Originally published April 2020 in Immortalists Magazine Issue #4:
With the recent events of the pandemic forcing everyone to reevaluate what it could mean to live and (if you are lucky, work) with no requirements to interact physically with anything outside one’s home, some are starting to rethink what is really tying them to where they live.
The Age Old limit – Commuting distance
It has been said that the average upper limit of commuting has been the same since the dawn of daily work schedules; 1.5 hours a day. While that meant a walking limit of a few miles for thousands of years, the ongoing evolution of transportation innovations have continued to expand that distance between home and workplace to an average of over 17 miles, leading to the creation of the American suburbs post-World War II. Now automated transport stands to reshape that landscape even further as self-driving vehicles, makes feasible even longer commuter distances, greatly widening the geographical radius of housing available to commuting workers.
Why do we live this way – Reevaluating our homes
With the increase in feasible distance to work centers, new options open up to homeowners, particularly those who, having been forced to shelter inside them 24 hours a day are now discovering just how dissatisfied they are with their current accommodations. Suddenly those in multi-room monstrosities begin to understand how isolating the design is, while those with little natural light or poor air circulation feel a drain on their mood, and others with limited space begin questioning why exactly do they have whole rooms dedicated to functions they rarely use and could be using for something else now. Others still begin to realize that a large interior space means little in an event such as the current crisis, when their exterior space is so small that they can’t even open a window without exposing themselves to quarantine breaking threats, much less actually go outside.
There has been much vocalized desire to see the old trend of McMansions, large poorly designed multi-room homes with little yard space, come to an end. Not only are these homes too expensive for their build-quality, they rarely consider how people actually use the space in their home when they are living there full-time. While there is some movement towards the emerging McModerns that addresses some of the issues of light and design, many available homes still fail to fully satisfy the habits and standards of family living, schooling, and working from home.
How do we really want to live – Rethinking the ideal home
If one looks at the heat maps of modern homes before the start of quarantines, one would note the hottest areas do not always correlate with the size of the designed rooms. Bathrooms, bedrooms, and kitchens are often afterthoughts designed around the more “presentable” spaces such as formal living and dining rooms, and as families stay home they begin to really look with a critical eye at what they really need. Spaces reserved for guests have to be quickly repurposed and room assignments shift as the family attempts to improve the flow of the everyday routine. Space around the kitchen needs more room as food remains the central communal activity. The central spaces also need more room as niches must be carved out for individual workspaces, be it for school, work, or leisure (Via Book, Screen, or VA/AR Helmet). The central common area is key for mental health as individual rooms lead to feelings of isolation when there are no other spaces to leave to or others to physically interact with outside the home, and so seeing and feeling the presence of others helps to maintain healthy interpersonal connections. This central space also needs to be the most rejuvenating, more open, airy, full of natural light, and empty walls (For AR Customization), contrast to many designs that treat the central spaces as merely a go between the formal rooms. Following this, bathrooms need to be larger with more room to separate the functional components allowing multiple people to use the different facilities in private without holding up the entire space alone. Bedrooms are another area where function can be reevaluated. If just used for sleeping, a single master bedroom can house a whole family for the night, freeing up other bedrooms for additional offices, or leisure spaces. Such an arrangement may not suite everyone, but it is an example of how space can be reconsidered. Finally, considering the outside, with the current threat and the availability of more land from farther commutes, most would prefer a greater buffer between them and public spaces, not only would the green spaces add to mental health, but add to the possibilities for decentralized self-sufficiency.
To illustrate let me present my particular imagined abode. Using the latest in printable concrete technologies, picture a glass seashell or cinnamon roll half-buried and rising up in the middle of hectare of land. Upon entering, the majority of the interior is a large round great room seemingly open to the sky. The center of which would be the main living or child play space, with a large hearth area functioning as the kitchen to one side. Around the perimeter, open walled rooms extend outward from the center forming unspecified working spaces usable as offices or studios. Those parts still buried would be the bathing and storage spaces affording privacy and natural climate control. A second level above holds the sleeping spaces, and above that a large open air deck. If designing for larger families or groups the spiral could be extended into the sky providing more work and living space, perhaps bringing back extended families living together. The whole land would be fenced in and surrounded by trees to afford security and privacy while maintaining the illusion of an even larger land space. Still, a hectare is pretty big, providing room enough for further self-sufficiency, but primarily to meet the need for green space without public exposure. This seems oppressive until one considers the current crisis, however if designed in blocks perhaps hexagonal hectares around central public spaces for families to mingle when not locked down, physical community could be maintained. Now all this would improve homes tied to a location, but what if that tie was broken?
