200 acres 3 hrs away from a major metro? If all it took to be happy was land, we'd already be in our telecommuting utopia. Unfortunately, the subtle joys of life still tend to require physical presence.
I don't think "city life" is popular with today's generation because it's close to work... I think it's because we value human contact and cultural diversity above acreage or square footage.
Some of us certainly do love city life. My current job is remote, and my family could live anywhere; we chose to give up our spacious house in a charming small town, with a lawn and a garden and separate home offices for me and my wife, and move back to the city, where we now live in a two-bedroom townhouse. No more home office - I visit a coworking space instead - but we're in a lovely walkable neighborhood near the heart of it all. We are much happier here and wouldn't go back.
A high-speed internet connection can and hopefully more so in the future, put you close to nature. All I meant to say is that working remotely doesn't necessarily imply needing or wanting a more cultured city. It depends on what a person values. Some of the most moving times of my life have been out in nature.
Grew up in the countryside, population 3K. Very happy about it, it has given me deep friendships, safety and a deep love of all things nature.
Moved to a big city to attend a good University. Worked for global corporations 15+ years, got more airmiles than I imagined possible and loved every second of it.
Now I've got kids and live in a mid-size city, work is 30 minutes walk, and I'm starting to think that I should move to the countryside to give the same chances I had to learn to love nature.
The problem with your analysis is that it undervalues the benefits of living and working in a major city, especially as a young person. I don't really want to remote -- I want to get out, interact with people, take a coffee break and people watch, grab drinks with coworkers. I want to meet people my age doing interesting things. I want to go out drinking/clubbing/whatever without worrying about driving home after.
Admittedly part of the problem is I, like most of my generation, grew up in the suburbs. Once I turned 18 I couldn't wait to get out.
I could work remote and move back to my hometown or Missouri or Thailand -- but why would I? I'd be sacrificing much of my current life to do so. Of course my opinion would probably change if I had kids, but for now I live in a city for a reason.
Two of the biggest factors in our happiness are a) the quality of your job b) the duration/stress of your commute. America faces a shortage of plots of residential real estate that are within a reasonable commute of quality of jobs. And you need to be in commuting distance of an abundance of good jobs, because job conditions at any one company can change fast, leaving you stuck. Suburban sprawl worked for a while, but in many metros the cheap land is so far out that the commuting times are horrendous.
Imagine you make a comfortable living at a tech job. Now imagine you find out all your co-workers make three times as much as you. Feels bad, doesn't it? But you felt comfortable before.
I'd recommend a middle path. Homestead, but adopt some modern conveniences where it makes your life comfortable. Reject the things that would just lead to more difficulty, expense, complication. Then disconnect from your friends for a while and see if you don't start to feel good about your life again.
Personally, the more I'm out in nature and just comfortable enough, the more I think everyone else is crazy for living in cities. It's really beautiful and quiet and interesting out here. And I really appreciate every little advantage I have. Just being able to lie in my bed, snug and cozy, with a glass of wine, some mushroom risotto, a movie on the laptop, and the whole world outside just quiet and blanketed in pristine snow ... How could anyone ask for more?
In articles and discussions like this I often feel like I'm in the minority by preferring to live and work in lower density areas. Living, or simply visiting, cities is stressful to me, and the benefits of doing so are not worth the downsides.
I like being able to drive 10 minutes to work, or 5 minutes to the grocery store, and not have to worry fighting traffic or finding parking. I like that there are walking trails behind my employer's office. I like that in the evenings or in the weekends I can drive into the mountains or to the coast. These things would not be possible if I lived in a city.
I wonder if there's a strong correlation between big city/rural dwellers and the work from home joy. I live at the edge of the suburbs with a nice yard that looks out onto the woods. I have a large home with plenty of space. I love working from home. If I lived in a tiny efficiency apartment in a big city I would hate being there all day, even though I might enjoy the benefits afforded to me by living close to lots of live entertainment, etc.
The promise of telecommuting for me isn't living three miles way from my nearest neighbor, but rather living in a town of less than 10,000 people and still making six figures. I live in a town of 7,000 with a strong community and a good downtown, but I don't have to commute a half hour into the city. Instead I can wake up at 7am, walk down to the local coffee shop and chill for a bit, then go back home and work. I can pop out for lunch to the diner, and at 5 when everyone is just getting into their cars, I'm already at the local brewery unwinding.
That's the kind of lifestyle previously reserved for people living and working downtown in major cities, but can be (and for me is) a reality in small-town America. I make more money in one year than it cost me to buy my downtown, 2000 sq ft house with a two car garage and a half acre of land. And I don't have to drive anywhere unless I want to.
That's what remote working can offer. That's what small towns should be promising today.
Completely agree. There are many different lifestyles, none inherently better than the other. I just disagree with the sentiment that the only reason to live in a big city is because of work. At least for the kind of positions people on HN tend to hold. It's not like working fully remotely was impossible pre-pandemic.
