" wrote in message
m...
Nehmo wrote:
How should this house be built and what should it have?

(snip)
The big apartment buildings.

Just build multistory buildings, and put all essential building
utilities on the second floor or higher. Let the bottom floor have only
easily repaired interiors and utilities. Connect the second floors
of the buildings using a system of walkways just like in Minneapolis.

You could even build the walkways open air, using the wrought iron
balcony style popular for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. This would make
the city a fun place to visit.

Essentially this is the "house on stilts" idea but on a big enough scale
you could house a population of 500,000 in a densely populated area.

For car storage some buildings would use the lower 3 or 4 stories for
car parks. Again, visit Minneapolis to see this sort of structure.
You'd need fewer cars since this would be a densely populated area with
lots of people able to walk to work.

This is the future.

Of course, this doesn't fit in with the real estate agent / developer
scenaria where every American is isolated on his own lot with 2 acres of
grass to mow every weekend. That's going to prove economically
non-viable when fuel prices rise, anyway.

Some of us like a little isolation. Not all of us can stand to live in a
beehive, or care to live in densely populated areas. Not slamming people
that like that lifestyle, but the times I've had to live in structures like
that (ie, college dorms, big-city apartment blocks), I found it highly
irritating. I don't wanna hear when the neighbors flush, fight, or f**k, and
I don't wanna irritate the neighbors when I turn up the TV loud. I also like
sitting quietly on the back porch at dawn, trying to be still enough that
the birds will come to the feeder while I am on 'their' side of the glass.
Can't do that in a high-rise, or even in most condos. Suburbia has its
downsides of course- mowing/raking/snow shoveling being 3 of them. If I
didn't have to worry about resale, I'd live in a shack on the edge of the
woods. But you have to be well off to live like Thoreau these days.

aem sends...