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If you're going to quote a line, quote the context. The OP was talking about "boom cities" as a problem, which they aren't by themselves. The problem is the una

If you're going to quote a line, quote the context. The OP was talking about "boom cities" as a problem, which they aren't by themselves. The problem is the unaffordability of the cities, caused by lack of housing, which leads folks to live outside of the city and commute. My main point was that arguing for remote work/sprawl was not a ecologically-friendly argument. Sure, lots of people want to live in the middle of nowhere. But the negative externalities, looking to the future, are many, and they are something to consider when trying to praise WFH as a potential solution for anything. Yes, everyone that reads this forum supports WFH because they benefit directly from it. From a birds-eye view though, looking at urban development and the cultural decline of isolated populations in the US, it looks like it could be a disaster.

sokoloff 5y ago
That seems like a perfectly fine amount of context to quote to me. You could make cities as dense as you want and many people would explicitly choose to live in an area where they can have a private yard. There’s no strategy of densification that will preserve that for everyone. You can make the inside of your box as amazing as you can imagine and some (not small) segment of people will opt to live where the sun can shine into their yard.
luffapi 5y ago
Wouldn’t wfh decrease the cost of living in the city, since currently most high paying jobs make living within commuting distance a requirement? To make an extreme example, cost of living on the Bay Area should go down if wfh becomes widespread. There are other reasons to want to live in SF aside from getting paid a high salary in tech, so housing prices should “fallback” to whatever people value the culture/scenery… at. What you would probably see is a more even (and healthy) distribution of growth in all metro areas instead of being centered in a few with all of the cost of living increases associated with that.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'm not sure SF is a great example. For most tech workers, they're giving themselves a worse commute by living in the city rather than somewhere else in the South Bay closer, in many/most cases, to where their office is. So, yes, their jobs may be a major reason they're in the Bay Area overall, but mostly not in SF itself. This is of course much less true in industries like finance.

sokoloff 5y ago

That seems like a perfectly fine amount of context to quote to me. You could make cities as dense as you want and many people would explicitly choose to live in an area where they can have a private yard. There’s no strategy of densification that will preserve that for everyone. You can make the inside of your box as amazing as you can imagine and some (not small) segment of people will opt to live where the sun can shine into their yard.

luffapi 5y ago

Wouldn’t wfh decrease the cost of living in the city, since currently most high paying jobs make living within commuting distance a requirement? To make an extreme example, cost of living on the Bay Area should go down if wfh becomes widespread. There are other reasons to want to live in SF aside from getting paid a high salary in tech, so housing prices should “fallback” to whatever people value the culture/scenery… at. What you would probably see is a more even (and healthy) distribution of growth in all metro areas instead of being centered in a few with all of the cost of living increases associated with that.

ghaff 5y ago
I'm not sure SF is a great example. For most tech workers, they're giving themselves a worse commute by living in the city rather than somewhere else in the South Bay closer, in many/most cases, to where their office is. So, yes, their jobs may be a major reason they're in the Bay Area overall, but mostly not in SF itself. This is of course much less true in industries like finance.