30 minutes around you define your life

How much influence does your place of residence have on your life, career, and achievements? Much more than you might think.

It's not just about the apartment's price, square footage, or the neighborhood's prestige. It's about location. Where you live influences this:

• who you spend time with,

• how often do you leave the house,

• how much energy you have,

• what opportunities arise in your life,

• and even on your mental health.

And interestingly, many studies show that a huge part of this impact comes down to one simple limitation: people organize their lives around commute times.

Our brain thinks in 30 minutes for some reason

There is such a thing as the Marchetti Constant*.

It shows that people all over the world, regardless of era, culture, wealth or means of transport, organize their lives around a 30-minute one-way journey, meaning they are able to devote about an hour a day to commuting.

And no matter how we get around, it works everywhere: on foot, on horseback, by bicycle, by train, or by car. Faster transport only translates into a larger city area covered, but the travel time itself remains almost identical.

Moreover, people are gradually adapting their lifestyles to their circumstances so that average travel times remain more or less constant. This means that...

*It's called the Marchetti Constant, even though it was discovered in the 1970s by Yacov Zahavi, an engineer with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Fifteen years later, Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti described it in his work "Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behavior," which he widely popularized and ultimately took his name from. Which only goes to show that it's usually the popularizers, not the discoverers, who benefit most from discoveries. Right, Mr. Edison?

30 minutes around you define your life

If people naturally rely primarily on what's within a half-hour of their home, that has a crucial impact on their lives. Yours, too.

In just 30 minutes, you'll build relationships, meet business partners, go to training sessions, restaurants, meet friends, and attend events. There, you'll accidentally bump into the people who will define your life.

If you live near ambitious people, interesting companies, positive energy, events, sports, culture, or entrepreneurship, you'll benefit naturally. Without much effort. It will begin to permeate your daily life.

It's really brutally simple:

• You are using the potential of your 30-minute environment.

• If something is further away, it simply stops being part of your daily routine. Your brain will refocus.

This is why where you live is the silent architect of success or stagnation.

What if I have more than 30 minutes?

Even if theoretically you only have an hour to do something, psychologically things that are further away start to disappear.

An hour-long commute to something worthwhile sounds reasonable in theory. In practice, after a few months:

• you go out less often

• you meet new people less often

• you come across opportunities less often

• you will choose comfort and routine more often

• Your life will become more closed and predictable

And it's not laziness. It's just how humans work.

Research also shows that long commutes correlate with:

• higher levels of stress,

• lower life satisfaction,

• poorer mental health,

• less time for relationships and regeneration.

So where to live?

In an era of such advanced technology, it's easy to believe that location has ceased to matter in our lives - but economists have been studying the so-called "agglomeration effects" for years, which show the opposite.

The most productive and innovative places in the world still rely on the physical proximity of people. That's why, despite their high costs, large cities continue to attract ambitious people.

For this reason, it is worth consciously choosing your place of residence and asking yourself an uncomfortable question:

• Do I really need a bigger house 60 minutes away from the life I want to lead?

• Is it better to have a smaller apartment in the right place that will give you more options, relationships, mental health, energy and chances than a big house on the outskirts?

People often view real estate solely as a financial asset or a status symbol. However, a place of residence is, above all, a tool for designing everyday life. And everyday life shapes life.

If you want to grow your business, it's worth living near people you can learn from and create with. If you want to be healthier, it's worth living near places that support exercise and regeneration. If you want to build relationships, it's worth living where relationships form naturally.

The environment always influences people more than we realize. For thousands of years, cities have developed around this truth. Today, we are still subject to it, even if we no longer notice it.

----- HELLO CURIOUS NERDS -----

What should a city be like?

Aristotle answered the question 2,300 years ago in a surprisingly modern way.

According to him, the city should be:

1. Big enough to be self-sufficient,

2. At the same time, it is small enough for citizens to be able to actually participate in the life of the community.

.

This is no accident. Our brains evolved in a world of local communities. For most of human history, everything important was close: work, relationships, trade, knowledge, community, and threats. And this has been a constant for thousands of years:

This is why most pre-industrial cities could be traversed on foot in just a few dozen minutes. Historically, cities stopped growing when they reached the 30-minute travel limit.

But then things began to change. And probably not for the better.

Capitalism has changed the nature of cities

“Never before in recorded history had such vast masses of people lived in such savagely deteriorated environment, ugly in form, debased in content.”

Lewis Mumford

For thousands of years prior, cities grew slowly, according to geography and natural human needs.

In the 17th century, the explosion of maritime trade led to a massive concentration of wealth in Europe's port cities. Now, wealthy landowners began to buy vast tracts of land and develop them wholesale, ignoring all else but profit maximization. For the first time in history, the Marchetti constant began to be systematically violated.

Lewis Mumford summed it up brutally: “The nature and purpose of the city have been completely forgotten.”

Land speculation has worsened the situation

In the 19th century, land trading became more profitable than the trade that had previously fueled urban growth. People bought land solely to sell it at a higher price. Undeveloped land became worth 50-100 times more than it had been a century earlier. It was then that the word "millionaire" was coined, and it wasn't initially a compliment.

The problem was that housing prices rose faster than the quality of life. In the Middle Ages, housing accounted for about 10% of a worker's income, and food for about 50%. Therefore, even rising food prices sparked protests and was a factor leading to the French Revolution.

Industrialization lowered food prices, but at the same time land speculation drove up housing prices, and cities began to sprawl unchecked.

The industrial revolution did not help

The railway enabled cities to expand even further. The faster the transport, the further away they could live. This fueled a gigantic speculative boom.

Vast working-class neighborhoods sprang up, built at the lowest possible cost. Today, we would call them slums. They were cheap to build and extremely profitable. The problem was that after 20 years, they were often ready for demolition.

New districts often lacked access to clean water or sewage. Cholera and typhus killed thousands. Factories burned enormous amounts of coal. Soot covered residents' clothes, homes, water, and lungs.

New York is a good example, as shown by the mortality rates for children before their first birthday:

• In 1810 – 12%

• In 1850 – 18%

• In 1860 – 22%

• In 1870 – 24%

The city became wealthier than ever before, but it did so at the expense of the health and lives of ordinary people, despite the growth of technology and agricultural production.

Changes since the 19th century have brought enormous economic benefits and increased human mobility, but they have also led to current problems:

• long commutes,

• car dependence,

• social isolation,

• infrastructure overload,

• decline in spontaneous social interactions.

“In the interest of expansion, capitalism was prepared to destroy the most satisfactory social equilibrium. No matter how venerable these old uses might be, they would be sacrificed to financial gain.”

Lewis Mumford

Cities are man's greatest invention

Despite all their problems, cities remain the foundation of civilization. Thanks to them, we are now richer, healthier, and more developed than ever before.

But history shows something very important: A city only thrives when it remembers that it exists for people, not just for capital. When it forgets this, it begins to produce wealth at the expense of its residents' quality of life.

It is worth remembering one thing: the place where you live becomes the place you begin to become.

That is why contemporary urban planning is increasingly returning to the idea of the "15-minute city", i.e. one in which basic needs can be met close to home.

Sources:

• Marchetti, C. (1994). Anthropological Variants in Travel Behavior . International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Anthropological Variants in Travel Behavior

• Ye, R., De Vos, J., & Ma, L. (2022). The Effect of Commuting Time on Quality of Life: Evidence from China . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19 (24), 16911. The Effect of Commuting Time on Quality of Life: Evidence from China

• The City in History - Mumford, L. (1961). The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects . Harcourt, Brace & World.

• Triumph of the City - Glaeser, E. (2011). Triumph of the City . Penguin Press.