Podcast Version: Here.
My claim is that the missing link in modern institutional society is small-scale private communities, built and designed from the ground up.
We have 4 new key technologies that can revolutionise property development as we know it.
1. Driverless technology.
2. Virtual reality simulations.
3. Group-forming apps.
4. Telecommuting.
The effective use of these technologies can lead to a different kind of private community for the common man, and not just the wealthy. Communities based on direct social discrimination, not discrimination on just the ability to pay.
Here is my model:
Structural:
With Virtual Reality systems that are cheap and accessible, people can put on their headset and see what their prospective home will feel like to live in. VR technology is already being used in this way. It can even provide explicit VR "dash-cam" tours so people can get a feel for the entire development.
VR will have the effect of making new-builds much more attractive (Note, buying off the plan is cheaper as developer risks are reduced), and it can expand the market for new-builds well beyond people local to the area. It will also drive a more tasteful form of property development, as developers will quickly realise that what feels good is more important to the market than what's hypothetically trendy. Serious design mistakes and bad ideas will be corrected on paper, before they are made in practice.
Driverless technology in new-builds is immensely powerful. A beautiful home on a busy wide street never feels like the fantasy image in the brochure, because the context that the home is set in is harsh. A road exclusively supporting driverless cars by comparison is narrow and discrete, and supports silent vehicles (internal combustion engines in hybrids will automatically turn off in sensitive areas). This allows the beauty of a development to come to life in ways that are otherwise impossible in a typical street-grid.
The technology for driverless systems in new-builds is here, and can be bought as a stand-alone system today.
In a few years time driverless systems will be universal, regardless. However, the advantages of driverless systems will be strongest in new-builds, because this is where you can fully exploit their capability for creating garden developments, where plants can dominate the then near-invisible roading.
Driverless technology allows for extremely efficient foyer-to-foyer transport within a new development, which has the effect of unifying a new community in ways that would not otherwise be possible. It effectively puts basic facilities and recreation on everyone's doorstep. (You will be at the beach, cafe' or tennis court in 2 minutes. You can finish your coffee while you ride).
Social:
With a community made up of about 100 houses, and about 300 - 400 persons, it becomes easy enough for the people within a given community to self-select each other directly via video interviews and Facebook groups, etc. The groups evolving online can work with a property/community developer to form their own community with their own rules, and can select for 'their kind of people'.
For example, I myself would be happy to live in a new community with these basic conditions: No criminal record of concern, ethnically-mixed and age-balanced, live-and-let-live attitude, and people who don't need to get drunk to have a good time would be nice too.
Also, I would insist on short video interviews for every applicant, so I can get a feel for their character. I would also insist that a 70% group majority can ultimately vote a problematic resident out, leading to a forced sale within 12 months.
That would give a me a development that I could relax in. But that's me. Others can form their own communities based on whatever parameters they want. But the point is, this is the great advantage of these kinds of new-build communities. They can self-select to whatever social form people want, and people can get a feel for each other via multimedia. You can build true from-the-ground-up communities.
-I would argue that if a community is not self-selecting, it will not be a community at all. It would then only can be a formal organisation, like school or work.
Child rearing:
In an age where ever-more people are having so few children, or having children so late in life that it's questionable whether they should be having them at all, we can see that we need to reconsider how we are functioning in terms of incentivising (or disincentivising) for fertility.
My model, if built on cheap land at the city outskirts (no artificial land rationing), and with modern innovations, would provide for highly affordable housing. Housing accessible to 90% of the populace or more. This is fundamentally important for those who want to create a family.
Ideally, central governments would provide a voucher system for financing schooling and daycare, so the option of homeschooling can be open to all competent parents, and on a level economic playing field. A self-selected family-dominant community could comfortably take care of its own childcare for all levels of schooling.
Note: We now know that what affects the long-range outcome of children is child abuse and genes - not schooling as such. There is no need to institutionalise a child's educational development. This is important to understand because so much of modern life revolves around children's education, and in ways that are costly, time consuming, and in fact totally unnecessary.
