People would go for condos if there were cheap large ones nearby. Alas, the supply restrictionists blocked all vertical development decades ago in order to inflate prices 10x and capture tech wages. That left SFHs and townhomes in far away places.
I'm living in smaller-ish city in Spain, we rent ~120m2 2bedroom flat for ~650€ and it's city center so we don't even think about getting a car as it would be more hassle to take it out of the garage then actually walking to the nearest shop. Lots of squares / parks around usually full of kids playing :)
You have to sign over most of your future earnings to the guy who's selling you the property, in exchange for (hopefully) getting the next guy to fork over most of theirs. The game is so hardcore that the pyramid scheme is as strong as ever.
Not where I live. A bus ride takes about half an hour to get to downtown SF. The same drive during rush hour would take an hour, easy. You couldn’t make me drive to work here.
Well... in most cases in densely populated places you simply can walk to the job or ride a bike.
In BCN for example commute would be most of the time ~15-20 minutes (walking+metro). Car would easily take twice as much.
Of course if you are living in urban sprawl and nothing is close and even getting something to eat requires "a trip" then yeah - door-to-door car would probably be "better"
They didn't necessary talk about time in commute. Maybe they thought spending time inside cars was useless. Sure your commute is shorter but most Americans also have to drive everywhere in their cars. To be honest, it's shit.
Edit: also, the chart is too simple to know how they conducted and came up with the data.
Tbf, some Americans might think it's shit to live life in a 100 m^2 box they don't even own and commuting in a crowded stinky wagon for longer than 26 minutes.
Not sure there's just one right way to live though. I wasn't saying there is, just sharing some data to a discussion oblivious to the realities of most Americans.
>I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend so much time in their cars
I agree that kind of commute is insane, but maybe we don't all want to raise our families in shoe boxes (often surrounded by filth and crime) in the city centre (as if everyone in France lives in downtown Paris).
You may find that thrilling, but I don't. None of it.
Your arguments has way too many fallacies, like if the US has any shortage of crime and filth filled suburbs, but I'll cut it short.
Everybody should live in the context they prefer.
That being said, if the suburb dystopia was instead built around sensible public transport with good trains, metros and well planned gathering and commercial areas I could have some sympathy.
But no, everything is planned and built around the concept of owning and driving a car for everything.
Which is also why you end up having so many suburbs that are the facto dumpster ghettos, people not owning a car cannot even easily commute daily to a job available downtown.
Good public transport and proper city planning are some of the best social equalizers and life improving engines out there. For everybody, including and especially people wanting their own home rather than living in apartments (that by the way don't have to be small, albeit smaller dimensions have plenty of benefits too).
"In 2005, Harvard University and Suffolk University researchers worked with local police to identify 34 "crime hot spots" in Lowell, Massachusetts. In half of the spots, authorities cleared trash, fixed streetlights, enforced building codes, discouraged loiterers, made more misdemeanor arrests, and expanded mental health services and aid for the homeless. In the other half of the identified locations, there was no change to routine police service.
The areas that received additional attention experienced a 20% reduction in calls to the police. The study concluded that cleaning up the physical environment was more effective than misdemeanor arrests."
They probably read your comment as three things instead of two (I did at first and had to take a second look). Tighter binding between the paired items might make it read better, instead of the awkwardly placed comma:
> There is zero relation between filth/crime and living in the city centre.
I find it tiresome how someone who lives elsewhere thinks we can waive a magic wand and change trillions in infrastructure and a century of entrenched car culture. Unless you have workable solutions please keep the peanut gallery comments to yourself.
There are solutions but they are the hard “get people to buck all incentives and change their behavior for the common good” kind that take a lot of work.
I'm not sure what other people can do, but personally I decided that instead of wishing in vain that the place I lived in was this way, I moved across the world to a new city and country where I could live car-free. Now I ride a bicycle to work and use subways and trains to get around on the weekends. Vote with your feet, I guess.
Well there are plenty of people going from Montreux or further to Geneva.
With the changes in schedule, any trains going around the lake past Renens will be slower by at least 5min.
Over the years, I had met several workers who were doing 2h+ per leg commute.
I live within an European city - not downtown, but relatively close. My commute by car over ~10km is 18-20 mins, same distance by public transport takes 40-50 mins, depending on train reliability and workers not striking.
I don't intent to change your mind because it's often that people are stuck to their opinions.
Just want to say that sitting in public transports I can do other things such as doing some work or reading a book. While sitting in a car feels terrible to me. 30 minutes of driving a car is a lot worse than sitting in public transport. Also, if I have to commute by walk/bike, I also feel much better.
> Just want to say that sitting in public transports I can do other things such as doing some work or reading a book.
In my experience that kind of activity was often not possible, especially in cases where one bus was late and I had go worry about getting to the connecting stop on time. Likewise I couldn't really read b/c I might get distracted and miss a connection.
This was all pre-Internet and of course pre-unlimited data plan. These days I might have a downright pleasurable experience on public transport listening to podcasts under those conditions. Except here in Seattle there are just too many maniacs on some lines.
What's there to change your mind? There are areas that are poorly connected and cars are much more convenient.
I live outside Rome, Italy, my SO works downtown. It takes her 35ish minutes to get to work by train, it would take her way more than one hour by car.
Hell, it takes her colleagues living in Rome center often an hour to get to work on a 6 km drive.
The funniest thing was when I worked with a guy that commuted by train from Naples! That's 150 miles away. And he would still get back home quicker by train than people living in Rome.
