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If only there was a way to make living within a city less important. There must be some way to move large numbers of people over "great distances" (50-100 mile
by melling 10y ago
If only there was a way to make living within a city less important.
There must be some way to move large numbers of people over "great distances" (50-100 miles) in a more commutable time.
- chadgeidel 10y agoNot sure if you are being sarcastic. The buyers driving up prices don't live in London. From the article: "Today, 60 percent of properties for sale in this part of London go to international buyers."
- maxxxxx 10y agoI think his point is that if commutes were quicker then regular people could move away from the city but still work there. Billionaires could still sell real estate to each other then without hurting lower incomes.
- chadgeidel 10y agoI like living in the city. I would prefer to live in one. Denver housing isn't so crazy yet that I can't afford to live here, but it's pretty close. I make a pretty damn good salary and would struggle finding a house that doesn't require significant rennovation in the city. Yes, I could move to suburbia - I could commute slightly further, etc, etc. I would prefer not to. I would prefer that my neighbors are people and not empty apartments used as safety-deposit boxes. (this is not the case in Denver, but sounds to be the case in London and other large cities). Edit: As an example - in my neighborhood there are $300k houses in pretty sorry shape that are purchased just for the land. They are destroyed and then a $500k new house is built on that land. This is what I'm facing. I could perhaps afford $300k (although I'm gunshy to purchase in such a volatile market), but it would require IMHO another $50k in renovation to make it "livable". I'm not talking about granite counter tops and high-end designer furniture, I'm talking about roof, insulation, water heater, bathroom fixtures, yard work, etc.
- kschrader 10y agoJust for comparison purposes, once a large portion of your housing is safety deposit boxes here's the sort of thing you can get for $300K: http://streeteasy.com/building/5-tudor-city-place-new_york/317 http://streeteasy.com/building/5-tudor-city-place-new_york/3... 275 sq. ft. with "a half refrigerator, 2 built-in electric burners, and a microwave oven"
- chadgeidel 10y agoYeah, that's nuts. At least $300k gets me a ~1300 sq ft single family dwelling with maybe a detached garage and a yard.
- marcosdumay 10y ago> I like living in the city. I would prefer to live in one. I'd bet once a decent public transportation system is inline, the termination points of the larger trains will become as much city-like as the center, but much more affordable.
- chadgeidel 10y agoAnd Denver has a pretty good one! (http://www.rtd-denver.com/ http://www.rtd-denver.com/) I could go a bit south or a bit west of town and be downtown in 20 minutes. It's on my mind.
- stuaxo 10y agoCommuting into London is already easy, huge amounts of people do it every day. It is expensive though.
- p1mrx 10y agoCan't we solve this problem with virtualization? Build houses in the middle of nowhere, but assign a central London address.
- melling 10y agoPeople are paying for the location not a "brand".
- titanomachy 10y agoHaha this is great. On a more serious note, maybe banks could offer some sort of investment vehicle made up of homes in a certain area. The homes would then be rented out for revenue, and foreign buyers could have an equivalent financial position without driving away actual residents.
- monknomo 10y agoI think they are also buying the prestige of a cool place to loan to friends and the safety of a cool place to stay if wherever they are from has trouble
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- stuaxo 10y agoI had a similar idea but with lower and lower ceilings, you could have 100s of apartments at one address with 1cm ceilings, but great sq footage. Virtualisation probably makes more sense though.
- CyberDildonics 10y agoOr... miniaturize everything. Great square footage, looks huge, but ceilings are only half height. Display it with half size furniture, half size appliances, etc. Money in the bank.
- stuaxo 10y agoI had a similar idea but with lower and lower ceilings, you could have 100s of apartments at one address with 1cm ceilings, but great sq footage. Virtualisation probably makes more sense though.
- acjohnson55 10y agoWhy would we want to? I grew up in the Chicago suburban sprawl, and it feels like a tremendous waste of land and infrastructure. I hope we one day figure out how to reduce humanity's physical footprint. Agriculture would obviously be the biggest thing, but compacting living space would help too.
- melling 10y agoWell, you could limit cars in cities which wastes a lot of space. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-01/american-cities-waste-space-and-money-on-car-parking-say-studies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-01/american-c... But then you need to answer my question: There must be some way to move large numbers of people over "great distances" (50-100 miles) in a more commutable time.
