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Comment by timthelion | Hacker News Reader

It's a real pity that sleeping in your car is illegal in most cities. Otherwise, with free parking and high rent, I suppose that cars would become the pods everyone has been dreaming of.

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I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of living in 60 cubic feet of space. Maybe instead we should, I don’t know, create more places where people want to be, rather than trying to cram everyone in the world into NYC and the Bay Area.

One of the biggest resources in the US is cheap abundant land. Why the hell are we concentrating all the talent in a few square miles of it?

Because all the talent likes being able to walk places in a few minutes.

I propose jetpacks, to vastly extend peoples' comfortable walking radii.

Hate to sound like the nerd... but segways are freaking fantastic.

If you haven't ridden one, go on a "segway" tour of your city. Super fun, and you can see just how simple and mobile you are. Completely replaces most small bus hops.

Not denying what you wrote, but a folding bike is cheaper, probably more portable (i.e. you can take it on a plane with you) and it doesn't need recharging.

Or we could all just live in cars! It all fits.

Is that really the number one priority for talented people? Walking?

Besides, we have a dozen modes of transportation already available: cars, buses, motorcycles, segways, bicycles, subways, trams, taxis, powered walkways, rollerblades, skateboards, hover boards, ATVs, skis, sleds, horses, etc. How exactly is walking the panacea of transportation? So much so that people would be willing to live in cars?

> Is that really the number one priority for talented people? Walking?

Just walking? Maybe not. But fast commutes to work, easy access to restaurants, easy access to culture, lots of things to do nearby, large dating pools? Most certainly.

> cars, buses, motorcycles, segways, bicycles, subways, trams, taxis, powered walkways, rollerblades, skateboards, hover boards, ATVs, skis, sleds, horses

All of which take lots of time! People pay lots of money to live in certain neighborhoods (think Williamsburg and the like) for a reason.

I'm reading Haidt's "Happiness Hypothesis" right now, and in one section he identifies life circumstances which people never adjust to (i.e. excluded from the Hedonistic treadmill effect).

A long commute is something he identifies as always a negative. Humans don't seem to adjust to a long commute -- it will always negatively impact the typical person's outlook/affect/happiness.

Congregating close to other talented people? Yes, it appears to be very very highly valued and the resulting cross-pollination of ideas a core reason that dense areas have very high creative output.

Are you willing to have millions of people move into your city and sleep in cars in the name of having some of the more talented ones nearby? At that point, why even bother with cars? Coffin hotels are a thing, let's just cover SF in those. We could charge $3-5k/month per coffin!

Not at all, I'm personally a fan of very dense mixed-use plans when it comes to urban development styles. But I was just answering your question about why walking is such a priority for talented people and why "walkability scores" are a thing. Clearly if we're talking about walking most places then everyone having a large car doesn't make much sense in the first place, nevermind living in it. That's just weird Telsa fetish stuff.

I grew up in suburbs and consider them soul sucking hellscapes for robots who've learned to feel despair ... so that probably colors my view of basing cities around them by having people drive all the time.

I'd say it's pretty high on everyone's list and we have almost no good places to live in the US, so only top talent and homeless people can live in them.

There's a world of difference between walking 15 minutes and driving 15 minutes, and overall having people walk usually makes for a better overall urban environment.

You wouldn't want to walk along a highway, but because everyone drives in major US cities, even downtown has highway-sized roads.

I'm not super for sleeping in cars, but I already pay a space tax for my living quarters to have walkability (even if I end up taking the train)

Fair's fair, I think that skis and horses might rank above walking for most people, but most places where that is possible don't have the amenities of major cities.

Also, horses shit all over the place.

I got a boosted board at this beginning of this summer, and I've really enjoyed using it to get around. It's mostly for my commute, but I've definitely taken it out in the evenings and stuff too— indeed, my main complaint is that I haven't yet gotten proper lights for it, so I can't ride after dark.

Or just build more houses where people want to live? They want to be there because lots of other talented people are there, with all the opportunities of culture, education, and jobs that brings. And also they want to be able to get around easily, not rely on their car.

Two reasons:

- living outside of a city is actually a luxury. Cheap land, but a long distance to culture and services. Most people cannot afford a car, for example.