I definitely see the appeal of owning a huge house and I might well consider it in the future, especially if I have children. But for now, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I own few things of the maximal quality I can afford. Even my city apartment is viewed as somewhat spartanic by some. So I prefer renting an entire place in different parts of the country with my girlfriend or friends for a couple of days at the time meanwhile living in my favorite part of the city where most everything I want to do or need is within 20 minutes walking distance.
As someone else who lives in a small town and works remotely, I have to agree it's a beautiful thing. I lived in San Francisco for a while, but I'm just not a city person, and it was hard to be so far away from my family and friends back east. 10 years ago, I would have had to choose between optimizing for my career or optimizing for happiness in my personal life. For the first time in history, it's not hard to actually have both.
Those of us who genuinely prefer city living and amenities seem to be relatively few among the crowd on HN.
I used to work full-time remote, and had the choice to go anywhere I wanted in the world. I still landed in NYC, and stayed because I loved a diverse, walkable community with amazing nightlife, culture, and parks all around.
I eventually took a job in an office in the city because I liked having an occasional social environment with coworkers, both in the office and outside of it. Working at home full-time as a person without a family and more social needs than I was willing to admit for a long time was extremely isolating, but I don't want a family yet.
I'm eager to go back to the office as soon as it is safe at scale for all the same reasons I was eager to leave my remote job and go into an office again most days originally. Moving somewhere cheap and more isolated to have more space to work at home is about the lowest thing on my priority list.
(But I recognize that I'm fortunate to work at a place which always had pretty good tolerance for remote work, even pre-pandemic, even if I didn't take advantage of it... and also lucky to have coworkers who I generally enjoy being around and working with.)
I live in the city because I love living in a city. So many things to do, not needing to own a car (I hate driving). Having the whole world a few steps away.
I need the buzz of a city around me. I lived in a tiny town in rural Ireland before and I was depressed and withering away. As I don't have a family I need more life around me than people who lock the front door at 6pm and settle down with the family for the night. Good for them but I don't work like that.
And yes I work remote 80% of the time, the office is 20 mins on the subway away but I prefer home. Especially since we moved to this horrible hotdesking setup at the office. If I could get away with it I'd never go :)
Not everyone's preferences and needs are the same.
I've elicited some strong reactions here. The commenter I responded to said this:
> When I read the stories of big city lifestyles I'm amazed so many people opt-in to it. Traffic, noise, concrete everywhere. Yuck - but to each their own.
I was simply explaining some of _my_ reasons for opting in to it. It's a tangent from the original post, I realize. I could easily come up with reasons a person might enjoy a rural or small town lifestyle, but here I simply gave my reasons for enjoying the urban life I currently live, even though I too have the option of going the remote work route.
Maybe we could actually let people work remotely, and not waste billions of hours commuting. Then we could leave these fucking urban and suburban hellscapes, and go live somewhere with green grass, and trees, and mountains, and human-scale communities. Maybe people wouldn't be so neurotic.
Nope. The far out suburbs. If it wasn’t for my job being near a city, I’d have moved even farther to the rural boonies. Now that remote work is getting normalized it’s tempting. To me, the idea of a SFH in the city is nonsensical. The whole point is getting away from having people everywhere and having your own place you don’t have to share walls, sounds, and drama with strangers.
One of the major considerations for me when I bought was “how likely is it urban development will reach this far out in my lifetime?”
Even if proximity to work were to be completely irrelevant for everyone, a lot of people (most?) would want to be close to something, be it their hobbies, hospitals, restaurants or at the very least shops. If your hobby is growing groceries and something outdoorsy (including road/gravel/mountain cycling!) and don't mind doing big shops/having to drive when you open a drawer and you realize that you ran out of oregano, then living in an isolated area is a valid choice (despite it increasing your individualized carbon footprint; if you fly more than once a year then that will dwarf almost any other lifestyle choice you make on that front).
I live in a city despite working remotely since the pandemic started, not because of proximity to the offices I might have to go back to, but rather because I can walk a block to buy groceries. I know people that live <.5 mile away from a Safeway in the peninsula that drive there because the streets are not very pedestrian or cyclist friendly.
Many people simply spend the increases in their pay while fantasizing about what they don’t currently have.
Live in the country … “I need to be in the city where I can access more events and people to fulfill my life. The countryside is boring and making me feel x.” Live in the city … “I need to be in the country where I can have more solitude and enjoy nature to fulfill my life. The city is overstimulating and making me feel y.”
Some of us are nomadic by nature and simply want some place different every few years. Others want stability and remain in places for decades.
I used to fantasize about new places, expecting the change in environment alone to be impactful. Now I realize that changing locations will not by itself impact my life for the better, but the act of searching for a new home, discovering new places and meeting new people is exciting and invigorating.
Moving physical things sucks though, so minimizing physical possessions makes this lifestyle much smoother of course.
I don't think "city life" is popular with today's generation because it's close to work... I think it's because we value human contact and cultural diversity above acreage or square footage.
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