From OptimalHomeLocation.com…

• “Everywhere is walking distance, if you have the time”, comedian Steven Wright.
• Commuting to work has been reported to be the least enjoyable activity in the survey performed by Princeton scientists: Noble laureate professor Daniel Kahneman, economist Alan B. Krueger, David A. Schkade, Norbert Schwarz and Arthur A. Stone.
• “If we use an increase in our incomes…simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not tend to end up being any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods – such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job – then the evidence paints a very different picture.” says Robert H. Frank, economics professor at Cornell University..
• “You can’t adapt to commuting, because it’s entirely unpredictable. Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.” says Daniel Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness” and a psychology professor at Harvard University.
• “There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.” says Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist.
• “We find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being. If your trip is an hour each way, you’d have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as ‘satisfied’ with life as a noncommuter is…” from the article “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox” by Alois Stutzer and Bruno S. Frey, University of Basel and University of Zurich.
• Read New Yorker article about commuting There and back again by Nick Paumgarten.