this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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A large surplus of housing, so one could change their surroundings on a whim, would be an ideal socialist future. Hostels are a type of communal pod system you are talking about.
I'm skeptical of abundance on a finite world nearing the limits of growth and being destroyed by climate change.
That said, pod hives could be easily established in any location. Want to live near a beach? Near a skiing slope? Near dense forest? Near downtown? There's pods for that!
Endlessly modular, extremely efficient, and using far fewer resources than fully private housing in all of these disparate locations.
Join us. Become a bug. Never be alone again!
A shitton of land is suburban wasteland and all the infrastructure to support it. Turf grass alone takes up 2% of all land in the US (from a quick search) and I imagine the stroads, strip malls, and single family homes with 3+ car garages take up another 3-5%. The problem has always been wasteful and destructive land use rather than scarcity. Imagine all the current suburbs as parks, farmland, or rewilded areas instead of ugly tract homes. I don't think infinite growth is possible or anything but cities should be looking to Shanghai and Tokyo as a blueprint.
It's also hilarious to me that NIMBYs are so opposed to any form of urbanization because "muh property value" when the highest property values are in the most urbanized, walkable places.
Bulldoze the suburbs, absolutely.
What NIMBYs are opposed to is their property values going down. They don't care that the value of a walkable urban forest is vastly higher than their 3bed 2bath 2car suburban box, because they won't be the owners of that urban property. They'll be re-proletarianized like the rest of us and rendered without property or investments - a fate worse than death!
What if I told you that we already have abundant housing, right now, as I type this out. And I'm not talking about our hotels, prisons, or "camp grounds", but actual livable units^1^. Enough to solve Homelessness in the US multiple times over^2^.
It simply is not evenly distributed yet
Oh I believe in seizing hotels for exactly this purpose.
^1^ Census on housing, table 3, Vacant Year Round - Held off Market: 6,812,000 units. This is nearly 5% of the entire US housing stock, and almost half of the Vacant year-round units.
^2^ Department of Housing and Urban Development homeless count in 2022: 582,462 people
We're also already destroying our biosphere and the tank of natural resources is running dry. This abundance is artificial, created by stealing from the future. It can not be sustained. We can't just seize the already existing infrastructure, a lot of this shit has to be torn down. Especially the 🤢 suburbs 🤮
A good compromise. I still favor actual hives, but yes, public hotel rooms would be a good halfway point between full apartments and bug pods.
It looks like you're talking past one another here. OF COURSE suburbs, golf courses, yachts, and other rich people bullshit needs to be bulldozed. Fuck that shit.
In a GOOD world—where everybody gets a nice apartment, all their basic needs met, and we've transitioned entirely to renewable energy—we'll be living lives of abundance, rather than scarcity.
Maybe I'm talking out my ass here, but in a world where the profit motive is gone, I cannot imagine we'd run into any hard limits on Earth for a long, long time.