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Would Movable Houses Make Cities Better?

Would movable houses with modular foundations make cities more scalable and more attractive? In an intriguing article, eliezeryudkowsky thinks so.

  • By making it easier for groups to relocate and untangle themselves in a coordinated way, movable houses can increase the natural dispersion of the city as it grows larger.
  • Since people could buy and retain customized houses manufactured with economies of scale, movable houses could have better technology and amenities not available today. (Contrast your current house to a modern car.)
  • Movable houses could allow unprecedented opportunities to live next to your friends, or to groups of similar-minded people. You and your friends just need to find a set of available modular foundations close together.
  • Movable housing might help on key points of governance and realpolitik, for example by making land value taxes more attractive, and decreasing exit costs.
Movable houses are not a new idea. In her 1828 story The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, Jane Webb Loudon describes Steam-Propelled Moving Houses:

"Oh! what is that?" cried Edric, without attending to him, as, lost in amazement, he saw a house in the suburbs gently slide out of its place, and glide majestically along the road, a lady at one of the windows kissing her hand to some one in another house as she passed. "Do my eyes deceive me, or does that house move?"

Via Steemit.

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