I have a 1-hour each way commute when I have to go to the office. I would love to live closer to the city centre, but the cost is extremely high for houses, so I would need to move to an apartment... I used to do that but decided that the feeling of having your own house and being able to walk outside on the grass and enjoy the weather (when it's a nice day), not to mention the silence at night and even during the day, are much more important to me. Living in an apartment felt like living in a jail to me.

With the pandemic I've been enjoying being at home so much. If they force me to go back to commute I will look for another job.

It depends on the nature of the commute. I've had a commute that was an hour each way, and that worked extremely well for me because the first half was by train, which is fairly low-stress and can be part of a relaxing morning routine (breakfast / coffee / reading the news), and the second half was by bicycle over quiet bike paths, which was important daily exercise that I would have to do anyway one way or another and also woke me up. The only part of the arrangement I disliked was the expense of the train fare.

Commute time doesn't have to be wasted time.

Unless there are an equal number of housing units to office seats in a particular region of a city, by the pigeonhole principle, it's not possible for everyone to just live where they work. Also working spouses and other cohabitants can't always just work in exactly the same place.

Your suggestion works for exactly one type of person, who has enough resources to outbid others for housing and either lives alone or has a non-working spouse.

I have regularly had 2-3h (each way) commutes. It's not because I couldn't change, but because I actively enjoyed the travel each day. Dedicated, no interruption thinking space, and a clear buffer between the stress of work and my home life.