> "By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work."
Must be specific to your suburb. I can look out the window of my downtown Seattle office straight into the windows of the condo complex across the street. As for the suburbs, having passed by innumerable times, the north edge of Microsoft's main campus is directly across the street from apartments and rowhomes.
I was wondering if someone would mention Microsoft in a reply.
Yes, there are apartments near there, but Redmond has the same failing as most other suburbs in the area: housing stock woefully inadequate for the number of people working there, and ordinances that artificially restrict building any more. Microsoft's campus is also adjacent to the Bellevue city limits, where residents on the other side of Bel-Red have fought vociferously against new housing for decades.
Meanwhile, SR 520 is a mess all the way back to the 405 interchange (and beyond, some mornings). After the much-vaunted light rail arrives, that station will serve fewer residences than the one in Angle Lake.
My point is that lots of people just throw out "well, live near where you work" as a panacea to life's commuting and office ills. Under our current idea of what counts as zoning and land use, it's not possible for any more than a small sliver of people to do that. So we have a choice: change how we do land use, change how we work with offices, or both.
Must be specific to your suburb. I can look out the window of my downtown Seattle office straight into the windows of the condo complex across the street. As for the suburbs, having passed by innumerable times, the north edge of Microsoft's main campus is directly across the street from apartments and rowhomes.