Urban planning focuses too much on moving people and ritually hating cars and not enough on moving goods breakbulk. If you had to design a major metro today from scratch, you’d probably start with a cargo underground with pallet-sized autonomous EVs and loading bays as base layer
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This tweet inspired by the utter pain of shedding unwanted large items (area rug, extra table, futon, kitchen crap) in preparation for a downsizing move from downtown Seattle to downtown LA. Mix of craigslist, eBay, yard sale, drop-off at goodwill... from about 1000 to 660 sq ft
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Suburbs are okay for trucks etc at least. Moving to/from downtown but old buildings without proper truck parking/unloading bays... horrible. Normal adults have stuff, not all amenable to being hand-carried and walked in highly “walkable” neighborhoods.
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I have a feeling high-walkability is partly a NIMBY dogwhistle against transience, mobility, renting. I’ve moved 20 times across 7 cities in the last 20 years. You feel pain of anti-cargo urban design most when moving, not when going shopping or getting a single big box delivered
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And note, I’m not a fan of cars personally. I barely drive anymore and would prefer to be carless (wife does almost all the driving). I walk everywhere. But I recognize that cars and light trucks are essential to urban life absent alternatives. Because people own larger goods.
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Serious question: how come the e-scooter companies haven’t explored a city-level streetworthy shopping cart idea? People do it anyway, not just homeless ones. Higher-tech stores put geofenced locks on their carts but the use case for moving goods up to ~1 mile is real.
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The shorter the median ownership period of a durable good, the more TCO estimates will be garbage due to very high variance delivery and transfer/disposal cost and illegible logistics snafu PTSD. Imagine getting a couch in/out of your home every day.
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Need a Coasean economics of lifestyles including a theory of transaction costs of ownership/rental of durable goods, both physical and digital
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
Adding this herehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1130215874336501760?s=20 …
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