Many people who have jobs in urban areas have to deal with long commutes on top of a standard work week.
I'm one of those rare people who will happily go to bed at 9 pm every night. My favorite job was when I teleworked from 6 AM - Noon. 30 hours a week, with no commute, and my choice of hours? It was heaven.
I worked at a job where a coworker of mine would commute 1.25-1.50 hours one way, every day. I’m not sure how he did it.
To get to work at 8am, he’d have to wake up at 6am, assuming he gets ready quickly. Then, after leaving at 5, he’d arrive home around 6:30. So all in all, about 4 hours of time to himself, assuming he didn’t work late. That’s a hell of a way to live.
in addition to that, in urban areas you have to deal with quiet hours usually being 11pm to 7am, and they're rarely respected. Hard to sleep in when the beeping backing trucks start at 6am and the jack hammers start at 6:30, and you can't do anything about the neighbors' subwoofer blasting at 11:30 so you can't go to bed early either.
You may find happiness living in a less dense environment. I live in a residential neighborhood among adults who seldom subwoof at any time, much less at midnight.
I was raised in the residential neighborhood of a suburb...unless you're in a village where your neighbor is 300 feet away, if it's not the subwoofer, it's the kids screaming around the pool. If it's not that, it's a new developer (housing crisis and call for density and all that) building a mid-rise after the "NIMBYs" "lost". Dense or not, short of living with the wolves, it's basically just dumb luck/bad luck if you're in a quiet environment or not, because the laws are not on your side and it just takes a single asshole to ruin it for everyone.
I spent years looking for the "ideal" spot, and an absolutely ridiculous amount of money to obtain it, and 6 months later zoning rules changed and screwed everything up. I've just learnt to live with earplugs, but not everyone can.
More importantly, to house everyone efficiently, we need high density areas. If we must put a lot of people so close to each other, AND we agree that sleep is critical to one's health, we should treat it the same way as we deal with drinking water rules, fire safety, health code, etc. The laws should reflect and be enforced to match how important it is.
Step 1: While the existing laws and ordinance suck, they're better than nothing. Let just starts by enforcing them. No one's fundamental rights are harmed if you get in trouble for driving an 18 wheeler backward in a residential zone at 4 in the morning.
I'm one of those rare people who will happily go to bed at 9 pm every night. My favorite job was when I teleworked from 6 AM - Noon. 30 hours a week, with no commute, and my choice of hours? It was heaven.