Quote :

"I don't know about that. Even if you can make that argument I don't think it's right. If you live in a rural area work in a rural area. If you live in an urban area work in the same urban area. I just think it's fundamentally wrong how much Americans commute and how much they drive. "

Your initial allegation was that it's silly to live more than 5-10 miles away from where you work. So even if you want to locate to an area where (a) crime rates are low, (b) taxes are low, (c) the school systems are good, (d) the community meets your needs and (e) is convenient for your other family members who do other things during the day, there is absolutely no reason why it makes sense to live 5-10 miles away from where the primarly salary earner works...

...that's why I made the suburbia comment. To me, this just sounds like a comment from someone who either has always lived in a decently sized city and/or hasn't had a lot of family members.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I don't think anyone would argue that you should "try" to minimize your commute for many reasons. But to make a blanket statement that if someone doesn't live within hear-shot of their work then they are being stupid is leaving out an aweful lot of factors. Sometimes if you work for a major employer "in the country" there aren't decent places to live 5-10 miles from where you work. A 20-30 minute commute isn't unreasonable or unrealistic for most places on the east coast. I've heard of people working at some of the military's testing site out in New Mexico and Arizona (Yuma) and having to commute 60 miles to work just because that's where the towns were.

[Edited on November 4, 2011 at 11:09 AM. Reason : Clarification]

11/4/2011 11:04:03 AM

Yes I've always lived in a decent sized city with a family of 4. You're right I have no frame of reference because I've never lived in a rural area. My point would be work there if you want to live there. If you want to spend 5-10% of your life sitting in a car then fine. That's years of your life in a car.

Quote :

"So even if you want to locate to an area where (a) crime rates are low, (b) taxes are low, (c) the school systems are good, (d) the community meets your needs and (e) is convenient for your other family members who do other things during the day,"

Yes and this is what's wrong with America. That these conditions cause Americans to leave Urban areas for better conditions. I'd rather everything be flip-flopped. Taxes, crime, school systems should all be BETTER in urban areas. They are in many cities and they're not going to get better unless people live and contribute to growth in urban areas.

Quote :

"But to make a blanket statement that if someone doesn't live within hear-shot of their work then they are being stupid is leaving out an aweful lot of factors."

Agreed. I didn't mean to make it sound like it was a blanket statement. I guess I'm more objecting to how things are rather than what people do because of them.

11/4/2011 11:13:00 AM

Quote :

"So even if you want to locate to an area where (a) crime rates are low, (b) taxes are low, (c) the school systems are good, (d) the community meets your needs and (e) is convenient for your other family members who do other things during the day"

Luckily for people in the Triangle, all of that can be had within 10-20 minutes of most people's workplaces. Main reason my family moved here from New Jersey. Up there you generally had to commute an absurd amount if you want to live somewhere affordable and safe.

11/4/2011 11:14:01 AM

Good point. It's amazing the high percentage of people I meet in Charlotte/Triangle who are from the NY area. They all come down here because the standard of living is so much higher for the price. It's almost strange when I tell people I'm a native.

11/4/2011 11:17:59 AM

I live five minutes from work. People tell me I'm lucky, but I go out of my way to correct them and tell them that its not because I'm lucky, but because I'm smart.

11/4/2011 11:19:12 AM

I actually take the bus to work every now and then. It bumps my commute from 5-10 minutes to 14-16 minutes but it gives me 15 minutes to catch up on emails before I get into work. Plus I'm on a bus line that runs every 5-10 minutes in the morning. I can walk outside and hop on a bus within minutes and the transit center is right next to the building I work in.

11/4/2011 11:24:15 AM

^^It's because you don't have other facets of your life to prioritize over your commute to work.

---

Quote :

"Taxes, crime, school systems should all be BETTER in urban areas"

This statement doesn't make any sense at all. A city requires more infrastructure and support which comes from taxes. A city is going to provide an easier environment for various crimes to occur than living in rural areas where due to lower populations, accountability is generally higher. The only thing I could see you argue is school systems. Due to the superior local resources in urban areas, public schools should be better.

I'm not arguing with you that "things don't need to get better", but some of the things you are saying "should" happen are unrealistic.

BTW, you say that "those are years of your life in a car"... yeah, but those are years of my life in a car in exchange for living years of my life in a community with lower taxes and a lower cost of living as well as a safer community for my wife and family. I could get a house right beside the security gate if I was willing to live in a run-down 2000 sq ft home in a little community that is known for it's stabbings. Boy, I sure would be 'smart' for having such a short commute...

