[vladvasiliu]

Probably noise.

As an apartment-dwelling European, maybe GP's point about density is based on the fact that having neighbors sucks big time. Sure, you can build apartment buildings that are well insulated, but most stock in my neck of the woods isn't built that way. You can hear your neighbor taking a piss at night. Of course, this doesn't help people making the median salary in the city actually afford those places.

So, given my environment, if I want peace and quiet without having to try out living in multiple apartments until I can find the rare one built with care, it's much easier to just go live in a detached house in the suburbs.

Also, despite dense public transport and "walkability", the traffic is still ridiculous so pollution is very high, too.

[dougmwne]

But that’s exactly the point here. Sure, having a nice back garden and a fully detached house is nice. But the price we pay when we build 2 million of those in a metro area is the 2 hour commute, and car culture, and unaffordable housing in city centers. If you have the ability to work from home, then it doesn’t matter that you are 40km from the city center for the rare time you need to attend a meeting or other event. And that’s exactly why folks in the US are so dead set on keeping WFH, their cities are just not designed to allow everyone to reach any arbitrary point in 30 minutes or less.

[vladvasiliu]

I fully agree. And that's why I think that we should somehow push companies to increase WFH where possible, because this doesn't only help the "privileged" who can WFH, but also all the people who actually need to work physically on the job site, by not being compressed in public transit or not waiting for hours on a gridlocked highway. Hell, when the first Covid wave started to wane and the lockdown was lifted, the government "suggested" companies encourage WFH "where possible". Guess what followed? The worst traffic jams Paris had ever seen, since people had to go to the office, but were still afraid of public transit. I understand that Covid hit all of a sudden, and many people didn't have the space to comfortably WFH. But I'm not talking about Paris and it's close suburbs, which tend to have people living in cramped settings. I'm talking about the suburbs further away, which, in most cases, have fairly big houses.

> And that’s exactly why folks in the US are so dead set on keeping WFH, their cities are just not designed to allow everyone to reach any arbitrary point in 30 minutes or less.

I only have a sample size of one, but the Paris region is clearly not great for that, either. And from what I hear, other major French cities aren't any better. And we do have public transit that seems somewhat better than the average US metro (from what I read here on HN, I've never lived in the US). But there are still miles and miles of traffic jams in the mornings and evenings. Trains are still filled to the brim with commuters.

[dougmwne]

Ok yeah I would consider Paris to be an outlier when it comes to the EU because its urban and suburban area is absolutely massive. But imagine you took the entire metro area population of Paris, (12 million) then spread them out across a 100km diameter and removed all semblance of public transit. You would have Los Angeles.

[danuker]

> You can hear your neighbor taking a piss at night.

That is true, I hear the flushing when it's silent, but I don't notice it when I am watching some video, nor does it wake me up. Occasionally the neighbors have a party and I wouldn't be able to sleep, but after 22:00 it's quiet (there are laws about it).

By far the worst source of noise is traffic. I hear vehicles on a nearby street. But even that is better than my parents' detached house with bedroom windows right in the street.