A housing industry of endless one-offs is holding our society back
The solution is to build dense housing (min. 20 story towers) with mixed commercial in the lower levels on cheap land (&lt;1&#x2F;100th the cost of city land) within 50 miles of cities and then run Boring Company tunnels to your new town at a cost of $1mil&#x2F;mile. Commute time of 10-25mins. Total cost is roughly $1.8bil for a town of 30,000. Each of the condos goes for $150k. That&#x27;s 12% of the price of a condo in San Francisco. Also could build down underground 10-15 stories. Unsolved problem is low-cost infrastructure (water, sewage, power). Whatever couldn&#x27;t be built on site could be piped in through through additional tunnels.<p>This would completely change housing prices in cities. If SF has around 700k residents and say another 700k people who want to live here or commute in each week, it would take 23 of these towns to accommodate demand: $46bil investment that would probably payout 25% within 5 years of construction start with all units sold, commercial leasing, naming rights, etc. (Large assumption is people would want to live in these towns). San Francisco housing prices would probably drop at least 25% in 5 years.<p>Just like Matatu&#x27;s of Kenya (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;infinitedictionary.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;Matatu-4.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;infinitedictionary.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;0...</a>) each town would be known for its thing: TownA is known for its Opera House, TownB is known for its Basketball Team, TownC is known for its amazing Foodie Scene, etc.<p>A successful &#x27;Town&#x27; model could even be franchised like Burger King, repeated all over the USA or World within 50 miles of existing major cities. If you were the owner of a successful franchise, and optimized your margins (solving the electricity problem with solar panels or a cheap nuclear micro reactor), you could have 200% returns on each $1.5bil project. Even a couple of towns completing each year could be worth billions. And they would probably be less complicated to build than the average Tesla Terafactory, once the first few had been built.