NewsFlash: Living Close To Work Not A Priority
Here's a shocker for you: most people in the Seattle area don't live all that close to where they work.
Despite the dramatic surge of new jobs in suburbia over the past three decades, most people in this and other metropolitan areas don't work in the same communities in which they live.It's a nice thought, isn't it? The truth is, I bet most people would still drive even if they lived less than two miles from work. People are just that attached to their cars. When it comes to the decision about where to live, I think "length of commute" is an mostly an afterthought. All the planning in the world is unlikely to change the perception that certain neighborhoods are "desirable," while others are what you settle for if you can't get into the nice places.
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A commute that crosses city limits isn't necessarily lengthy. Still, census estimates, based on information collected in 2000, help explain why traffic in the Central Puget Sound area can be such a mess.
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Seattle is one of just three cities and unincorporated "census designated places" in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties where a majority of residents live and work in the same community. The other two are military bases.
The geographic divide between home and work is most pronounced in bedroom communities where there simply aren't many jobs.
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In the 1980s, a concept called "jobs-housing balance" arose in urban-planning circles.
If government policies promoted building new houses, condos and apartments close to offices, stores and factories, the thinking went, people would commute shorter distances and be more likely to walk, bike or take the bus to work.
Traffic and air quality would improve. Energy consumption would plummet.
The census estimates for places like Redmond and Issaquah suggest "there are limits to that notion, and they should be recognized," says Dan Carlson, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs who studies transportation and land use.
Forget big freeways, bus frequency, and light rail. As long as people continue choosing to live far from where they work, we're going to have crappy traffic.
More thoughts at Seattle Bubble.
(Eric Pryne, Seattle Times, 07.22.2006)
4 comments:
I used to live and work on the same street in Bellevue. Man, I loved it. I bragged about it all the time. I didn't even own a car. But then I moved to a house in Renton. Why? Not because I wanted to live in Renton (who does?), but because I wanted to own a house, and I couldn't own one in Bellevue.
Now one of the reasons I was able to make the move is job permanency. The days of working at the big factory/corporation for 30 years is long gone. Heck my co-workers are amazed I kept my previous job for five years. The fact is many people don't know where they'll be working even three years from now; so it's impossible for them to plan to live/work in the same place. So it's hard to consider the commute since it might change in the near future. I think that's a factor that the planners never took into account.
I agree that people are attached to their cars but I also feel that alot of that is due to our non efficient mass transportation. If we had something in place as efficient as the New York Subway I feel alot more people would commute rather then drive. But at the moment our mass transportation is pretty slow and a hassle.
I think another big part of why so few people live and work in the same place is because people change jobs a lot more often than they used to. It's too hard to live near work when you're a contractor working in a new place every six months.
I want to live in Seattle... I'd love to work in Seattle, but the tech jobs are all on the eastside... I ain't movin to the burbs. So I commute from West Seattle to Snoqualmie every day. It's really not as bad as everyone thinks it should be.
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