Kinda tangential to the thread, but interesting (I hope).
During retirement, my Dad got interested in an affordable housing experiment. With lots of time on his hands, he decided to buy a rundown shack and try to renovate it. “Rundown” means rotting walls, leaking roof, rats, and in general, not even suited to be a crack den. At purchase, the floor level differed by almost a foot from front to back of the structure. His goal was to use only junk or castoff materials picked either up as construction detritus, from the dump, or in some cases garage sales. He set himself a rule of never purchasing anything new for the house. He kept a spiral notebook from day one, and has written down every purchase.
His goal was a heated and air conditioned space, with plumbing (and sewer of course). He didn’t spend much time on frills, he just made everything work. He spent about 5 years on it as a sort of part-time hobby, and ended up with some really innovative solutions. As an example, he found a thrown away (large) piece of linoleum flooring at a remodeling site. He built a framework out of 2X4 and folded this piece into a usable shower stall. It actually looks pretty good. Another find was some garage door sections being tossed out, he managed to find two matching sections (the type with windows in them) and used them as windows in one section. The toilet, cabinets, kitchen sink, and even the water heater were found as junk and reconditioned to working order.
Other than fasteners and some pvc pipe, the only thing he bought new was two window airconditioners.
It’s kinda interesting (to me anyway). It ended up being about 1600 sq ft, 1 main bedroom and a sort of bunkroom (where kids would stay) and a combination kitchen - living room. After some serious painting, most of the old stuff looks pretty good. The total price (including 1/3 acre of land) was just under $16,000.
And there’s the problem. We don’t need to worry about whether we can afford to do this, or whether we are able to do this. We can, and we can. The problem is that most people who can afford something better will avoid these sort of accommodations. There is no crying need for human termite mounds. So if we DID build the things, people would avoid living in them, unless they literally had no other choices available. And short of a totalitarian society, there WOULD be other places to live.
When my husband and I bought our house a year ago, there were plenty to choose from. Would you demolish all the old houses? Our new house is 50 years old, but it’s still very suitable for living in. There are two humans and four cats who live here…in a three bedroom, two bathroom house. My husband and I sleep in separate bedrooms, because of various issues (snoring and odd sleep schedules for the most part), and our daughter uses the third bedroom when she visits. When she’s not visiting, the third bedroom is used as a day room by both of us, and it’s also where I have one of my game consoles set up.
I imagine that we could probably house a dozen people in this place, assuming that we could stick some people in the den and living room, but it wouldn’t be comfortable for any of those 12. And that’s the main argument against tiny living spaces…they aren’t comfortable. It’s possible for people to get a single room in a big house, and share the kitchen and bathrooms, but it’s not a good longterm living situation. College students do it because they pretty much have to. But they generally don’t like it.
I could see this sort of thing working for housing prisoners. But prisoners generally don’t get a choice in housing…which brings us right back to the basic problem, which is that most people would prefer to live in roomier places.
Something else occurs to me. People in such crowded conditions would be at an increased risk of TB and other highly contagious diseases…which means that this sort of thing might bring about increased medical costs, thus offsetting any putative savings.
And if such a place gets built, but nobody wants to live in it, does it really save any money? You’ll have a mostly empty building.
I don’t get it why everyone thinks these places will be like a jail.
I understand a lot about the way people would like to live.
People right now subjugate them selves to smaller living environments an actually pay for it.
Not to say these structures are better, i’m saying, that the rooms can be as big as needed.
Ideally, it would be for younger people, like students or loners, people who just want a place for their stuff and to not feel claustrophobic. That why i made the rooms as big as they were(151512 feet). Most rooms people rent are not that big.
Now if you are talking about a family, they will need more room. They need a kitchen of their own, their own bathroom, and enough rooms to support their family.
But what about after all the kids leave to do their own thing. Even in a world with no jobs and just school, eventually kids grow into adults and want to start families or just get out and see the world on their own.
Isn’t the home the parents own now lost resources, because no body is using them to the designed capacity?
Couldn’t we just give the parents a smaller home and give the larger home to a new family who needs it?
It’s true, people like to have their freedom in the sense of having six cars and 8000 sq feet to themselves. Everybody is always trying to get bigger and better. Partly because we are human, and partly because that’t what we grow up around as children. We see a world were status makes you a better person. Where ethical conformity makes you likable. If you really believe a person needs that much to live like a king, your dead wrong.
this is also true,
my concern is not the need, but the desire of people who don’t have what you have. You were born in america, so you can have the option between 12 different houses. When was the last time any of you naysayers took a nap on the concrete? I bet NONE of you, because if you had, you wouldn’t be so optimistic about this economy. And I guess we are just so much better that the earth, we can live on it, but not in it. No matter how big it is, I guess and underground structures scare people.
