[Gys]

The problem is actually in the time and boredom while traveling. So maybe autonomous cars, workplaces in trains or (far fetched ;-) teleportation could improve the 'commuting-problem'.

I think most people still like to work physically with other people. That is why I go to a co-worker space. Because I am actually more productive at home.

[TeMPOraL]

Boredom while traveling is something that could be solved for most, but it goes against the will of people and various cost-cutting solutions. You could get rid of cars in the big cities and replace them with more public transportation. But people won't willingly give up their cars because of various - often not very rational - reasons, and the public transportation is being developed in the wrong way too. Someone figured out the cheapest way to increase the capacity is to replace sitting places with standing places, and so each new generation of buses and trams has less space to sit down. To get rid of boredom in commute, you need the opposite - have much more sitting spaces, so that commuters can read books comfortably or work on their computers.

[dasmoth]

Not so very long ago, there seemed to be a movement in quite the opposite direction: live somewhere car-friendly and work on out-of-town campuses with ample parking.

While I'm another one who believes that the ideal commute is "step across the hallway" (or perhaps an office at the bottom of the garden...), I'd argue that the old low-density promise of commuting 20 or 30 minutes on open roads isn't so bad (and certainly no more taxing than what the public transport/new-urbanist lobby seem to be proposing). Why is this never on the agenda any more?

[TeMPOraL]

I don't know why there's such "new-urbanist lobby" in the US, but in Europe you can't realize the dream of "open-road commuting" and low-density employment, not without turning the entire continent into one big suburbia. I don't think we have enough land for that.

I'm personally for public transit because of efficiency. Even if you could somehow get that "old low-density promise of commuting 20 or 30 minutes on open road", which would definitely be not a bad situation for commuting, it would still be an energy disaster. Mass transportation and high-density settlements are much more energy-efficient, and energy is one of the biggest problems we're facing as a civilization right now.

[dasmoth]

The UK has 26.7M households in 243,610km^2. That's nearly a hectare per household -- doesn't sound "suburban" to me (although maybe some parts of the US would disagree!).

Of course, the UK population is very unevenly distributed at the moment...

[TeMPOraL]

You still need land for agriculture, industry, forests, animal habitats, etc. Also, not all of the land in that 0.25M km^2 is habitable nor suitable for other uses mentioned above.

I've heard some calculations that in theory you could have all 7 billion people living comfortably on 50% of the land while the other 50% could go to agriculture, industry, forestation, etc. but that would require geoengineering on an unprecedented scale, not to mention being very energy inefficient.

[Gys]

Yes, individuals optimize traveling focused on cost (less space = cheaper) so they get what they want. Whereas society and employers would like to see higher output. If only 'they' were willing to pay for that.

Personal happiness is mostly a long term goal which does not go well with short term needs.