If you have a long, painful, soul-crushing commute, Tesla has a solution for you: Full Self-Driving (their autonomous, but still supervised, self-driving technology). And it makes sense that Tesla would position its product in this way. A great deal of our built environment (the vast majority of it in some geographies) has been designed around the car. We are dependent. And this is an obvious solution to its negatives.

To be clear, I'm excited about autonomy, which is why it's a frequent topic on this blog. But the urbanist in me can't help but think that positioning it in this way is in some ways a solution to the wrong problem. Here's an alternative solution: live and work in a walkable, transit-oriented community.

Imagine, for instance, pitching this Tesla positioning to a Tokyoite. Tokyo is reported to have the highest railway modal split in the world. According to some measurements, only something like 12% of trips in the city are done by car. So if you said, "FSD is the solution to your long and boring commute. Now you can just sit, relax, read a book, do work, or play on your phone!" it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine Tokyoites saying that they already do this on a train.

Of course, Tokyo is a unique place, and there are lots of car-dependent cities where there is simply no other practical option. I also recognize that housing attainability is a major driver of sprawl. In these cases, FSD represents a meaningful quality-of-life upgrade.

Again, I support this happening, but at the same time, I worry about it placating us into thinking that we've solved one of the major negatives of urban sprawl. Yes, you have to sit in a car for two hours each day, but now you're not actually driving. Isn't that, like, so much better? In a best-case scenario, we maintain the status quo when it comes to our built environment. And in the worst-case scenario, it leads to even more sprawl.

This is an open question that we have on this blog: To what extent will self-driving cars increase our willingness to commute? Historically, new mobility technologies have promoted urban sprawl because they allowed us to travel greater distances in the same amount of time. Consider streetcar suburbs and then our car-oriented suburbs.

A big part of the AV argument is not that they will solve traffic congestion (they won't); it's that they will make your commute suck a lot less, and in an even rosier scenario, become a kind of "third space" where people work, relax, or whatever. This, in turn, will make sprawl more widely palatable.

But the more I think about this, the less I believe it. Marchetti's Constant tells us that humans have generally maintained a consistent "time budget" for commuting irrespective of the technology being used. Will this time really be different?

On the flip side, there are many who would argue that urban sprawl is a natural market outcome. Not everyone wants the "utopian, socially-engineered dream" that urbanists and YIMBYs like me want. And this is a fair response. I believe in individual freedoms. Give people housing options (we're very bad at this) and let them choose where they want to live.

But we should acknowledge the tradeoffs. Traffic congestion is a clear byproduct of urban sprawl and land-use patterns that leave no other practical option for getting around. Complaining about traffic is complaining about sprawl. One more lane or cars that drive themselves have not been shown to change this relationship.

Sprawl also contributes to greater loneliness and declines in happiness. In 2000, Robert Putnam argued in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, that, roughly speaking, every 10 minutes of additional travel time leads to a 10% reduction in social connections. We spend less time with our families, friends, and communities.

There's little doubt that self-driving cars will make commutes more tolerable. But perhaps that's not ambitious enough.

Cover photo by HONG FENG on Unsplash

The fact that we still refer to things as pre- and post-COVID shows just how impactful this period of time was in our lives. What initially seemed like house arrest for only a few weeks ended up having a lasting impact. One of those impacts appears to be happiness. In a recent post by Aziz Sunderji, who is the author of Home Economics (you should subscribe), he shared this chart:

The data is taken from the General Social Survey. What it shows is the shift in the "very happy" group of Americans, and the ten demographic groups that experienced the biggest declines in reported happiness. Overall, the share of Americans reporting to be "very happy" has dropped from 29% before COVID (2016-18) to 22% in our post-COVID world (2022-24).

The biggest decline is among those who make the most money and were previously quite happy. Top earners went from 49% reporting they were "very happy" to 30%. On the other end of the spectrum, the unhappiest people moved the least. If you were unhappy before, chances are you have a similar level of unhappiness today. All of this is problematic.

This is an important societal problem to solve, and I'm not going to come close to doing that in today's pithy blog post. But I did want to point out two things (the latter of which is the key takeaway in Aziz's post).

First, I think it's important to note that at the top of this chart are those with "excellent health." The older I get, the more I have come to realize that the greatest luxury in life is our health. If you don't have your health, nothing else matters. This probably seems obvious, but it remains a real challenge in our increasingly sedentary world.

Second, Aziz notes that the groups that held up the best in terms of happiness all shared one trait: social connection. Interacting with other humans and your friends is good for your mental health!

Of course, the problem is that we are designing our cities and our economies in the opposite direction. Call it "sedentary isolation." AI is a powerful multiplier that allows us to do and produce more while we sit at our desks. And autonomous vehicles are in the process of making long, painful commutes more enjoyable. Now you have more time to sit and stare at a screen while a car drives you!

This is not to say that I'm against these new technologies. I'm not. But driving or not, I don't want to sit in an AV for hours each day. There are real individual and collective costs to social isolation and car-dependent land-use patterns. Let's not forget the simple merits of living in a walkable neighbourhood and socializing with friends, in person.

Cover photo by Ryan Searle on Unsplash

Chart from Aziz Sunderji, "The Great Happiness Compression," Home Economics.

