I work out in the suburbs, and my commute would be super short and convenient if I lived in the same suburb. The problem is, if I were to change jobs, there are no other companies that are looking to hire somebody with my skillset in the same suburb. Instead, most of those other jobs are located downtown in the city or in suburbs clear on the other side of town. So while suburban office parks might've been great for somebody who was planning on working at the same company for their entire career, so that they could buy a house nearby and raise their family there, it doesn't work so great these days when people are changing jobs frequently.

By and large it's not practical to live and work in the same suburb, especially if you're a two-income couple. Which is why in the D.C. area you have crazy traffic with people commuting between random suburbs. It's way more efficient to put all the jobs in a central location and move people in and out with commuter rail. It could easily take you an hour to drive from one D.C. suburb to another. In that same time, I can commute from Connecticut into NYC.

I have a friend who commuted via high-speed rail from Berlin to Braunschweig, logging on via the rail WiFi to start work. He'd arrive in a little over 2 hours, work for ~4 hours, and head back home finishing his work day on the train. It's a long day on the train but he loved it and continues living in Berlin today.

I think many of us wouldn't actually be bothered with a huge commute if it could be considered as part of our working hours. The problem with that is how common it is to not to be considered working unless you're at your desk, which turns that into a 12 hour day rather than the 8 hour day you have.

It is rather odd that, as a knowledge worker, I have to climb into a metal box and operate it at dangerously high speeds (participating in an activity that's the #1 highest accidental killer in the US) so that I may arrive at a desk in some distant location so that I may be seen typing at my keyboard so I may get paid for it.

Can confirm. I commute between Herndon VA and Greenbelt MD every day. If I get on the beltway before 6am it takes about an hour. I would love to ride the Metro rather than drive, but that takes nearly two hours.

Aesthetically, I'm not a fan of office parks and the one I'm in doesn't have great places to walk unless you count parking lots. Having said that, urban company locations are usually great if you live nearby and can take public transit or easily walk/bike. It's pretty horrible/expensive for large cities if you have to drive and/or take a long commuter rail in.

I love commuting to work: it's either a 20 minute bus ride, or a 30 minute walk. The most direct walking path is just a hair over 2 miles, which means that—along with walking to and from lunch—I can easily walk 5 miles a day without having to make any 'real' changes to my daily schedule.

Some easy math will demonstrate that many more people live within walking distance of big city office towers than live within the same distance of exurban office parks.

Not to defend suburbs, but a well-designed suburb/exurb let's you access quite a bit in a reasonable amount of time. My old commute from the East Village to Tribeca, both in downtown Manhattan, was about 25-30 minutes by subway with a transfer. In the same time I could walk about half-way to work. This is a pretty normal commute in the densest part of the USA.

In the same time, I could get to a 20-30 mile radius around my parents house in suburban maryland (if my math is correct, this is 1200-2800 square miles). I could drive to downtown Baltimore, or downtown Annapolis, or close to DC.

If your _average_ driving speed from home to work is 60MPH you don't even live in the suburbs. You live in the country. For me, 1800 square miles of country through which one can drive at 60MPH (implying that it's totally depopulated) would not compare favorably with the amenities within half an hour of the East Village.

It's not quite fair to compare raw distance. Instead, consider comparing number of businesses or people within the East Village 25-30minute radius vs. the Maryland 20-30mile radius. I don't know about your area, but as a current East Village resident there's there's way, way more in that NY radius compared to my hometown's equivalent.

Not everyone wants to live within walking distance of the big towers.

And I'm completely in favor of personal preference. What rubs many urban dwellers is the gigantic subsidies heaped upon suburbs. I don't care where people live, as long as I don't have to pay for it.

Which gigantic subsidies did you have in mind?

Ten seconds of googling gives perspectives from either end of the political spectrum:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-conservative...

http://grist.org/cities/starving-the-cities-to-feed-the-subu...

I'm aware of the home mortgage interest deduction. If that was what thrownaway meant, they could have said so, and we could discuss that. "lmgtfy" isn't an argument.

Interestingly, that Grist article doesn't attempt to quantify how much of the deduction goes to city vs. suburban property owners, so it's hard to get a grip on how "massive" a subsidy it is vs. say, community development grants and public transit set asides.

Is there a summary argument that also takes into account the wealth transfer from poor tenants to rich landlords that is created by making everybody rent instead of buy? If interest and tax writeoffs are a ~$140bil/yr subsidy, are there economic or social benefits greater than $140bil/yr that make it worth it?

If landlords are making huge profits off people who are renting in the cities rather than buying in the suburbs, then those tenants have an arbitrage opportunity to buy condos or coops.

You have to have capital or someone who trusts you with capital to buy large things, though, which is exactly what the previously vilified federal subsidies provide.

Distance is less interesting in this context than time; in the same time it takes me to commute to The City, I can drive nearly 60 miles in almost any other direction. That makes a great number of exurban office parks a lot more accessible to me than a big city office tower.

city life is amazing. 20 minutes commute is the only way I can work 12 hours a day and still have time for friends, family, and hobbies.

Rural life is amazing. That 30 second commute from my bed to my desk is the only way I can work 12 hours a day and still have time to walk the dog, tend the garden, and enjoy the outdoors, and avoid having to engage with the seething squalid mass of humanity unless I choose.

Remote work is the best. Having to get all your employees breathing the same oxygen will hopefully seem like an insane anachronism in fifty years.

+1 for remote work!

Open the window to the office, listen to the birds outside, smell the fresh air. Go for a walk in peace and quiet, no busses, ambulances blaring, people shouting, stepping on your toes etc.

I'm not sure whether you're serious or not. I'm awake about 15 hours a day. Working for 12.7 out of those is not what I would call "having time for friends, family, and hobbies".

"An office park that has nice walking paths"

The problem is, most don't.

Most are actually designed not to. There are a whole lot of interesting looks at how suburbans are designed (hint: keeping undesirables like African Americans out is a major feature). While the intent in 2015 may be less overt, those same isolationist tactics are still in heavy use. Big walls, large setbacks, windy streets, large parking lots.. they all serve to build an effective moat around the place people are.