Episode 189 Scott Adams - Some BlightAuthority.com Ideas and Tour of Scott’s Home

doo-doo-doo-doo pom pom pom hey everybody I'll let the people coming in catch up with us we're gonna be talking about the blight Authority some of you already know what that is but it's a nonprofit effort led by Bill pulled a and I'm helping out in which we're trying to come up with some ideas some creative ideas for what to do with the blighted areas that the blight Authority has already cleared and some that will be cleared so there will be spaces in urban areas that will be brought down to dirt getting rid of all the blighted areas that essentially nobody owned anymore so it makes the land almost free almost so what do you do with it what do you do with it that would help the inner city people I'm not talking about building shopping malls and you know yuppie condos I'm talking about what can you do with that land that helps the people in this city that that addresses the low income world and I like to use as a standard that if you're building homes that don't work for a single parent you haven't gotten it right yet right if you're building in an urban area if you don't have a way for a single parent to afford to live there and to thrive you haven't quite designed it right so I'm going to talk about some ideas and then I'm going to do a little tour of my house now I know what you're thinking you're thinking wait a minute a rich guys house will teach us nothing about how to build for low-income people that's mostly true that's about 80 percent true but I'm going to use my house as partly a reason to get people to watch this so it's just really to attract eyeballs but also there are a number of things that will remind you of a concept when you see my house there would be useful for any kind of a house so we'll we'll get to that after I talk about a few ideas that are already coming through for the blight Authority and I've added some of my own idea just to sort of pull it together in a package all right so here's the idea you've got a big patch of blank space in an urban area in fact there are lots of these and there will be more of them as the blight that already exists is torn down in the future and a number of these already exists thanks to Bill Ponte is good work with the blade Authority aid nonprofit that works with cities this is important they work with the mayors with the with the community they really get the community involved to know what to do and and you know get them excited about what's happening Bo but the next phase after your tear stuff down is what do you deal with it and if you can't figure out what to do with it that's productive well then you've only taken it half way it's a good half but let's see if we can get the other half so imagine if you will this this block of land that's in an inner city and you're trying to think what to do with it here are some ideas for those of you new to watching my periscope any idea you see me present you should assume it's the bad version of the idea in other words I'm just trying to stimulate your thought so don't get too hung up on these ideas I'm gonna comment first on the person who said no socialism keep in mind first of all that these are these are very small parts of the entire country and nobody has to live there we're not talking about making the entire city this way we're talking about experiments small experiments some of them might look something like this some of them might have no socialism some might have some experiments of sharing things like tools or sharing rides something like that but I'm not going to call that socialism I think that's a great disservice to try to label things away sometimes sharing works sometimes it doesn't maybe we can experiment find out where does where it doesn't all right so that said here are some ideas just a stimulate thought the number one thing that I hear about improving urban areas is that you have to take care of security first if you don't do that it doesn't matter what you build because nobody wants to live there nobody wants a business there nobody wants to shop there nobody wants to raise children there so security has got to be your absolute base requirement now you also don't want a police state so how do you get to a gentle security where nobody is getting beaten up you know there's there's nothing abusive going on you haven't given up too much privacy but you still got a safe space I'll give you some ideas again not the greatest ideas in the world necessarily but they'll get you thinking imagine if you will that you put a ring of homes around the perimeter and the houses act as part of the let's say gated community normally you see a gated community for a wealthy neighborhood but wealthy neighborhoods don't have that much crime it'd be a lot more useful to put a little gate around a an area that's in an inner city now of course you'd have actual gates so that they're you know emergency exits and services can come through but you'd have some security at the gates now imagine if you will that there's external cameras on both sides of the homes on all of the public areas plus the homeowner has an option that comes with the house this is important the video security comes with the house you don't have an option of not getting it it's just a cheap camera goes to the internet you can look at it on your phone now I just saw a commercial for ring ring calm I'm not doing a commercial for them that I have no interest in their company but they they just showed a upgrade that allows you to alert your neighbors on your phone if something fishy is you see in your camera so if you see somebody suspicious at your front door you've got an option to alert the neighbors and they get ping-ping-ping and then