3 ms·

You have to walk to the train station, wait to get on the train (plus buffer for unreliable/full trains), wait at every stop in between, and walk to your final

You have to walk to the train station, wait to get on the train (plus buffer for unreliable/full trains), wait at every stop in between, and walk to your final destination. You're right about congestion, though, and rush hour probably does dominate the equation for commuters. Still, in the city you pay a lot more for real estate and get a lot less. It is very important for models to include that aspect: do the benefits of density accrue to you, or to your landlord?

bobthepanda 4y ago
Finding parking alone in a major downtown like Manhattan is time-consuming. Metro-North from Connecticut to NYC has a speed of 80MPH, and combined with pretty good acceleration from electric propulsion, is often traveling faster than cars. --- You get a lot less real estate but you do get a lot more in terms of amenity. * a lot of amenities found in major cities are there because the major city provides critical mass for niches. (If you don't have enough gay people you won't have gay bars, if you don't have enough Chinese people you are not going to have grocers with Chinese produce, you need a big enough population awake late nights to support diverse late-night food options, you need enough arts patrons to support a museum, etc.) * switching jobs is easier in big cities, particularly for people with specialist jobs. Remote work is more of a thing post-COVID, but realistically speaking a lot of companies will limit that to areas where they are already set up (since even in the US tax, employment benefit, health insurance etc. regulation varies significantly by state), and major cities are better covered in terms of companies already being tax compliant. Big cities aren't for everyone, but also suburbs are not for everyone, and small towns are not for everyone, and we are seeing that there is more demand for big city than is currently being satisfied.

bobthepanda 4y ago

Finding parking alone in a major downtown like Manhattan is time-consuming. Metro-North from Connecticut to NYC has a speed of 80MPH, and combined with pretty good acceleration from electric propulsion, is often traveling faster than cars. --- You get a lot less real estate but you do get a lot more in terms of amenity. * a lot of amenities found in major cities are there because the major city provides critical mass for niches. (If you don't have enough gay people you won't have gay bars, if you don't have enough Chinese people you are not going to have grocers with Chinese produce, you need a big enough population awake late nights to support diverse late-night food options, you need enough arts patrons to support a museum, etc.) * switching jobs is easier in big cities, particularly for people with specialist jobs. Remote work is more of a thing post-COVID, but realistically speaking a lot of companies will limit that to areas where they are already set up (since even in the US tax, employment benefit, health insurance etc. regulation varies significantly by state), and major cities are better covered in terms of companies already being tax compliant. Big cities aren't for everyone, but also suburbs are not for everyone, and small towns are not for everyone, and we are seeing that there is more demand for big city than is currently being satisfied.