Literally, Society is a mask that can be flung of in a moments notice. The Moment there isn’t enough FOOD, HOMES, WATER, and sometimes work, we become animals ready to kill to survive. Some people can them riots and they happen all the time. You tell your self that is not something you would every do. WAIT till you are tested, then get back to me. Only doing for yourself is what animals do. I thought we were people. why is it so hard to imagine something so far beyond greed and gluttony.
If that is all it takes to cast aside 200 years of advancement, why would we ever let ourselves be put in a position were anyone feels like they don’t have what they need to survive.
Its asking for disaster; it’s happened in the past and will happen again.
Personally, I would not destroy the resources we have unless they were too inefficient to keep going. A home is still a home and could be used by someone. But then equality comes into play. why does that guy get a nice room and I get this piece of crap. People will settle for whats available, especially if it’s to wait for something better. But it only goes so far before it becomes a waste of time. Whether we give every one a room a 2000 sq foot apartment with the works, there is enough room and resources to do it.
One day we will cross that bridge, and can be on the peoples terms, or could be on the corporations terms. Then it will really be a jail, because last time I checked, most workers are expendable and replaceable.
I’m sorry that everyone keeps thinking of the problems we have as people in the mind set of the ECONOMY. It really annoying. If any of you people who keep bringing it up actually did their homework, they would know that the FOUNDING FATHERS, the men who started the united states, DID NOT BELIEVE IN SUPPORTING AN ECONOMY like the one we have today. Actually, they did fight it and won 2 time, once when we separated from Britain and became the United States Of America, the other when Andrew Jackson Abolished Debt and made the debt free currency called the green back.
Then they died off, their safeguards failed, and now everyone actually believes we NEED the economy to function in this world.
I don’t have a problem with currency, But anyone can see that the economy we currently have is bad news and everything that supports it.
When was the last time you got a million dollars? I haven’t seen mine yet. The land of freedom, has become the Land to freely rip people of for everything the could of had.
Really cool and innovative, never thought of that. 5 years is quite a while if you need it in a hurry.
I think the problem is this: not everyone will want to live in the accommodation you’re describing, and the ones to which the individual accommodation units are best suited, are probably not people who will be happy assembled together in a massive pseudo-social cluster.
We have the resources to give everyone medical care. Like I said before, Money constricts anything that IS ACTUALLY HELPFUL.
If you didn’t have to worry about $200 fee just to be seen, or a $50 co-payment is you are lucky enough to have insurance that sorta covers the cost, You might just visit the doctor more often. leading to less spread of disease, earlier response to new disease, and complete prevention of diseases we have cure’s and vaccines for.
If money was not involved, we could possibly have many more people working on the prevention of disease and infection. It may JUST BE POSSIBLE that most diseases may just vanish if ALL PEOPLE lived a higher quality of life.
Ebola, One of the worst diseases ever, almost made its self the human extinction virus. It does what AIDS does in 5-10 years, in 2 weeks. It was highly contagions. Then it just disappeared as quickly as it came. Science didn’t do it, Luck made it go away.
Influenza, The last big virus to almost kill us all, never had a cure. It out grew humans and moved onto to other species. LUCK again.
Disease comes and goes, sometimes people get the crappy end of the stick. But in all reality, we are not in control of everything, all we can do it prepare and try our best to prevent these things from happening. Respond accordingly. Take action.
The way things are didn’t stop these problems before, what makes you think if Ebola come back more aggressive that our government and money are going to fix it?
They didn’t do it before, and they probably are not doing anything now, and when it happens again, hopefully luck is on our side again.
May I point out that the infrastructure of the US is crumbling. Water mains break with regularity because the damned things are 100 years old … electricity goes down at the drop of a treebranch because it is above ground. People have limited access to internet for either educational or recreational use, and in many areas there is oly expensive broadband access. School buildings are falling to pieces, or have minimal modern educational equipment.
Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot better to build an organized modern and fully equipped arcology than suffer a crumbling city zone?
Certainly the rich will live away from the arcology, the rich can do whatever they damned well want, they actually rarely interact with real people normally unless it is us serving them dinner or cleaning up their messes.
But look at Detroit, for an example. Acres after acres of empty rotting and neglected houses, crumbling roads, all that infrastructure that is deteriorating for lack of maintenance. Would it not be better to raze the empty areas, and off to one side create a brand new arcology, with modern schools, shops, churches/religious spaces of what the fuck name, office space, hospitals, integrated electrical and cable/internet runs, libraries and governmental spaces? Clean, rat and bug infestation free spaces with full bathrooms and kitchens with hot and cold running water? The people on the dole that live in the slums would love to be in a clean new apartment. You could make them all work cleaning and maintaining the arcology by rota for a ‘paycheck’ above the basic housing and dole. Get rid of the slums, run the bulldozers through , salvage the recyclables, plant it in grass and trees for carbon sequestration, raffle off allotment space for personal gardening spaces. Put up tennis courts, foot ball fields, picnic areas. Hell, somewhere in the arcology make some large cubical farms, and train people to be CS phone operators and see if you can get some companies to actually subscribe to the call center service. Maybe we can get some damned jobs back into the economy.
