In the cities, there are buildings with shops and restaurants on the ground level and apartments above. Sometimes even in towns you see buildings like that, wh

In the cities, there are buildings with shops and restaurants on the ground level and apartments above. Sometimes even in towns you see buildings like that, where the people who run the business live above it. It's possible, even if a physical presence is needed, to have housing and commerce/industry within walking distance. My first jobs were all within walking distance of where I lived. After that I got jobs on the bus route. But that didn't always work out great - miss a bus by a couple of minutes, or if they miss each other at the transfer station, and you're an hour or two late from waiting for the next bus. Eventually I ended up in a place and career where commuting was pretty much necessary - jobs were spread over a wide area across multiple towns/cities. And intercity transit is far far worse than local buses. Carpooling to the rescue. The commute sucked, but we had each other's conversation and the audiobooks. Now I work from home, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I've gained 2 hours a day. The company gets the best of me, instead of me tired and frazzled from transit. It's cheaper and safer. It's a win-win. Being on a remote-oriented team, it's been said multiple times by people in the office that we talk more than they do to each other. And that matches my experience from having worked in an office. Driving is insane, especially for commuting, and doubly-so if the job can be done remotely. Cars are extremely expensive not just to buy but to maintain and operate, and yet they spend almost all of their time just sitting in a parking space doing nothing but wasting space. It's a total waste. We can do better. Someday we'll be explaining to our descendants how we used to spend half our income for a giant box that you had to drag around everywhere you went and constantly pour money into, and then you would just sit in it for hours wishing that you weren't, because that was the fad back then.