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[Reelya]

Parking solved: just put giant parking decks everywhere, with robot arms that snatch the cars out of the air so quickly that there's never a build up of traffic, just a constant stream of the building eating cars and quickly sorting them into compact car-berths.

Even better, just have flying car tethers on the outside of buildings. You don't even need internal parking bays then. Why would you need horizontal decks anymore if you can hang the cars vertically on the sides of buildings?

But this would be best off if we ditched the hybrid road-car / flyer thing and made dedicated 2-person flying pods. Having to cart around all that ground-driving apparatus is a major waste of flight-fuel. Hybrid car/flyers are a dumb idea for the same reason planes that turn into robots are a dumb idea.

[wierd]

For the same reasons that ground level or sublevel parking does not meet the needs of (theoretically infinite) vertically scaled commercial, residential, or hospital buildings.

Increasing the number of levels dedicated to parking greatly increases the upkeep costs of the complex. 

Removal of open-pavement parking, and installation of rooftop or parking level structures in vertical buildup will result in more total vehicles entering or exiting a square footprint area than before, as the area previously used by the parking lot will be re-purposed into much more lucrative housing or commercial properties.

Roadways (and associated right of ways for utilities et al) would likewise become obsolete as fewer and fewer terrestrial vehicles operate. The real-estate previously used for this purpose will be diverted toward the more lucrative industries cited above, with exception made for necessary utility right of way.

As buildings get closer and closer together (due to the no longer needed space between them, because terrestrial vehicle access is no longer a thing), ability to absorb traffic through the sides of buildings will diminish, as there will not be sufficient clearance for the vehicles to safely traverse the gaps between them.

as a consequence of the above, you end up 're-inventing" the road.  Instead of an open sky theater in which these autonomous flying vehicles operate, you end up with more "tunnels" between builings that they operate inside of.

Parking and holding space becomes an increasingly burdensome thing, as buildup reaches new saturation.

Basically, all these ideas about how flying cars are going to make everything wonderful ignores centuries of humans fucking up the commons.  You need to consider how, where, and why humans will fuck the commons.  Any proposal that does not do that, is not realistic.

[misko27]

OK.  Ever been to a major city?  What is the ONE THING that they never have enough of?

Space?

PARKING.

Close enough!

Related: how would flying cars handle New York City? The sky would be dark with cars at all hours of the day. And since so many people want to go places... all I foresee is Three-Dimensional traffic nightmares.

[Reelya]

As buildings get closer and closer together (due to the no longer needed space between them, because terrestrial vehicle access is no longer a thing), ability to absorb traffic through the sides of buildings will diminish, as there will not be sufficient clearance for the vehicles to safely traverse the gaps between them.

Why would buildings get closer and closer together? That would require us to be in a Malthusian scenario, which clearly isn't actually happening.

Additionally, we could already build over roads, right now, with ground-level cars, and turn existing roads into tunnels. But we don't do that, do we? Which indicates that having flying cars won't somehow encourage us to convert cities into arcologies.

[wierd]

Reelya, a 300ft^2 apartment (in NY, and increasingly in the bay area) costs thousands of dollars a month to rent.  Every square foot of floor space that can be leveraged, *WILL* be leveraged. The god of mammon demands it.

[Reelya]

Not if there's not enough demand for living space. Joining all buildings together would be unnecessary space. Email me when they actually start joining buildings together in that fashion, growing over the existing roads. There's nothing to stop them doing it right now, which is the point. Flying cars won't have anything to do with it.

Also, if you have windowless boxes deep in a structure, then you need to have NASA level oxygen recycling since you can't rely on the air doing that for free via windows. Plus, the rent people would be willing to pay would be less, meaning that adding units into the space between buildings would reduce the average market rent per unit.

[wierd]

*IF*---

However, need I remind you of a gubernatorial platform of yesteryear in NY state?  With the "The rent is too damn high" party,  Or the much more recent headline about Silly Valley professors being requested by university brass, to host students in their own homes because it is near impossible to increase student on-campus housing?


There are reasons why they do not build over the top of roadways in the way you surreptitiously demand that I provide.  The biggest one is that roadway work is a recurring cost center for a city, and the need to excavate on demand is ever present, in order to sustain the roadway surface.  With an aerial drone infrastructure, the actual surfaces of the transport network does not come into contact with the vehicles, so the need to constantly resurface them will not exist, and likewise, the need to continually excavate the underlying ground wont exist.

A closer analog is to look at city planning before constant repaving was a feature in play.  You will note that many buildings are so close together that you can barely squeeze between them going sideways.  The same economic factors that caused that then, will cause it now, once the civil engineering requirements prohibiting it go away.

[Jopax]

I don't think a street being in a tunnel or not is a factor in it's ability to be repaved at regular intervals, since you know, we already have tunnels and they are being serviced just fine.

Also the building density of older cities has more to do with the main mode of transportation being walking for the majority of the people, which means you don't need as much space and you generally don't want it to sprawl into infinity since that means more ground to cover on your feet (as well as defensive walls playing a limiting factor in the available space but that kinda thing is rather rare as a factor and only seen in way old cities).

[Kagus]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

How's that Gofundme for Kylie Jenner's last few bucks before officially becoming "The World's Youngest Self-made Billionaire" going?

[Loud Whispers]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

How's that Gofundme for Kylie Jenner's last few bucks before officially becoming "The World's Youngest Self-made Billionaire" going?

It raised $2k, but considering that it's ran by FAT JEW I think they're being meme'd on

[scriver]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

no, that's the american meme

What is a people's dream if not a meme

[Kagus]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

How's that Gofundme for Kylie Jenner's last few bucks before officially becoming "The World's Youngest Self-made Billionaire" going?

It raised $2k, but considering that it's ran by FAT JEW I think they're being meme'd on

Are you saying that FAT JEW may be behaving in a dishonest manner with these finances?

That's antisemitic. You should be ashamed of yourself. Why can't you just be happy for the young upwardly-mobile lady entrepreneur? She's an inspiration to us all!

[Starver]

Are you saying that FAT JEW may be behaving in a dishonest manner with these finances?

That's antisemitic.

And/or sizeist?

[Loud Whispers]

What is a people's dream if not a meme

Sweet memes are made of this
...
Some of them want to meme you
Some of them want to be meme'd by you

Are you saying that FAT JEW may be behaving in a dishonest manner with these finances?

That's antisemitic. You should be ashamed of yourself. Why can't you just be happy for the young upwardly-mobile lady entrepreneur? She's an inspiration to us all!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[smjjames]

Lol Ted Cruz, since when is becoming a tech hub a bad thing?

"We are seeing tens of millions of dollars flooding into the state of Texas from liberals all over the country who desperately want to turn the state of Texas blue," Cruz said. "They want us to be just like California, right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair."

Unless he meant silicone (as in Hollywood I guess), it sort of sounds like he is railing against technology.