If you have a long, painful, soul-crushing commute, Tesla has a solution for you: Full Self-Driving (their autonomous, but still supervised, self-driving technology). And it makes sense that Tesla would position its product in this way. A great deal of our built environment (the vast majority of it in some geographies) has been designed around the car. We are dependent. And this is an obvious solution to its negatives.

To be clear, I'm excited about autonomy, which is why it's a frequent topic on this blog. But the urbanist in me can't help but think that positioning it in this way is in some ways a solution to the wrong problem. Here's an alternative solution: live and work in a walkable, transit-oriented community.

Imagine, for instance, pitching this Tesla positioning to a Tokyoite. Tokyo is reported to have the highest railway modal split in the world. According to some measurements, only something like 12% of trips in the city are done by car. So if you said, "FSD is the solution to your long and boring commute. Now you can just sit, relax, read a book, do work, or play on your phone!" it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine Tokyoites saying that they already do this on a train.

Of course, Tokyo is a unique place, and there are lots of car-dependent cities where there is simply no other practical option. I also recognize that housing attainability is a major driver of sprawl. In these cases, FSD represents a meaningful quality-of-life upgrade.

Again, I support this happening, but at the same time, I worry about it placating us into thinking that we've solved one of the major negatives of urban sprawl. Yes, you have to sit in a car for two hours each day, but now you're not actually driving. Isn't that, like, so much better? In a best-case scenario, we maintain the status quo when it comes to our built environment. And in the worst-case scenario, it leads to even more sprawl.

This is an open question that we have on this blog: To what extent will self-driving cars increase our willingness to commute? Historically, new mobility technologies have promoted urban sprawl because they allowed us to travel greater distances in the same amount of time. Consider streetcar suburbs and then our car-oriented suburbs.

A big part of the AV argument is not that they will solve traffic congestion (they won't); it's that they will make your commute suck a lot less, and in an even rosier scenario, become a kind of "third space" where people work, relax, or whatever. This, in turn, will make sprawl more widely palatable.

But the more I think about this, the less I believe it. Marchetti's Constant tells us that humans have generally maintained a consistent "time budget" for commuting irrespective of the technology being used. Will this time really be different?

On the flip side, there are many who would argue that urban sprawl is a natural market outcome. Not everyone wants the "utopian, socially-engineered dream" that urbanists and YIMBYs like me want. And this is a fair response. I believe in individual freedoms. Give people housing options (we're very bad at this) and let them choose where they want to live.

But we should acknowledge the tradeoffs. Traffic congestion is a clear byproduct of urban sprawl and land-use patterns that leave no other practical option for getting around. Complaining about traffic is complaining about sprawl. One more lane or cars that drive themselves have not been shown to change this relationship.

Sprawl also contributes to greater loneliness and declines in happiness. In 2000, Robert Putnam argued in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, that, roughly speaking, every 10 minutes of additional travel time leads to a 10% reduction in social connections. We spend less time with our families, friends, and communities.

There's little doubt that self-driving cars will make commutes more tolerable. But perhaps that's not ambitious enough.

Cover photo by HONG FENG on Unsplash

The fact that we still refer to things as pre- and post-COVID shows just how impactful this period of time was in our lives. What initially seemed like house arrest for only a few weeks ended up having a lasting impact. One of those impacts appears to be happiness. In a recent post by Aziz Sunderji, who is the author of Home Economics (you should subscribe), he shared this chart:

The data is taken from the General Social Survey. What it shows is the shift in the "very happy" group of Americans, and the ten demographic groups that experienced the biggest declines in reported happiness. Overall, the share of Americans reporting to be "very happy" has dropped from 29% before COVID (2016-18) to 22% in our post-COVID world (2022-24).

The biggest decline is among those who make the most money and were previously quite happy. Top earners went from 49% reporting they were "very happy" to 30%. On the other end of the spectrum, the unhappiest people moved the least. If you were unhappy before, chances are you have a similar level of unhappiness today. All of this is problematic.

This is an important societal problem to solve, and I'm not going to come close to doing that in today's pithy blog post. But I did want to point out two things (the latter of which is the key takeaway in Aziz's post).

First, I think it's important to note that at the top of this chart are those with "excellent health." The older I get, the more I have come to realize that the greatest luxury in life is our health. If you don't have your health, nothing else matters. This probably seems obvious, but it remains a real challenge in our increasingly sedentary world.

Second, Aziz notes that the groups that held up the best in terms of happiness all shared one trait: social connection. Interacting with other humans and your friends is good for your mental health!

Of course, the problem is that we are designing our cities and our economies in the opposite direction. Call it "sedentary isolation." AI is a powerful multiplier that allows us to do and produce more while we sit at our desks. And autonomous vehicles are in the process of making long, painful commutes more enjoyable. Now you have more time to sit and stare at a screen while a car drives you!

This is not to say that I'm against these new technologies. I'm not. But driving or not, I don't want to sit in an AV for hours each day. There are real individual and collective costs to social isolation and car-dependent land-use patterns. Let's not forget the simple merits of living in a walkable neighbourhood and socializing with friends, in person.

Cover photo by Ryan Searle on Unsplash

Chart from Aziz Sunderji, "The Great Happiness Compression," Home Economics.