The Geography of Desire

Privacy, Commute, and the Making of the Housing Crisis

The tension between the human desire for privacy and the desire to spend no more than 45 minutes commuting between home and work, has shaped our cities. We can see this tension playing out as we speak, with many developed countries in the midst of a housing crisis.^⁠¹ For many people the balance between an acceptable commute and a private place to rest is breaking down, creating obvious tensions in the community—between the NIMBYs and YIMBYs, between the renters and landlords, older homeowners and young adults trying to establish themselves.

Everyone seems to have identified what they see at the ‘cause’ of the crisis, with the debate in the media devolving into arguments over whose solution the government should adopt. The core problem, however, is that tension between a human desire for privacy, and the desire to spend no more than 45 minutes commuting. While many of the various prescriptions all have their merits^⁠²—from encouraging more building, relaxing zoning, modernising construction methods, and so on—these are all necessary but not sufficient solutions.

Zoning reform can make it easier to build and so encourage more experimentation in how we use the space we have, and removing zoning restrictions will lead to a surge in building, but the resulting density will still be constrained by cultural preferences for privacy. The question isn’t whether we’ll get more housing, but what kind of density people will tolerate. Will we see Paris-style mid-rise developments, or Hong Kong-style micro-apartments? Given Western preferences for space, it’s likely the former rather than the latter. That means zoning reform can alleviate the crisis to some extent, but it won’t eliminate the underlying tension between our need for privacy and our commuting limits.

Cities that have aggressively pursued up-zoning, such as Tokyo, have seen improved affordability, but these policies work best when they align with cultural norms around privacy. Similarly, cheaper construction methods can make housing more affordable, but they don't resolve the competition for well-located land. These interventions can reduce costs while improving quality and speeding development, but neither fundamentally alters the underlying pressures that drive housing crises.

Similarly, financialization of housing, rent-seeking behaviour, and restrictive land-use policies have exacerbated the problem, making housing even less affordable. However, these factors operate on top of an underlying demand for land that is shaped by the fundamental tension between privacy and commuting constraints. Without this demand, speculative investment in housing wouldn’t be as profitable, and restrictive zoning wouldn’t be as politically charged.

Addressing these issues might provide temporary relief, but they don’t resolve the core pressures driving housing crises in major cities. Unless we deal with the core tension between privacy and commuting constraints, we can only delay rather than resolve the crisis.

It’s not the first time we’ve been here. If we look back through history then we can see many housing crises. Most of these are associated with an extrinsic event, such as war, natural disaster, or financial collapse. One crises stands out, however, providing us with lessons for the present day—the housing crisis created by the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s.

Just as in the current crisis, the Industrial Revolution resulted in too many people unable to balance the desire for privacy with an acceptable commute. Society was in transition from a system where most people worked from home—such as in farming or manufacturing under the putting-out system—to one where workers left the home for a workplace. Given the desire for an acceptable commute, this mean living within walking distance of the workplace as everyone—from the boss and most senior managers to the lowest workers—walked to work.

We can see this in the urban landscape that developed during this time. The well-off built big houses on wide tree-lined streets, while the less-well-off crowded into smaller homes down the lanes or alleys. Or the rich lived in spacious and well-appointed rooms on the ground flood, the middle class in more modest rooms one floor up, and the poor were in the attic where they had to deal with multiple flights of stairs. (It’s important to remember that homemakers of the era spent 50–60% of their time on physically demanding tasks like hauling water, carrying fuel—coal, wood—and removing waste (ashes, chamber pots, etc.)³ The result was crowded, dirty cities with horse manure covering the streets and the poor crowded into tenements where the building consumed 90% of the available land. One survey in 1907 reported that 60 percent of these households had at least one room that was was ‘dark’ (windowless).⁴ All of this was driven by the desire to have a reasonable walk between work and home.

The congestion and filth in cities drove an affluent flight to the periphery. Early public transport (first steam ferries, then trains, trams, and so on) enabled those could afford it to commute, and commuter towns started to spring up along ferry and train routes. This didn’t solve the housing crises though, as only the affluent could afford to commute—public transport wasn’t cheap. Indeed, commuter towns developed the same landscape as the city the affluent were fleeing from—while the head of the household commuted, the household and the trades and merchants it dealt with still walked to fulfil their needs.