everybody can look through their own cameras can look out the window can alert the police whatever they need to do that would be amazing I mean I think that would really make a difference here's another idea again just ideas imagine if you said we're going to build this community and then we're going to reserve some of the unit's they have a good view of things for people who are either current police police workers or ex police people who are trained to identify problems and to know what to do if they come up now if this police officer moves it's still a designated it might be a first responder or or police but somebody who's trained so you make sure that you've got a few of them in key areas because if they're if their app goes off they know what to do all right you want somebody who's got a legal right to own a weapon and knows when to use it and when not in your community very helpful I've got a neighbor who was in the police force down the road and I gotta tell you I felt a lot safer knowing him personally and knowing that he was in the neighborhood makes a big difference then next thing you want to do if you got your security right is you want to get your transportation right you could have a lot of stuff here that doesn't require you to leave home so if you have an app-based community things you need you can order on your apps if you need an uber you can order it on your app maybe you don't even have private cars you might you know one of the experiments might be let's build a community where nobody has a car but you still need to get places so let's say there's a bus that takes you to mass transit on a regular basis and let's say that you can see where the bus is on your app so you don't even have to go outside until the bus is you know approaching but better yet let's say the bus driver has the app - and the bus driver can see all the people who are converging on the bus so you pull up in your bus people get on normally you wouldn't know if there's somebody around the corner who's almost there and you pull off but if you're looking at your app you're like oh there's Bob Bob's right around the corner I'll wait for 10 more there's Bob so suddenly just adding an app to a shuttle to mass transit makes it a whole friendlier situation much the way uber did you could add a shared garage possibly so that maybe some people had private cars or maybe there were your own private rental Buber type situation just for the neighbors you can see if that worked that would be another experiment and maybe there were some shared tools as well so you don't need a garage if you can go you can go borrow a tool you know everybody knows who has it you borrow it on your app you make sure that it's there before you go borrow it oh yeah I need one of those okay so you could have a shared tool thing people do that already I don't know if it works well or not then imagine again for those just joining these are not the best ideas in the world I'm just trying to stimulate thought so imagine if each of these residents had built into it a storefront or office on the street side with a separate entrance and a separate bathroom right if you are living here and you owned both the residents and the storefront and when I say storefront I don't mean a big-box I'm talking about one room size of a small one-person office with the bathroom for a guests and for yourself and if you had a business to go into there well you've already got your job so your job in your home become the same place and if we've done a good job in construction and brought the cost way down and the cost of the land was almost free well you could run a little shop here now suppose you don't want to run the shop you don't have a home business you don't want anything to do with the business but you like living here you could rent it out so if you could rent the front of the shop to somebody from the outside they can't get in your house they're just running their little business there suddenly you're a landlord so you've gone from a person who can't afford a house to a person who's a landlord and one move you already have a job now that wouldn't be enough necessarily to pay for your home you might need to do more but if you were a person who had a good job outside of the community you could take your bus there somebody's working in your home you've got two incomes something all right now I'm imagining oh and I'm also imagining some kind of a way that if people have pets they don't need to be home all day to to walk them maybe there's a little area that your dog has a dog door and they can do their business in a place that isn't too you know isn't too bad for other people to look at easy to clean up artificial lawn is the best I'll show you mine in a little bit now there are a number of ideas that we're receiving on blight Authority calm which is where there's a forum where you can suggest things that you could do in places like this and we're hoping that we can stimulate some more ideas but people said things like well just go through the list suppose you had a central food source just for the residents and it could be simply like a togo's it could be just sandwiches and salads keep it simple that doesn't mean you can't just buy your own food anywhere you want you can still do anything you want but if your kid gets home before you do and they need a sandwich wouldn't it be great if your twelve-year-old could look at the app and if approved by the parent they can say yeah it's after school and I want a ham sandwich and they just hit it maybe the ham sandwiches dropped in a drop box at your house imagine building these homes so that they're optimized for drones maybe there's a place on the roof for a drone to land maybe there's a hot box for a hot meal if