7 ms·

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,

• chitowneats 4y ago
  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.
  • tluyben2 4y ago
    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.
    • rr888 4y ago
      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.
    • closeparen 4y ago
      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.
  • adql 4y ago
    If you could 100% WFH moving to just smaller city (instead of to suburbs of a bigger city) is always an option.
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      U.S.A. really doesn't have walkable smaller cities outside of college campuses. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them.
• m000 4y ago
  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.
  • humanrebar 4y ago
    If they're not commuting, they're also using the car less.
    • m000 4y ago
      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.
  • neutronicus 4y ago
    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).
• itake 4y ago
  > 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.
  • chitowneats 4y ago
    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?
    • itake 4y ago
      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.
      • chitowneats 4y ago
        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.
        • itake 4y ago
          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.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
• humanrebar 4y ago
  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.
  • neutronicus 4y ago
    > 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.
• onion2k 4y ago
  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.
  • blululu 4y ago
    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.
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      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.
      • agentultra 4y ago
        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.
        • raxxorraxor 4y ago
          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.
• fundad 4y ago
  There must be ample apartments near train stops that take you to all the jobs so you’re right.
• version_five 4y ago
  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.
  • adql 4y ago
    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).
    • DoughnutHole 4y ago
      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.
• ivan_gammel 4y ago
  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“.
  • randomdata 4y ago
    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.
    • ivan_gammel 4y ago
      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.
      • randomdata 4y ago
        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.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    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.
• UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  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.
• Karawebnetwork 4y ago
  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.