The eventual solution to the housing crises was the motor car, in particular the Model T (dropping price by a factor of four in 20 years). The motor car enabled private point-to-point transport—suddenly all the land around the city between the public transport routes was available as a worker could commute from home to work within a 45 minute radius. This massively increased the accessible land supply, more people could find a balance between private space and comfortable commute, and tensions eased. The landscape of cities also started evolving differently. The motor car didn’t create the modern suburb—a place where families in similar socio-economic cluster—but it did facilitate our desire for privacy and space to express itself in the urban landscape.⁵

We have a similar problem today. Our underly desire to spend no more than 45 minutes travelling between home and work means that we're clustering in a small number of large and increasingly congested cities. This is conflicting with our desire (in the West) for space to provide privacy, creating tensions. Proposed solutions like relaxing zoning (i.e. densification), modern methods of construction, etc.) won't solve the problem—they’ll only alleviate it, kicking the can a little way down the road.

The cities we live in today are deeply shaped by the urban patterns established in the past—patterns that were influenced by the transportation technologies and cultural preferences of the time. Once patterns of development are established they become difficult to change, even when newer solutions or technologies emerge. Early urbanisation, for example, was constrained by walking distances and later by the availability of mass transit and, eventually, the automobile. As a result, the sprawling, car-centric suburbs we see today are the legacy of earlier decisions around transportation and land use.

These physical and cultural structures continue to shape urban life. When we talk about solutions to the housing crisis, it’s crucial to understand that these urban forms—shaped by the car, by trains, and by zoning laws—have locked in patterns that are not easily undone by simply relaxing zoning or modernising construction techniques. What we consider ‘affordable housing’ today is often constrained by where people can live, which is dictated by infrastructure that was designed before these constraints were fully understood.

If we look at the history of technology and society, we see a punctuated equilibrium: long periods of incremental change, interrupted by sudden shifts when we reorganise to realise more value. Each reorganisation is associated with relaxing a constraint. The motor car relaxed the constraint of (compressed) time and space by enabling one to travel much faster than walking pace with minimal effort. (Similarly, innovations in how we managed moving cargo between ship and truck, compressed time and space, enabled the development of the global multi-modal container network, triggering a new wave of globalisation, but that's another story.) If we want to ‘solve’ the housing crises then we need to find a way past our two constraints: this desire for privacy, and the design to spend less that 45 minutes commuting.

In Western cultures, privacy is closely tied to the physical space one occupies. Privacy is provide space: the deep back yard (with no overlooking appartments), a quiet cull-de-sac, sprawling yards, fences, and detached homes. Space creates a buffer between individuals, allowing them to retreat into their private sanctuaries. The ideal in the West often revolves around the notion that privacy is best protected through distance—both literal and metaphorical—from others. Cities evolved in-line with these values, with zoning laws reinforcing low-density, single-family homes. But in the face of growing populations and limited space, these designs become increasingly unsustainable. High-density housing solutions, like micro-apartments or high-rise buildings, struggle to gain acceptance because they challenge the Western ideal that privacy can only be secured through space. This clash between limited urban space and the desire for privacy plays out in the ongoing debates around affordable housing.

Japan has been held out as a country to emulate, a country that seems to have avoided the housing crisis. The reason is obvious when we view Japan through our two-constraint lens, as Japanese as a very different approach to privacy. For Japan, privacy is a design problem, rather than via physical separation. Social dynamics and behavioural norms are used to provide privacy. This is a more fluid, structured around maintaining social harmony (known as wa) and mutual respect for others' personal boundaries. Privacy, in this context, is less about monopolising a large physical space and more about how individuals navigate close proximity to each other through etiquette and respect. This allows for smaller, more compact living spaces to coexist with a high level of personal autonomy. Urban planning in Japan reflects this shift. Residential spaces in cities like Tokyo are often smaller than their Western counterparts, but they are designed with a focus on efficient use of space—think sliding doors, multifunctional rooms, and hidden storage solutions. These design strategies maximise the use of available space while maintaining a sense of privacy. Japan's social customs, such as maintaining quietness in public spaces and avoiding physical intrusion, foster an environment where even in densely populated areas, people can feel a sense of personal space and respect. This cultural orientation toward privacy as a design problem—rather than one solved purely by physical distance—enables Japan to manage high-density living arrangements effectively. In Japanese cities, people are able to live closer together without sacrificing their need for privacy because the emphasis is on respecting others' personal boundaries through behaviour.

Emulating the explicit aspects of Japanese culture, such as the approach to zoning, will help, but it is the implicit, cultural aspects that enable Japan to find a balance between the desire for privacy and a desire for a manageable commute. Japanese zoning laws that encourage compact living are deeply connected to a cultural emphasis on social respect and personal boundaries. Similarly, many commentators have also looked to Europe’s high-density, walkable neighbourhoods for inspiration. However, it’s important to acknowledge that the structure of cities is deeply shaped by the transportation technologies available when they were developed, and many of these walkable neighbourhoods exist because they were developed before the automobile, when pedestrians and public transport were the only option. Newer developments, by contrast, tend to mirror the car-centric suburban model found in the U.S., shaped by the tension between a desire for privacy vis space and a manageable commute. This path dependence means that simply adopting Japan’s zoning policies won’t necessarily create the same urban dynamics—Western cities were built with a different underlying logic and set of norms. If these cultural norms are not addressed, efforts to densify Western cities may face resistance, even if zoning reforms are implemented. Simply importing these zoning policies into Western cities without also shifting cultural attitudes may not yield the same positive outcomes. Western societies would need to embrace the idea that privacy is not purely a matter of physical space but can also be negotiated through social behaviours.

