New York Times: Mortgages: Factoring in Commuting Costs

[sheepstache]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/realestate/mortgages-factoring-in-commuting-costs.html?hp

The general populace might still not be clued into the costs of commuting, but maybe banks are.  Could help those of you in the bind of not being able to qualify for houses closer to town even though the housing+transport cost is cheaper than a cheaper house farther away. 

Little while ago I read The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City which is about the demographic shift, sort of the opposite of "white flight", which shows well-off people heading back to the cities while the less well off are relegated to the suburbs.  It talks about the new found desirability of cities as well as the stories of some suburbs and inner-city suburbs attempting "citification" like by facilitating downtown nightlife, commuter rail, etc., including walkability.   Seems like mortages that take the cost of transportation into account couldn't hurt.

[Kamikaze Emu]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

[c]

I emailed this to my colleagues.

This is something we discuss frequently. They all live in the suburbs and have long, expensive commutes yet somehow I'm the extravagant one for having "an apartment in the city". They just don't factor in all the little extras they spend because they have to commute everywhere.

[Jamesqf]

Seems to be using an obviously flawed premise, that commuting costs per mile are the same for everyone.  Now if you and I live the same distance distance from work, and you drive your new Escalade while I stick with my Insight, aren't you going to be paying a lot more than I am?  If I bike some or all of the time, it costs me even less.  And if I can telecommute, my cost goes to near zero.

[Kriegsspiel]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

I feel like Pittsburgh was a lot like that.  I would imagine it has a lot to do with it being very hilly, so different neighborhoods developed independently back in the day.  I imagine SF and Seattle and other hilly cities are the same way.

[sheepstache]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

I think in some ways the author of the book would agree with you because he didn't consider a "commuter suburb" to be the solution.  In some ways I disagreed with him myself because I thought he was overly rigid about what constituted "citification."  For example one area was a failure according to him because, despite having mixed-use residence and commerce and bustling public spaces, it didn't have retail.  Mustachian anti-consumerism aside, I think tailored solutions to urban planning rather than one-size-fits-all have always been the way to go.  I think the factor he was after was people's desire to live in a "cosmopolitan" center, such that there's an influx of outside people on a daily basis, either for work or nightlife or shopping.  But it's not like that's the only solution suburban sprawl.

[capital]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

I'm not sure I understand this idea. Downtown cores are a good place to be employed, due to economies of agglomeration, which allow for higher incomes, and the biggest, densest downtown cores in the country only function because of public transit, since there isn't enough room for storing all the cars people would need to drive into them. On the other hand, most suburban areas and newer cities have multiple nodes, but because all of the businesses and services are so spread out,  most people need to drive around to get to all the stuff they need, and it would be difficult to build a functional public transportation system to link them. Most people in New York City, home of the densest business districts and where the word "downtown" comes from, live in a neighborhood centered around a railroad station they walk to, mostly shopping at businesses on a nearby main street, or sometimes in shopping districts reached by train for specialized goods. Of course, the very high incomes many have in the city can lead to a materialistic culture, and restrictive construction policies lead to those incomes being used to bid housing up to stupid prices, but those issues are their own bags of worms. Older cities without a rapid transit system usually developed their dense neighborhoods around streetcar lines to an even-denser downtown.

Los Angeles, widely promoted as "polycentric", is far more car-oriented than other cities its size. People claim that eventually this will make it a great mass-transit city once all of its rail lines get (re)built out, but that certainly isn't true yet.

Empirically, the only places in this country where it's normal not to own a car are the big cities with dense downtowns where people take trains (occasionally buses) to work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car

[BlueMR2]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

I'm not sure I understand this idea. Downtown cores are a good place to be employed, due to economies of agglomeration, which allow for higher incomes,

However, the cost of living in downtown cores is so high that the economy of agglomeration is often lost.  I imagine that many others have found the same thing as me, that even with my commute, it's cheaper to live in the suburbs (not to mention a whole lot safer than living in the gangland that many downtown areas are after dark...).

[chicagomeg]

I cannot wait to see more and more cities start getting away from the central/downtown core mentality.  Each area of a city should function as its own little community, linked together via rail/public transport, and yes, even roadways.  It would cut out so much useless driving/commuting time/pollution that it would make a huge impact for the betterment of society.

I feel like Pittsburgh was a lot like that.  I would imagine it has a lot to do with it being very hilly, so different neighborhoods developed independently back in the day.  I imagine SF and Seattle and other hilly cities are the same way.

Chicago is like that too to a large extent, but I think the hard thing, especially since people change jobs so often now, is finding a place where both you and your partner can have a manageable commute. A neighborhood can be walkable as far as groceries, going out, retail, all the essentials (or "essentials"), but most jobs do still tend to be concentrated in downtown areas. Personally, if I were opening an office, I'd deliberately put it in a less traditional area as a perk of working there: "You can afford to live 5 minutes away from the office!" but nobody asked me where Fiance's software company should be located...

[Jack]

Be careful what you wish for when advocating putting employment centers outside downtown. Atlanta is like that, and it's a nightmare: instead of merely commuting from the suburbs to downtown, most people now commute through downtown and out the other side! Or they commute from one quadrant of suburbs to another (and vice-versa), or from downtown to the suburbs (which is what I'm forced to do until I find a better job), etc.

Also, from a planning or engineering point of view, it's disastrous: hub-and-spoke transportation networks are cheap and efficient compared to the endless circular bypasses necessary for suburb-to-suburb commuting. And the issue is compounded when you're talking about rail transit: with roads, at least there's (theoretically) a trade-off where even though you're building segments, each segment can have fewer lanes. But when you're trying to build commuter rail you'd only have one set of tracks in each direction anyway, so building suburb-to-suburb lines in addition to suburb-to-downtown lines is completely infeasible. Oh yeah, and you've killed the ridership numbers on the suburb-to-downtown line while you're at it, so it can't get feasibly built either!

[Gerard]

it's cheaper to live in the suburbs (not to mention a whole lot safer than living in the gangland that many downtown areas are after dark...).

But the "gangland" part stops being true as downtowns repopulate (or in places where the downtowns never emptied). Toronto's a good example of that... the "scary" neighbourhoods are in the middle suburbs.