somebody's dropping off that once it's dropping off nobody can get into it maybe there's a cold box for your milk so those are some ideas so you might have a simple place now the beauty this is also a number of these things I'm going to talk about would provide first jobs in some cases a second you know real jobs but at least teenager or first jobs for a lot of people without leaving the community so if you've got an app to find a babysitter or an app to find a pet walker and you know an app to find somebody who does various services you could you could have a lot of jobs that exist just within here now I'm guessing that the size of this might be more like a hundred homes but there's probably some optimal size a size where you could sport a let's say a school of some sort a gym some shared business services and and such you wouldn't want it so big that nobody knows their neighbors and you don't want it so small that you don't get the advantages of scale let me tell you why scale is important depending where you put this you might have a lot of a lot of expenses for heating or cooling if you start with blank land which is what the the blight has been torn down to you can trench it more easily for lots of houses and then you can put in geothermal heating now geothermal takes advantage of the fact that the earth is about a constant 56 degrees once you go down I think 10 feet whatever it is so you run pipes under the ground and those pipes I think with water in them picks up the temperature of the earth and then brings that up above so if you're trying to heat your house from what it would be which is zero in the winter to what you want it to be that's maybe 68 the first 56 degrees are free because you're just using the heat from the earth and likewise if you're trying to cool it from 100 down to 75 the 56 degrees that you're taking from the earth is going to help a lot but it's far more economical if you do it in the first place it's not as economical if you're doing it for one house right so you want it this big enough to get the economies and and not too big that you have other problems I say school but I don't think we have the right ideas about school I don't love the idea of school the way it exists so I'm not necessarily thinking of a public school maybe it's a place you got to do homework and maybe that's all maybe it's a place that's a home schooling maybe it's a maybe it's an experiment in video schooling maybe there's a remote school so there's a lot of creativity that could be tried out here for training but at the very least you want somebody is a place that's quiet that people can go to kids to study and have some help maybe with a tutor you want some training facilities imagine that you start this community by training people to build it if you've if you've seen a video it's on the blight Authority right now of these insulated concrete forms ICF's insulated concrete forms there's big blocks that one human can pick up without too much trouble and they they fit together like Legos and you can see videos of people building an entire house in one day once you have the foundation so once you have the foundation is just boop boop boop so imagine some different ways that people could build their homes in a modular fashion suppose instead of painting the interior of the house you could take you know modular little blocks and just stick them onto the wall and if you want to change them out you just take out the blocks you have reuse them resell them to somebody else likes that color put up some new blocks make it interesting your house doesn't if you have to be one color it could be different blocks whatever you want so imagine all those possibilities somebody suggested shared business services for all of the home businesses in the area or anybody who wants to start a business anywhere that's a great idea especially if there are mentors that can help you find funding it turns out there's tons of government funding if you know how to get it but it's not easy you'd have to know how to get it and you'd have to know which of the many government programs fits you you have to know how to fill out the forms it's hard so suppose this community comes with its own business experts they could be on site it could be an association of people just sharing ideas we're in business you could have external people you can have apps that connect you to experts some people suggested food farms and indoor farms basically so might be depending on the climate indoor outdoor indoor farming is probably not as economical as it needs to be for an inner city situation but it's getting close and there may be some companies I listed a few at light Authority calm in the forums some that look like they're getting close so you can see those names in there I've invested in one of them they have some experimental wall farms but they don't grow every kind of vegetable so you'd probably need some Milt's now one of the big issues in the inner city is something called food equality if you haven't heard that term refers to the fact that if you're eating the wrong kind of food your energy is low you're literally not as smart you might even have behavior problems or all kinds of problems health problems of course from eating the wrong kind of food but if you had some kind of centralized food source even though it's optional you don't have to eat there you would at the very least have something that the parents could say look kids you're eating here you know food equality is over you know I mean we have food equality you just have to eat the centralized stuff less variety but you're mostly going to have an option for that there are probably other ways to get there as well you want some kind of shared gym or exercise area and maybe a