[Edited on November 4, 2011 at 11:30 AM. Reason : ^^]

11/4/2011 11:30:01 AM

Sounds like a thinly veiled insult. I'll take it as such and retort by saying that I could just as easily ask why you work in a shit area that you're uncomfortable living in. But instead, I'll just say that maintaining a healthy work/life balance is always going to be difficult, and, having experienced the lack of such first hand,it makes little sense to belittle those who have achieved at least a semblance of it.

11/4/2011 11:37:26 AM

15 min bike to Duke, 25 min bike to NCCU, 12 min bike to DUMC for clinicals. If I walk to work it's 40 minutes.

That's 2.5, 5, 2 miles respectively. Chose my school based on the ability to get there by bike (well, and they
have an affordable BSN program).

I used to live in Raleigh after school and commuted to Duke every day, and wasted 2 hours of my life each day doing that. I moved to Durham because I was sick of giving up my life to Diane Ream every morning, and I really like how energized the city has become since I moved here in 2007.

11/4/2011 11:41:51 AM

^^^You have valid points and I don't disagree with anything you've said. I really have no room to talk seeing as I don't have a family to support nor do I have many expenses.

Quote :

"BTW, you say that "those are years of your life in a car"... yeah, but those are years of my life in a car in exchange for living years of my life in a community with lower taxes and a lower cost of living as well as a safer community for my wife and family. I could get a house right beside the security gate if I was willing to live in a run-down 2000 sq ft home in a little community that is known for it's stabbings. Boy, I sure would be 'smart' for having such a short commute..."

Now this is taking it a bit far. You're making quite the blanket statement. There's neighborhoods with low crime and decent schools in almost any city. Almost everyone I knew growing up lived close to the city and sure being middle class we lived in smaller houses then similar families in the burbs but culturally I feel as though we had a much greater connection to where we live. I'm not trying to down play living in the suburbs but all my friends who did really didn't know much about the city they lived in and went to the mall on weekends.

11/4/2011 11:54:54 AM

Quote :

"I used to live in Raleigh after school and commuted to Duke every day, and wasted 2 hours of my life each day doing that."

Man, where in Raleigh were you living that it took an hour to get to Duke? It only takes me 30 minutes on a typical day.

11/4/2011 11:58:16 AM

Oh, between Hillsborough and Wade Ave., so the drive was 30 min, but because I had crappy H lot parking,
I dropped my bike off my car and rode that in to my building. Never wanted to wait for the shuttle.

So 30 min drive + 5 min getting bike and crap ready + 15 min bike = 50 min, give or take 5. I rounded up

11/4/2011 12:05:59 PM

Quote :

"in a shit area that you're uncomfortable living in. "

You could, but I would have responded by saying: I was offered a job by the US Navy and this is where they told me to go. My other option was far less paying and for a much smaller organization. Sounds like a good reason to me. So now the question becomes 'if another job comes around that offers me similar pay/benefits and I can shorten my commute from 20 miles to 10 miles, is it worth selling my house and uprooting my life to cut 10 miles off my commute'.

By the way, it wasn't an insult. You stated you weren't lucky but that you were smart for living close to work. I stated that what you see as "smart" is only because it's "smart" for whatever your priority concern is. If your primary concern is your work commute, then yeah, you made a brilliant move. That doesn't mean that your co-worker who lives 45 minutes out is an idiot, though... he may have a higher priority.

...obviously if he goes around bitching non-stop about his commute, he's an idiot because it's his choice.

---

neo, I'm not making a blanket statement about cities. I grew up in-and-around Charlotte and loved it (arguably more than living in a more rural environment). I'm just saying that SOME aspects of city living are simply that... aspects of city living. Higher taxes are necessary to maintain a city. That's not an insult or a blanket statement, it's just the mechanics of the beast. There are "areas" that are very nice and have good schools with low crime rates, but I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that if you move to a more rural area, on average, you're probably going to be in a lower crime area. And for the record, I completely agreed that cities probably should have been schools than the country...

I love the city and have nothing against it. I'm just arguing with the statement that if you don't live 5-10 miles from where you work it's somehow a dumb move. Theres just a lot more that goes into where you live than your commute to work.

