2 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Zvi Mowshowitz's avatar

In my experience the problem has been a combination of the quirks of when people move, the availability of apartments and especially willingness to pay (in the context on NYC) that has kept me and my friends from coordinating better.

The thing about the 'be in the middle' theory is it's flat out wrong, as you observe - the utility of proximity is roughly an inverse square, so if there's two useful things A and B, the midpoint is actually the worst possible place to be, you want to be at A or B instead. So it takes a weird config combination of A+B+C to make picking such a point wrong.

Expand full comment
Ben Southwood's avatar

Interesting. Well, it would be amusing if my theory was completely wrong because of the point you make, and it would be delightful if it was as simple as making housing much more abundant.

Expand full comment