People traveling for 30-90 (or more!) minutes to and from work, particularly the ones driving in traffic, are the commuters. And the ones I know that fall into that category hate it.
Good for you that you have such a nice situation, though!
Between a chatty wife, active kids, and unfinished projects around the house, I don't have the willpower or ability to avoid distractions at home. I'm more productive going into work even if you factor in the time spent driving.
Plus, my drive gives me some down time to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. I do look forward to self-driving cars though (adaptive cruise control helps a lot in the meantime...)
Commutes are not all bad. But the bad ones can be miserable. Self driving cars (for all drivers!) would make it so much better...
Generally it's not bad in the morning, and it's going home that's worse, but at that point, it matters less if I get sweaty.
I used to bike 30-45 minutes each way to work, and, yeah, I got very sweaty. I always wished there were a shower I could use there. It's not ideal biking (or walking) weather, for sure.
One additional anecdote I'd like to share: my coworker just moved to be under a mile from the office. His first time biking to the office from his new place was under five minutes. The other day he had to drive home. He messages me afterwards: "Took me 31 minutes to drive 9 blocks". (5:30pm and raining.)
So I love my bike, even in the Texas summer. :-)
I worked for a company in NYC for years and lived 8 miles from work. It took me a minimum of 90 minutes to get to work.
You seem to think I can either just uproot my family and move to some sort of utopia city with short commutes, good public schools, and well-paying jobs; OR I can just change New York City itself.
The fact is that most people in the US have commutes of 25+ minutes. Folks who walk to work are not the norm, and city schools across the US are a complete failure and joke. Don't assume your situation applies to everyone.
* According to the US Cencus Bureau: https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html
I used to walk with my wife to her office and back when I started full remote work (it's been 6 years, in a fully remote company).
Also, you're free to rent coworking space or shared office space if you like to. Working remote means you have a choice - not that you have to work from home :)
A majority of people don't have to prefer something for it to become standard. It's possible for only a minority of influential or vocal people to prefer commuting for it to be widespread.
In that case, 'they' prefer it, not 'us'.
So while I don't like the commute, I do still prefer it to living closer to London.
(took some photos... https://gallery.tasuki.org/2017/10-few-hours-in-tallinn)
I lived 10 mins away on foot from my job. It was all fine and dandy for some time, but then things got seriously tense in the workplace and it meant the super short commute gave me no time to unwind. It ended up being mentally taxing to live so close to my workplace, even when I was not working since I ended up being near or walking in front basically anytime I got out. Nasty. Too long a commute and you're wasting so much time and energy in our life, but too close and it can have deleterious effects too.
When I'm at home I'm specifically not at work, which means I don't do any work, I don't think about work, I don't talk to anyone from work (unless there's an emergency that someone else can't fix).
What I think would be an awesome balance between this, is very small regional shared offices. Just shared office spaces that offer usage of their space as a 'subscription' to businesses, and as part of that subscription you get 24/7 access, a desk, internet, a kitchen etc. That way you don't have to have dirty dirty work things in your house, AND you only have to "commute" to a potentially very local office.
This is not quite a commute.
Still, sounds more like a daily walk that happens to be to the job than a commute.