some friends who stayed after uni just deny the problems of cities, rather than simply state they care more about the advantages.
people weren’t meant to be around that many people
There’s a middle ground between a population living on top of one another and sprawling suburbs. I would strongly argue that humans are creatures that thrive on social interaction. Today’s culture has twisted that on end driving us away from one another - THAT is unhealthy.
I do take the point that crowded environments sometimes aren’t good for our physical health. Indoor plumbing and sewage systems solved that issue on one hand, but on the other hand we just lived through a pandemic that may or may not have been exasperated by close living quarters.
Maybe if we were less prone to be dicks to one another (because governments and corporations thrive on our anger, fear, and division) we wouldn’t have been so polarized during the pandemic and had saved a few hundred thousand lives.
I have social interaction all the time, we’re having it here right now on Lemmy, I also talk on VRC and occasionally visit ppl IRL. Social interaction with strangers though, especially forced as it is in cities, isn’t supposed to be a thing, that’s like why prisons are so horrible
WTF? I make an average salary and live in an average home. I do not go “out” all the time - that’s financially irresponsible and I’m a grownass adult. You’re not even making any sense. I have no way to relate to London but I have to imagine it’s stupid expensive.
You must be middle class af then. My wage is like 80th percentile for the UK and while I could afford living in London it’d be in some studio dump or like a moldy room in a shed somewhere.
However, our research found that returning to an office often is a major disruption to one’s routine, foundational work, and overall life experience.
Damn work. Disrupting their routine and life experience.
What? It’s a return to the office, not work. It’s not the 8 hours; it’s the additional hour (if you’re lucky) getting there and back which, for some jobs, brings no discernable benefit.
Well, the office is obviously the place where the work takes place. It was probably relatively okay for you when you started the job, then the pandemic hit and now you think it should be different. But it’s not up to you to decide whether it makes sense to go to the office, that’s for your employer to decide - you know, the guys who pay your salary.
What you would say with irony, I say with conviction.
You are free not to work and live the life you’re dreaming of.
Yes. Get used to it corpo shill, or we’ll unionize.
My heartfelt condolences to all those affected. Having to drive to work is certainly very cruel and completely unexpected. Life is one of the hardest.
I don’t even have a driver’s license lmao, nobody I know does either. Cry harder, corpo shill.
We had a skip-level with a director today who told us our 3 day in office is going to become a 5 day. When asked why, he couldn’t articulate a single good reason. It was a “management decision” made by a bunch of tone-deaf fucks who never go to the office or get paid so much money that the cost is trivial. It’s time to start unionizing everywhere. Fuck these class traitors.
Time to brush up that resume, WFH or hybrid is the new norm.
Fully remote is the only way. In my experience hybrid workplaces are just as toxic. It could turn into full time office out of the blue like mentioned here or generally the ones showing up to the office get a bit of a preferential treatment if the boss also regularly shows up at the office.
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Not all jobs can be remote, while some can. Not all remote jobs can be 100% remote. That’s great if you can, but someone has to go swap out failed disks or see things hands-on because of whatever reason. And there are isolated networks too.
I’m curious why even bring that up? No one is suggesting jobs that physically require your presences in a geographic location to be Fully Remote. When people are saying things like “all jobs should be fully remote” they’re referring to all jobs that can be fully remote should be fully remote.
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The most challenging aspect of returning to the office is the commute. This isn’t surprising because commutes of only 30 minutes are linked to higher stress and anger, while 45 minutes or more is linked to poorer overall well-being, daily mood, and health.
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