- rural living is more detrimental to the environment

So people who can't afford a car should give up whatever housing they have outside a city and buy a Tesla, then move into the city and live in the car?

Like, I guess I don't understand how nobody is seeing the dystopian future where you have to live in a goddamn car because you can't afford proper shelter. I know it's a thing elsewhere in the world, but people are try to get out of that, not into it.

It's actually a relative luxury to live in a car. Living in a car is more expensive than, say, living on a cot in a group shelter.

If we were most concerned about maximizing efficiency, we'd all be living in dense urban environments, using shared public transportation, etc. Most people would sleep in something similar to a Capsule Hotel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel

Right. I am saying that it seems not desirable to live in Capsule hotels, cars, shared shelters. We can do better than that. Why move in that direction?

I feel ya. I have three thoughts:

1. Could view it as a cultural thing. For example, some cultures might embrace minimal personal space. And, the media keeps talking about the "tiny house movement."

2. Everything is relative. I personally opted to buy a smaller house than I could afford, and I generally try to live minimally.

3. In general, it's better for the collective good (less waste) to move in that direction. That said, technological advance might some day allow every human to live in a McMansion.

I grew up in a neighborhood with large houses and "horse lots" and I always dreamed of living in the apartment block in the next neighborhood over, because I had no one to play with, and the "poor kids" over there were always together.

The tiny house movement is because people can't afford regular houses so they build glorified sheds on whatever scraps of land they can afford. Cities are breeding grounds for disease primarily because of the lack of personal space.

See I can totally get behind what you are saying. Or at least most of it. Tiny houses require a lot of external infrastructure to make work. Again, a few people camping out in Golden Gate park is not an issue. Thousands would be.

Also remember that there isn’t a big difference between tiny houses and trailers. Imagine turning SF into a trailer park.

But there is a huge difference between a minimally viable shelter (electricity, plumbing, standing room, privacy) and a car or a capsule. Where exactly do you have sex? Vomit when sick? Keep a pet gold fish? Cook? Poop? All of that is possible in 400 sqft apartment and not possible in a car. So it’s not quite relative.

What is dystopian about not forbidding it. I didn't suggest we force everyone to live in cars, I suggested that it shouldn't be illegal.

The long term effect is that it allows for landlords who own parking spaces to charge what is currently charged for a small apartment, charge for small apartments what is currently changed for large ones, and so on. SF already has a housing problem. This would invite more people in without actually adding proper housing. How many hundreds of thousands or millions of people would do it? Have you thought about the plumbing issues associated with adding people without bathrooms? One person roughing it in a car and using public facilities is ok. Several thousand is an annoyance. Snowball that to few hundred thousand and you have a shit river.

rural living is more detrimental to the environment

Good luck with your city without rural folks to grow your food...

Less than 2% of the US's population works in agriculture. Nearly 20% live in rural areas. We are no where close to the point where we need to worry about having too few people living in rural areas to be able to grow food.

Those farmers don't need any network around them then? Just farms and more farms? Who does all the non-farming stuff in your vision of rural areas? Noone needs a plumber or a dentist or a schoolteacher?

Hey, I’m pretty darn pro-density, but “most people cannot afford a car” is just a false statistical statement about the US adult population, unless you add some MAJOR caveats.

> It's a real pity that sleeping in your car is illegal in most cities.

Is that the case? I know it’s legal in NYC (much to the consternation of yuppies in the upper west side). In Oakland people sleep in cars and rvs parked on major roads, same in San Francisco.

Sleeping in a car for a long period of time increases the risk of leg edema. In most vehicles you can't lay flat and so the blood pools in your lower legs. Not good for veins, especially for older people.

Presumably parking would not remain free though.

This would be another advantage to my plan. Maybe free parking would become a thing of the past and you could perhaps even get rid of all the parking lots and stop having a concrete death valley in front of every building in America.

with a fully autonomous car you could probably just keep driving slowly in loops while you sleep

My startup is called Druber, the elevator pitch is: like Uber for people who sleep in their cars. Use it to find and hire a driver to drive slowly while you sleep, so you don't break the law.

Or I guess the driver can just sit in thr parked car and watch for authorities, if they knock, the driver can claim s/he's just about to depart, and their friend (you) just went out like a light.

https://www.bigissue.com/news/londons-homeless-boarding-nigh...

CapsuleHouse

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