And that’s fine. I just don’t understand what it has to do with housing people in giant buildings. I mean there is a reason we build buildings the size we build them. Because with our given technology, that is the most efficient size to build them.
Yes and no. Look at the immensely tall crap that has gone up/is going up. Then look at the short, wide ones we have built.
Imagine the fun of turning the Pentagon into housing for all the politicians in the Congress and Senate, they could each have a lovely apartment and full office suite with no problem, they could eliminate all the need for per diems to buy and rent dwellings in a very expensive area, they wouldn’t need vehicles because the government can run shuttle busses to the house of legislature [which by the way would no longer be crushed for office space, because all the various reps and their staffs would be over at the pentagon] and think how easy the security would be … and plenty of surrounding parking for their staffs! hell, there is even a commissary and exchange unit in the pentagon for their shopping pleasure:D
Arcologies are not evil - though the US has bad memories of the huge blocks of Soviet era Soviet apartment buildings as huge grey masses of downtrodden humanity, or the tall anonymous glass blocks of american high rise apartments. They really aren’t, if you follow various links to arcologies they come in all sorts of forms.
If you can create a functioning community centered in an arcology instead of sprawled out with an ageing infrastructure, crumbling buildings and outdated actions, why not?
When it comes to disease control a lot of people aren’t doing their part, when you consider the current bunch of anti-vaccination freaks, and the religious zealots who claim that polio is a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Another difficulty is when people don’t get enough paid sick time at work. I can think of several times I’ve wanted to stay home but not had any days… unless I wanted to also lose a day’s pay.
Where does all the sewage go? Where does the trash go? Is there a recycling pickup? Why not have a bigger building if you already have1.5Km squared make it an even 3 or 4 KM squared to give everyone plenty of space and thick walls. Will there be parks, schools, shopping nearby? Are there jobs for everyone? Do the windows open? Where do people park their cars, motorcycles, bicycles and trucks?
If you ‘own’ the arcology you can make the entry/residence rules. Mandate vaccination, not a problem. If living in your arcology is desirable, you suck it up and like up for shots, if not - live elsewhere.
Not the problem of arcologies, blame the damned puritans who decided anything but hard work 7/365 is evil and a sin. I personally agree that the American employer needs to get their act in gear and realize that employees are not machines, need more base vacation[like 4 weeks to be on par with much of Europe] and a more sensible sick policy. I can remember when vacation time and sick time were 2 different things, and I can recall having a week of sick time and 3 weeks of vacation time.
Ah, now that is part of the arcology =) I base my arcology on Bucky Fuller’s Old Man River City. Say what you want about the guy, he could design well out of the box.
Since by definition an arcology is a giant human habitrail it is designed to support entire families and businesses in a manner that is conducive towards functionality. It is designed to have areas dedicated to residence, business, manufacturing, government and infrastructure. One can assume that within the arcology there will be public transportation so if there are personally owned vehicles they will be parked in an adjoining lot, or in an interior parking lot. Obviously there will be plumbing run to each unit - business, residential or governmental as will electricity, probably high speed cable internet and cable for entertainment. As with large apartment buildings, there will be made provision for trash and recyclable collection [I have lived in buildings with a trash chute door next to the elevator shaft. It would be easy enough to have 5 doors, organic, plastic, glass, metal and other.] If you will assume that the arcology was planned as an integrated project to replace for sake of argument Detroit [google map Vermont Alexandrine Park to find an area bracketed by 4 majorish expressways. I have no idea if this is one of the areas that is in need of replacement or not, I just picked it as an example. Plunk it down in the ass end of Kansas if it makes you happier.] you begin by bulldozing everything, removing the extant crumbling and outdated infrastructure and abate any leftover industrial crud. You start by putting in the base infrastructure of sewer and water, and make an arrangement for the proper septic treatment plant and incoming water treatment plant. Electricity will come into the arcology, perhaps in the form of a garbage burner plant to try and be as self sufficient as possible. Communications as well, cable, internet, landline phone, perhaps a cell repeater tower setup reflected internally. Going by Bucky’s city plan, it has a 300 meter circular city core of parkland, he put in a football type stadium. I would prefer to have more like a city park, with a small swimming pool, tennis court, basket ball court, and picnic type stuff. Next is a 300 meter wide central torus that I would make residential - at least on the upper levels. It is stepped balconies and residential units. Then is what he has labeled esplanade, which to my mind describes a central passageway that could have either a top level rail with elevators down to each level, or a base rail with elevators up to each level. Hell, make it a rolling walkway if that tickles your fancy. Then he has a 300 meter outer torus that is similar to the interior one, the stepped balconies look outwards. I