[Edited on November 4, 2011 at 12:18 PM. Reason : ...]

11/4/2011 12:15:06 PM

Quote :

"but because I had crappy H lot parking, I dropped my bike off my car and rode that in to my building. Never wanted to wait for the shuttle. "

lol yeah that lot does suck. The lot I'm in sucks for most people on Duke's campus, but it's a short walk from my building so I don't mind it. Gives me some minutes to burn off steam before hopping into the car.

11/4/2011 12:22:45 PM

Quote :

"I love the city and have nothing against it. I'm just arguing with the statement that if you don't live 5-10 miles from where you work it's somehow a dumb move. Theres just a lot more that goes into where you live than your commute to work."

Agreed. I guess I'm spoiled. I work in uptown Charlotte and live 2 miles from the center city. I just think the suburbs have no soul. I always hated driving out to friends houses who live outside the city. Now when I get married and have kids that opinion might change but as of now I'd rather be where everything is both culturally and socially.

11/4/2011 12:30:52 PM

^I lived in Concord which 'is a suburb of Charlotte' but when you visit it, it's not really a 'suburb community'. If I'm talking in person to someone from NC, I don't say I'm from Charlotte and don't really consider myself a part of that community, but the economic effects of Charlotte on my hometown are pretty obvious.

If you want to see a suburb, come up here near DC and I'll show you some places that look just like these retarded sitcoms about families in the suburbs.

11/4/2011 12:43:44 PM

True there's rural areas and then there's suburban rural areas. There is a difference. Concord isn't bad.

11/4/2011 1:01:25 PM

3.9 miles and 8.5 minutes door to door.

11/4/2011 1:34:36 PM

I'm 18 miles from work - takes about 20-25 minutes because thankfully I live right off 40 and my work is right off 40. I also work from 7-3 so I miss a lot of traffic.

And as much as I hate the commute, moving closer isn't much of an option for us considering we both own property in Raleigh. When I lived at my place, it was the same distance, just coming from downtown. Plus my fiancé's job is a 3 mile commute.

I was working from home 2 days a week but I took a new job with my company and am back in the office full time. I'm hoping that eventually I can go back to working from home half the week or they'll decentralize me

11/4/2011 8:52:07 PM

Quote :

"To stay sanealive and productive out of jail during my 8 minute bikedrive into work I watch out for idiots trying to run me over and pedal really hard bike to work on a busy ass road."

11/4/2011 9:33:09 PM

Quote :

"Today is my last day of working from home. I've been working for a small company based in Texas since the beginning of the year. Start a new job on Tuesday which will have me commuting from Cary to RTP again (~30 minutes). I'm not really looking forward to it but it could be worse..."

I commuted from Cary to RTP.....in the morning it would take me 20-25 min, but in the afternoon it would take me an hour to get home. I moved 3 miles from work. I was totally happy until work moved 10 miles further

11/4/2011 10:04:52 PM

^ yeah wtf is up with that? The afternoon commute always takes longer for some goddamn reason. Half the time I just end up getting off Aviation and cutting over to Evans to get home. Even with the traffic lights it will take less time than going up to US-1.

11/4/2011 10:19:46 PM

Good article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html

11/26/2011 5:44:45 PM

When I started my current position this time last year, I was living in Raleigh, and my territory is the Western half of NC. Our house stayed on the market from November until August, 9 months. My territory starts in Clemmons, and goes to Murphy, so just to get into my territory was close to 2 hours. Most of my work is in Charlotte and Asheville though, so most days I was driving between 6-8 hours round trip. At first i just stayed in hotels all the time because my employer pays for everything, but I got tired of being away from my family, so I started waking up at the ass crack of dawn to get on the road, and start heading home around 4-5 each day to sleep in my own bed. It got old real quick, and once we got an offer on our Raleigh house, I didn't even blink at taking a loss on the house. I needed it for my sanity, and because of the market, i felt like we made it up in the savings of building our new house in Charlotte. Now I hardly ever stay overnight for work, unless I'm west of Asheville. It's pretty nice, and I don't regret anything I did, but it was definitely tough on me.

11/26/2011 7:59:34 PM

I keep my eyes on the road, my hands upon the wheel

11/26/2011 10:02:57 PM

I drive 4.2 miles to work, and attempt it likes an F1 road track each way. Sector times split into 3 parts and all

11/27/2011 9:29:20 AM