- wavefunction 10y agoHigh-speed rail sounds like it could fit your needs, as long as you could somehow limit the number of stops along that distance that would need to be made, as the time-cost of slowing down, unloading and loading, and speeding back up would likely be the limiting factor in its efficiency and utility to the user.
- pjc50 10y agoThere is. It's full. (Most of the towns in the southeast of England are dominated by commuters to London)
- melling 10y agoWhat about the other directions? How many people commute from Birmingham, for example? It's only 126 miles away? That's a 30 commute sometime this century. It's really just a question of when.
- pjc50 10y ago"HS2" is under construction which should make it more like an hour, although anyone with experience of UK trains will be skeptical. Today if you said you were commuting from Birmingham on a daily basis people would regard it as a bit extreme. There are people who commute from Barcelona, although not many.
- stuaxo 10y agoHs2 is not gonna be cheap...
- alimw 10y agoWell it'll be 49 minutes in 2026 if HS2 goes ahead. (Waste of money though if you ask me.)
- Symbiote 10y agoAccording to the visualisation [1], something like 1000 people commute from Birmingham to Central London. Though it's not easy to tell, as London is divided into many statistical areas. It's 85 minutes at the moment [2], plus the journey from Euston Station to the office in London. 85 minutes is commonly accepted for a total journey, but I'd guess most people with longer journeys are only doing this temporarily. If you find places closer to London on the map, you'll see many thousands of people make ~30 minute journeys by train into London, before continuing by metro/bus/whatever. (If you can find it, try and click "Westminster and City of London". It's small.) [1] http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc193/ http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc193/ [2] http://traintimes.org.uk/Birmingham/Euston/0800/Monday http://traintimes.org.uk/Birmingham/Euston/0800/Monday
- mattlondon 10y agoThe trains can be fast and effective over those sort of distances. The trouble is, they terminate at only a few points which tend not to be right in the center, meaning that then getting to where you need to be when you get off of the train takes longer. E.g. between Stevenage (town North of London) and Kings Cross in the UK, its about 30 miles. Trains do that in 24 minutes. But to then go the final 1-to-3 miles to your central London Office might take another 25-30 minutes - the tube is good, but only if your destination is near a station, buses are slower than walking due to them stopping every 100m, and driving/taxis are obviously not an option due to gridlock. You can walk it of course, but it will be slower than expected due to waiting to cross streets etc, plus of course it might be raining one day, or 90% humidity @ 25c the next (neither are great for getting to work in a comfortable state!). For me, the solution appears to be get a job near the station, or perhaps buy one of those electric unicycles.
- mercer 10y agoI really like the solution of offering 'public transport bicycles' at stations. I've used it in a number of cities in Holland and seen it in action in Barcelona and (IIRC) Paris. Barcelona in particular seems to have really gone all-in on this solution. The city, or at least the center, is covered in spots where you can pick up or leave such a bike using a card. In Holland it's understandably not as widely rolled out because most people have at least one bike in the city where they live, and often a second bike for the city where they work.
- Grishnakh 10y agoThere absolutely is, but no one seems to believe it's possible. It's called SkyTran personal rapid transit. Wikipedia has a page all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran With small maglev pods traveling 100-150 mph, a 100-mile commute is actually quite doable in one of these, especially since you can sleep in it as it's automated and takes you door-to-door. If governments would actually invest in this and build it instead of wasting money on boondoggles like high-speed rail, we'd make a gigantic dent in our carbon emissions and roadway deaths, plus save ourselves a lot of time that we waste driving.
- stuaxo 10y agoThere is no way that would get planning permission in central London. It would have to be underground.
- Grishnakh 10y agoYou don't need SkyTran in dense city centers; it can't handle the volume of people that a subway can. SkyTran is an alternative for cars; it can handle a lot more people than cars, and in a far more efficient manner. It's not meant for extremely dense areas, except perhaps as an alternative to taxis (i.e., in places like London or Manhattan, it would have to more expensive than the subways and cater to richer people). The main use-case for SkyTran is for suburbs, inter-city transport (between cities close enough to drive), etc.
- dasmoth 10y agoIf only there was a way to make working within a city less important. There must be some way to move large numbers of bits over "great distances" so that knowledge/desk workers can choose where they want to live, and don't have to commute every day.