Our other option is to find a way to compress time-and-space. The Star Trek transporter would be greatly appreciated, as one could live anywhere and have a near-instantaneous commute to work. Unfortunately that looks unlikely. The motor car revolutionised urban mobility by compressing time and space, enabling people to live farther from work without sacrificing their desired commute. It was, however, a one-time solution^⁠⁶—electric cars a nice, but are not materially different from those with an internal combustion engine in terms of commuting, while autonomous cars have the potential to drive congestion up rather than improve it as they put non-drivers (such as children) into single-person vehicles. (Autonomous buses are different, as they reduce costs and so enable us to improve public transport coverage, which could encourage ridership.) Similarly, many people find micro-mobility convenient, but as a technology it doesn’t have the potency to ‘solve’ the housing crisis. Some advocate for high-speed rail as a way to ease housing pressures by allowing workers to live farther from job centres. While this can help with occasional travel—enabling workers to live remotely and visit the office less frequently—it does not solve the daily commute problem. High-speed rail connects cities rather than integrating suburban areas into a metro region, meaning it won’t provide the flexibility and convenience that a true commuting solution requires. There's nothing we can see in the future that has the potential to have a similar affect on society as the motor car.

Another approach to compressing time and space is to loosen the tie between work and (physical) workplace. One lesson from the global pandemic that we seem reluctant to learn is that when you make the work digital, you open up a plethora of new possibilities for work practices. Framing it as the work-from-home vs work-from-work dichotomy is missing the point.^⁠⁷ If we view work as digital rather than physical—a change in work media rather than place—then we have an opportunity to make work more convenient and more productive. We only need to look at trends such as remote mining ops to see that this is much broader than email workers learning to make sourdough bread. Industries like mining, logistics, and even healthcare are increasingly finding ways to digitise or remotely manage physical tasks. There will likely always be some work that requires a physical presence—somewhere work—but many jobs may well be anywhere jobs. Similarly, some activities—such as monthly team meetings—might be better conducted face-to-face, not necessarily because its more productive, but as there’s something about interacting face-to-face that turbo charges team and relationship building. The expansion of telemedicine, the use of drones for infrastructure inspections, and the automation of warehouse operations all suggest that the boundary between ‘somewhere work’ and ‘anywhere work’ is more fluid than we assume. Regardless, loosening the tie between work and (physical) workplace requires us to discover new work practices—it’s not something we can simply design.

Unfortunately both of these shifts—approach privacy as a ‘design’ problem, or loosening the tie between work and (physical) workplace—involve culture change, though the latter is probably a lot easier than the former. The question is then: which is the preferable and more practical path forward? While both the rethinking of urban design and the transformation of the workplace could evolve in parallel, the latter—workplace transformation—appears to be the more achievable solution in the near term. The workplace transformation is enabled by advances in digital technology, and we can see work practices evolving in response. Industries ranging from tech to healthcare are already experimenting with hybrid or entirely remote models, offering a promising path to reduce the strain on housing markets by decentralising work. In contrast, urban redesign involves deeper cultural shifts and requires large-scale infrastructure changes, which may take much longer to realise. Both are important, but focusing on workplace transformation offers a more immediate opportunity to alleviate some of the pressures on housing and commuting.

The root of the housing crisis lies not just in zoning laws or the price of land but in the deep-seated cultural assumptions about privacy and the role of space in providing it, interacting with the need for a reasonable commute. While we can’t predict the future, we can predict that the current fracturing will worsen until we either arrive at crisis (and the problem becomes an extrinsic force), or until the problems drive firms and other institutions to innovate and find a solution and path forward.

1. Kohler, Alan. “The Housing Crisis Is Global. What Are Other Countries Doing about It?” The Guardian, September 28, 2024, sec. Books. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/28/the-housing-crisis-is-global-what-are-other-countries-doing-about-it.

2. Let’s not talk about rent control, or making mortgages even longer.

3. Gordon, Robert J. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

4. Ibid.

5. LA makes sense when you understand the underlying drivers and context.

6. Gordon, Robert J. The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

7. Evans-Greenwood, Peter, Alex Bennett, and Sue Solly. “Negotiating the Digital-Ready Organization.” Deloitte Insights, March 30, 2022. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/digital-ready-work-ecosystem.html.