How we could live – Rethinking the essentials and the possibilities.
One of the major issues brought up by this crisis is the fact that so much of the economy is reliant on workers whose jobs aren’t essential to the function of the nation, having money to spend on things that also aren’t essential to their lives. The federal government’s response to the first part of the problem is testing the waters with the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI), paying people for just living, not for working. It is beginning as stimulus checks, but as many rightly point out it is not enough, and with the increases in automation this crisis will also elicit, many won’t be able to return to work once it is over. UBI has been suggested as an inevitability as rapidly improving automation would eventually displace so many workers, that the current work-income model would be untenable. Even John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern macroeconomics, predicted in 1930 that even his economic models would eventually have to change, probably by the time of his grandchildren (we are running behind, fighting the inevitable) as production capabilities would outpace the work required to produce them, leaving all of us with little work and lots of time for play. Short of abolishing money, UBI is the current solution to keep the increasingly large non-working population contributing economically to a capitalist system. So, what happens when a huge portion of the population has no work ties, a steady income, and access to self-driving vehicles?
Home is where the Wi-Fi is – The new digital nomad
As a child, Recreational Vehicles (RVs) seemed like such a waste of money. Why would I spend the equivalent cost of a small house to have a cramped hotel room on wheels that I have to drive myself? But in recent years my thinking has changed, at first, when I became a minimalist (As I suspect many are becoming stuck at home with so much useless stuff), then I became a fan of cruise control and then Tesla self-driving vehicles (I don’t own one yet, but given how much I drive I have a strong incentive to get one. Living in the DMV with long commutes will do that.), and finally I began to ponder retirement. As I considered it, suddenly a tiny home didn’t seem like a bad idea, especially if I could pull it…with a self-driving vehicle! Better yet a self-driving RV! Then as I looked at the economic requirements to live such a life, I realized I might not have to wait until retirement, all I need is a job that pays just enough to sustain us while working remotely. As I ran the idea by friends, they agreed it was a viable and attractive retirement plan, go to bed in your self-driving RV and wake up the next day somewhere new. So that was a few of us. But then I considered the large percentage (at least 14% just including transportation workers) of the current workforce soon to be displaced out of work in the next decade, and I know there will be more of us.
The more the merrier – The Convoy Community
This is when I began to picture a whole segment of the population living a whole new lifestyle, and the public infrastructure that would have to be built to accommodate them. Whole communities of like-minded individuals, moving in convoys of self-driving vehicles between camping parks and redesigned travel centers. A whole segment of peoples exploring the world together as friends and families, splitting off and regrouping for special events or in situations such as the current one, finding a nice isolated spot outside a town and hunkering down till it blows over. Several new systems would need to come into play, the aforementioned travel centers, would not only be mega-recharging and restocking stations, but also community and postal shipping centers. A new postal code system would have to be developed and assigned to each vehicle to mark it as a home for taxation, and registration purposes (As less people would own stationary homes for state property taxes). Packages and mail would be rerouted to the nearest travel center for pickup or drone delivery. AR and VR spaces would be big parts of the vehicle functions to provide more privacy in the limited space as well as more ways to connect to each other remotely and allow more in-depth remote work and schooling. And this future can start very soon. Currently Tesla is producing their Tesla Semi, a large long-distance electric vehicle designed for automated freight delivery, that could easily be retrofitted with an RV package in both its medium and full-size models. If it could carry or tow a smaller Tesla vehicle for intown or off-road excursions, even better. And on the more affordable scale, for those of us who have already ordered a Tesla Cybertruck, I’d love to see what Tesla could come up with for a Tesla Tiny Home. I’m imagining a Cybertruck inspired version of an Airstream that could be pulled by a matching Cybertruck. All vehicles would be mobile 5G rebroadcasters as well as fitted with SpaceX Starlink pizza box antennas creating a chain of high-speed connectivity wherever they go. You see, once you realize how little is essential to living a fulfilling life, the possibilities for actually living it open up. I originally foresaw all this happening in the next decade but with the current crisis bringing these changes in lifestyle possibilities faster into the public eye I think Elon Musk might want a team on it now. I think such designs even have greater potential than just earthly RV Convoys. The tech to provide the essentials for a comfortable living in small mobile spaces could also reshape poverty on earth and be applicable to how we can live on Mars or even outer space. So, how bout it, Elon? Care to truly reshape the way we all live?
#WheresMyTeslaRV #TeslaTinyHome #TeslaRoadLife
