Some countries have really high housing prices and housing scarcity right on a border with another country where this isn't the case. You can get 30-40% differences just by moving a few km on the borders of the Netherlands. The reason this isn't that popular is that by moving like that you get to deal with different jurisdictions and tax systems. Particularly the social systems different countries have are very different. So there's a cost to moving to another country. But it sure is tempting when you realize that what you paid for a small apartment buys you a large house with a garden just 10 km away.

Here in Berlin where I currently live the population grows by a out 50K people a year. There are housing shortages and people are struggling to find a place to live.

However the surrounding Brandenburg area has been depopulating since the wall fell. Lots of little ghost towns there. And it's not even that far. There's plenty of housing available if you can tolerate the inconvenience of a shitty commute.

IMHO the coming revolution of autonomous driving is going to lower the cost and inconvenience of living a bit further away. It enables working or relaxing while you commute. A two hour commute is much less of a problem if you can be a bit productive. And of course you don't have to do that everyday. Lots of people work remotely some or all of the time.

Autonomous driving could also lower the cost of public transport by eliminating the cost of drivers and fossil fuels. Most of the reason of remote villages being underserved by public transport is cost. On demand pickups/dropoffs and more flexible scheduling could further address that. And it's a lot cheaper than commuter rail extensions.

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gfrecvh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There's plenty of housing available if you can tolerate the inconvenience of a shitty commute.

I would rather pay for the better location than pay for the larger house. The physical size of my home isn't a large factor in my quality of life. The length of my commute is. Now I was going to write "It's really weird to me this isn't a more mainstream view", but given the data we're looking at, seems this view is absolutely the mainstream.

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bonesss 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Longer commutes aren’t just about work, and that time in the car is not free. Kids, kids sports, kids social lives, and kids schooling can leave people trapped in their cars day in and day out trying to reconcile modern urban socialization expectations and the lower property prices they enjoy because of the minor impracticality.

In my specific area the housing price reduction of moving out of the city balances out quickly by the need for a car and/or a second car (our cheap tiny EV works fine for short commutes), particularly if you compare the relative interest rates. I imagine market forces make it so, the financial tradeoffs are reflected in the pricing.

Further: as the only available housing at a low price point collects in smaller towns the impact of borderline purchasers becomes more pronounced. As neighbours I don’t care, but as a parent who has seen kids get an unfortunate personality remodel from a near-peer bad influences and listened to the experiences of my parent friends who live out of town… the contemporary local culture needs to be considered. It’s not necessarily the cozy small town upbringing we expected in olden days, there has been generational turnover.

	▲	gfrecvh 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> parent who has seen kids get an unfortunate personality remodel from a near-peer bad influences Scary stuff, I would love to hear more. May I ask what country is this?

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retired 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For most people the size of their home reflects the quality of life. Having separate bedrooms for all children, having a room dedicated to a home office, having an outdoor space to relax, having a dedicated EV charger, having a second bathroom to make the morning more streamlined. To a certain point a large house makes life better. So I understand having a 50 minute commute if that means everything in the house is a better experience.

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Towaway69 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It enables working or relaxing while you commute

If everyone is on the road, be it "autonomous" or not, then the net result will be traffic jams. It sounds so idyllic if it's only me but it won't be.

Make public transport more attractive and it could be doable. After all, Europe has spent the last X years trying to get people to use bikes and public transport instead of clogging up roads.

> eliminating the cost of drivers and fossil fuels

By that time, we'll be on fission fuel ... it's just around the corner!

	▲	jillesvangurp 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You can get an EV right now and if you have a house in the country side, you can power it almost exclusively using solar power. That would be fusion power from the big fusion reactor in the sky. We've had fission power for about 80 years already. I actually called out public transport as part of the solution. Autonomous driving makes small buses for uneconomical, remote destinations more feasible. Even just a shuttle to a commuter rail way station would be helpful. The challenge is that these remote areas are depopulating because you can't easily get there. Public transport is amazing but not when it means waiting for a bus for 2 hours that may be delayed by another hour or be cancelled entirely. One plus side of the countryside: not a whole lot of traffic jams there.

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simongray 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> A two hour commute is much less of a problem if you can be a bit productive.

A two hour commute sounds absolutely unbearable to my ears. I guess it makes sense if you are able work for 4 hours daily inside a train or something, but that's already half of the workday, i.e. you might as well just work from home.

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ghaff 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I had about a 90 minute commute--each way--for about 18 months. Trust me; it's not nirvana even if it was by rail/subway except for about a 7 minute drive to the station. Wasn't sustainable long-term--which dot-bomb ensured it wasn't. Latterly, I was about 2 hours each way to go into our city office which I really didn't enjoy doing.

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mjr00 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you could reliably work from your autonomous vehicle for two hours you might be able to include that as part of your work day, e.g. 2 hours working on the ride in, 4 hours in the office, 2 hours on the ride home for the full 8 hours. If not, you could fall asleep in the backseat, watch some TV shows, or... you know. Just make sure your windows are tinted. In any case, I'd definitely take a 2 hour "do whatever in the backseat" commute over an hour-long "pay attention to the road at all times" commute.

This is all predicated on true autonomous vehicles though, not the half-baked non-solutions that exist today.

	▲	keiferski 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t agree at all. A train ride is not that different from what you’re suggesting a self-driving car will be… and I certainly wouldn’t want to spend 4 hours a day sitting in a vehicle. Even if it was my own first class seat, or even an entire train car.

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danaris 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> the coming revolution of autonomous driving

...is going to take another 20-30 years, if it arrives at all.

It's become very clear in the years since the promise of "self-driving cars in six months!" failed to materialise that the level of computer vision and processing required to operate self-driving cars on arbitrary roads (as in, not in very specific areas in the American Southwest, where the weather is very consistent) is much, much higher than we thought.

Until we can be pretty damn well guaranteed that a self-driving tractor trailer is not going to see a road under construction and either continue going straight through—killing lots of construction workers, and possibly causing a massive explosion if it's carrying fossil fuels—or swerve off the road into someone's house, no matter how poorly the correct lane to drive in is marked...

And that self-driving vehicles will be able to keep in lane at least as well as humans can when there's 8cm of snow on the roads...

We're going to need to accept that the answer to "shitty commute" has to be public transport, or remote work.