The final result is that women can comfortably have children in their late teens and twenties, not late thirties and forties, if they so choose. And they can certainly have more than just one or two children.
From a mass-social outlook this is probably the most important advantage of allowing for these kinds of modern new-build communities - built in the direct image of consumer demand. Indeed, I have often described my ideas as "fertility machines".
Working:
Internal work local to the community should be unregulated and untaxed. It would be more like a 'baby-sitting economy'. People should be free to utilise help between each other, freely and informally, as they wish. Hence it's more like a club than a profit-driven commercial economy.
People should pay for services via a special account (possibly a cellphone app) to control demand for services and be fair. But the returns from the use of facilities would be used to pay expenses towards the body-corporate, so usually there will be no 'technical' earnings for the enterprise - just expense reductions. In a sense, I propose that it functions like a private large-scale household economy.
Establishing developments like this on the outskirts of a city does not isolate people from important work opportunities from the main economy. Most people do not need to travel to a city center to work, and online working is now practical for countless jobs. Online working is a potential that is growing and will continue to grow. This is important, because it creates freedom with respect to where these developments can be located. They can then be positioned in the most geographically ideal places - anywhere in the world.
Development:
I don't see these developments being built and sold by major developers, who largely just guess as to what their markets' want and are prepared to pay for. I see groups developing online, with a website providing the basic organisation, and finally an experienced architectural organisation coordinating the design and development of the villages, and organising contractors from there.
However, a skeleton structure would need to be first proposed and formed from the architectural body, before a group of buyers is established so as to let the evolution of the details begin. (Otherwise you'll end up with a mess that takes forever to reach consensus, and get to first-base).
Conclusion:
My belief is that private communities such as this--built from the ground-up both structurally and socially--are a great missing link in modern western society. Centralisation and nationalism has become much too intrusive in our lives, because we lack the social foundations to naturally resist it.
I believe we need to draw stronger lines between domestic society, and mass society.
The state defines too much how we live, what we do and how we can do it. We find we have to battle with the state over the details of our private lives, that really they should have nothing to do with. Like forcing your children to learn to speak a useless though politically-correct language, and telling us who our company has to be.
One of the indirect results of unwarranted government intrusion is fertility rates collapsing, well below replacement levels, which is a truly concerning failure. And largely, because we have made child-rearing so difficult from making it school-centric, and making the cost of living so high that young mothers have no choice but to work.
Modern technologies give us the tools to create new communities like never before. Housing can be remarkably affordable and life can be much more socially cohesive, and much more simplistic than the way it is now. And indeed, we can give most people a rich man's lifestyle if they want it - in countries like New Zealand at least.
Also, we can provide for people a healthy lifestyle as physical recreation that is fun (not just painful) is easily accessible, and people can have more time when they don't have to be mortgage slaves nor a non-stop taxi service for their children.
All we need to do is let this evolution happen, and I logically predict it will. Our technology will facilitate and drive lifestyle demand, and what I am suggesting is, again, only a predictable expression of actualised consumer demand in response to new opportunities.
THREATS:
The public policy that can threaten this evolution is as follows:
-Urban growth boundaries.
Making land grossly unaffordable, and forcing apartment living even for those who do not want it.
-Intrusive tax and regulations.
Making internal trade within a new development expensive and cumbersome, falsely disincentivising cooperation.
-Anti-discrimination laws.
Not allowing people to choose their own company in a private development.
-Excessive educational dictates.
Forcing people within a development to send their kids to external schools, rather than being able to conveniently take care of education internally.
These controls, to varying degrees, may block the proper development of private communities and suppress their innovation.
I don't want to see this happen and I will do my best to fight these threats, as time goes on.
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My related videos:
Granny Magnets, highlights how to build a modern low-cost village.
Choose Your World, argues for political decentralisation.
Globalisation - A new model, describes the far-reaching impact of property development in an online world.
Solving the Auckland Housing Crises - Now, is related to Granny Magnets, and further explains how these developments can solve the problem of affordable housing. Though, in a way that might be politically feasible.
Housing Affordability - For Real, is an older video that breaks down the nonsense arguments opposing geographical urban expansion.
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