@BrentToderian isn't this more the fault of centralised and capitalised cities?

In the rush to skeletisation most companies eschewed office distribution and networks. There was a movement for decentralization in the 80s that went missing in the 90s & 00s E.g Silicon valley. Globalisation and specifically outsourcing just ignored everything except highly populated cities and massive urban sprawls.

Globalisation put entire world regions and multinational corporations under the thumb of individually sprawling mega cities. I live in a regional city which never sees any offers from swathes of advanced industries. Blaming suburbs for commutes potentially ignores the fact suburbs become a crutch for narcissistic business models as employed by megacorps.

A bit like calling a normal model overweight because supermodels obey chronic beauty standards in their industry. It's a radicalisation of who they are to begin with.

There were years where the exodus from regional factories just dished people up on a platter to major cities that consumed population growth as a power grab.

(No expert. Only remembering the big changes.)

@BrentToderian when I tell people at work that I bike in every day, the response is often "I wish I could do that"

Housing isn't so bad here, but I normally bite my tongue rather than retort "you could, but you chose not to buy living 30+ min away by car"

@BrentToderian There are certainly parts of this that ring true: choosing to work in a large city and living far from it & commuting by car being the main one.

Other than that, this is short-sighted, linear, and incomplete.

Both #Cities and #NationStates need #systemic makeovers in the new era. Their reasons for existence have mostly evaporated, and they continue to generate massive negative externalities, like concentrated #pollution, #inequality, and excessive transportation (while externalizing other negative consequences out beyond their borders, escaping consequence and social measure of their insatiable nature).

City-dominating #Corporations and their wealthy benefactors are but a tiny % of society, and do not distribute the gains they extract from the world. Their surplus wealth & power also raise the entry barriers high enough to prevent real competition by alternatives; only like-wise extractors can keep up the #unsustainable pace.

Apologists will continue to spin myths around "advantages" of cities, ignoring their caustic, imbalanced ratios that destroy so much of #community-based organization & the limits of local realism, in favor of the endless expanding financialization of market-based social organization.

The planetary #polycrisis demand moving in the opposite direction of concentrated populations living far from their resource demands and means of balance.