would make that businesses, governmental, industrial and assorted [schools, hospital and such] A strength would be integrated fire detection and supression system [sprinkler system and smoke/heat detectors in each space.] as well as CC cameras in the public spaces. There would be a municipal police department, a municipal fire department, a maintenance crew, a utilities department. People could own frex a subway franchise and while they would be ‘issued’ an apartment space, would rent a business space for the subway and be free to employ however many people they need to run the business. There would be the ability to lease space for anything up to light industrial [or perhaps even medium, depending on what it is] It would be better IMHO that the arcology is actually just replacing an incorporated municipality as I think it would be better than a ‘company town’ and the community simply transfer all the extant businesses into the arcology, businesses, schools, offices, hospitals, libraries, government offices and all. Any lands in the original ‘land grant area’ outside the arcology can be landscaped and perhaps even small plots can be assigned for personal gardening - lots of people like ‘victory gardens’ instead of trying to container garden on a terrace. If you have plunked the arcology down in Kansas, if it is on a large enough land grant it could practice ‘corporate farming’ and have members of the population who’s job it is to tend the corporate farm outside, and other members have jobs in government, education, business and so forth in the arcology. If there are ‘welfare families’ then they get their basic dole of a residence, medical care, a food credit card that works like food stamps, education like normal. If they want to work for money to supplant their dole, they can sign up at the arcology work office, and get assigned shifts as needed to do basic stuff like sweep the halls, paint walls, work on a landscape maintenance crew, work in the babysitting creche taking care of kids of working parents, if they have the skills, be a temp worker pool for people who call out sick or on vacation.
Yes, I do see the government as having a social contract to support the population a bit more than it does now, but I also see a stronger set of responsibilities of the population towards the government and the rest of the community. I also feel that businesses have their heads up their respective asses - they are so concerned with an instant profit NOW that they forget that employees are not machines, and that you need adequate staffing with proper training, sensible hours and sensible policies. Currently they are so intent on making that instant profit they do not maintain adequate staffing, they do not allow enough vacation time, nor enough sick time. They allow the morons who insist ‘the customer is always right’ to abuse employees and commit fraud frequently. If you do not believe me, just read the posts on customers suck and my3cents.
Why yes, I do think that we should all obey the golden rule and try to not harsh anybody elses mellow. I try to like my fellow man, but dammit, they can make it so difficult
But people need security, comfort, belonging and feelings of control of their future. Without these you develop many other problems at an individual and group level. Individual health (depression, stress, anxiety, physical health) can be compromised; social structures are put under stress which cause violence and instability.
Oh … and where do my horses, dogs, cats & chickens get to live in your world?! Coz they aren’t going to fit in those boxes!!
Heinlein’s “I will fear no evil” (IIRC) has that kind of situation, with most people being “illits” (short for illiterate). Being illit is actually considered a bonus in a bodyguard, as they can be trusted to work as couriers where someone literate isn’t.
Most people who rent don’t rent a room in a hive. Every time I’ve rented a room, it was “with the right to use everything else which wasn’t someone else’s bedroom”, including gardens. Every time I’ve rented a room or a studio, it’s been in a city: I have a studio where the main room isn’t much bigger than you propose, but with its own kitchen and bathroom - and a 5’ walk from both El Retiro and Jardín Botánico. Your proposal has enough room to sleep in, but not enough room to live in.
I don’t think they are evil, just very institutional. Sort of like living in a giant shopping mall or cruise ship. I also think they are impractical unless integrated into a much larger, dense metropolitan area.
I also don’t believe you can effectively plan out a self contained city in a single structure like that. Most major cities develop organically to meet the diverse needs of it’s population. Arcologies litterally create a fixed box for people to live in. Their static nature limits their ability to adapt to growth and change.
People living in the arcology will get jobs outside (or in other arcologies elsewhere) and vice versa - creating a need to commute (one of the problems an arcology is supposed to fix) - unless you place constraints to prevent this happening, which will translate into a)unwillingness on the part of people to live in such job-restricted places and b)unwillingness on the part of corporations to reside in such workforce-restricted places.
Yeah, as an employer I did have employees accrue sick and vacation time separately…most of them HATED it. Those are the sick employees who begged to use vacation time to cover additional illnesses and the healthy employees who wanted to use sick time for an additional week of vacation.
So, I got my act in gear and let them accrue PTO time for their versatile lives and then everyone was happy. They accrue about 4 weeks per year total…I really can’t go more than that though, but I do honor unpaid FMLA laws that go beyond their accrued PTO time.