dog park the reason I throw them in is that you want to also you want to manage this area for natural connections there's nothing cooler than a dog park where you take your dog to run around down doors with other dogs to get you to meet your neighbors because you always have something to talk about it's like hey is that your dog I love that and a dog how old is your dog so I've bent about dog parks and they're great for socializing same with the gym so you want a place that people can go maybe somebody suggested basketball courts that you could rent on your app so maybe you just reserve it I don't know if renting is right but suppose you had an app where you could find nine other people to play basketball and then the nine if you could schedule a time and then you've got an hour so that would optimize your court people would not be monopolizing it and everybody would would get something a imagine that you organized to make bulk purchases of the things that everybody uses so it could be things like milk and paper products so since you don't want to drive wherever you got a drive to Costco and have a Costco membership maybe the community is big enough that they can do some bulk purchases now that bulk purchasing might include wireless access it might include cable it might include insurance you can imagine a lot of things that a hundred families could negotiate for and get get better prices imagine if you will and I'll just take you through this thinking I'm not saying this is the idea again these are just a stimulating thought imagine if you started with dirt and the very first thing you built right in the middle was a training facility to train people how to build how to be builders specifically for this community so you train them and then you have them built now let's say the next thing you do is have Elon Musk's company called the boring company Bo are ing it bores holes in the grounds have them bore holes for the for the geothermal that produces a lot of dirt that you got to do something with Elon Musk has said they've already figured out how to turn that dirt into bricks on site so now you've got bricks you've got geothermal you've got a training facility that you're creating jobs and they're and they're building the homes so they feel some feel some connection to it so the idea here is that your community should help you with your jobs your social life your livability your transportation your food and if you haven't designed all that into your community it's just it's just homes all right and plopping an existing style home into the middle of the inner city and not doing anything else with the community you were security or anything else not making it affordable it doesn't get anywhere you've got to be able to make sure that they can sustain themselves in every possible way from health to security to jobs to transportation all right I'm gonna take you on a little tour of my house oh and here's another thing if you get the right kind of mix of people so that the kids have other kids to play with the adults have people who have something in common you you improve the social life immensely just by having people your same age in your same situation all right would you like to see my home I know you would that's why you're here I'm gonna turn the camera around and then I'm gonna take you around my house now keep in mind here's here's the idea I'm not suggesting that the things you see in my home would make sense in an inner city my house was not built for that but it will stimulate some ideas and let's look at that all right let's start with this lamp this lamp seems kinda random and not important but it is because with the addition of that little bit of accent light which you can't see too clearly here it completely opens up this part of the room the point of that is that if you spend just a little bit on lighting it completely changes how people perceive the livability and it costs almost nothing to put in a little bit extra of accent light next point is the view I did not optimize my house for the view so you have to kind of get up to the windows to look out now in this in a community you wouldn't have this kind of view of course but you could easily organize it so that you're always looking at something interesting whether you're looking at your window at the let's say the park or you know you're looking at interesting architecture across the way people's lives completely change if you get that right here's my workspace this is where I do all of my periscopes from typically I'm in that chair and the i.

Pad I hold it in my hand would be right in front of that chair here's where I do all my work this is a Wacom Cintiq it's a computer screen that is a drawing pad at the same time so I draw directly on the computer monitor and here's a Dilbert that you won't see for a month or two in the papers one of the things I do is that I hate desks that face the wall because you feel claustrophobic so I put my desk area so that it's facing out to the room and the view alright I'm gonna take you down the hall oh here's a big old TV and I'm going to make a point about how that might not be it might not be useful to have any kind of TV screen in modern homes here are some books I'm reading you don't care about that there's some Dilbert awards I've wand and some Dilbert dolls alright I'm not gonna show you the bedrooms they're not very interesting but look down here here's a piano you would not have these in inner-city homes but I can't imagine that you would have some homes that are optimized for different life styles you might have a homeless guy they a soundproof room for people who are musicians that might actually be your job maybe you're a professional musician they need a room to practice or two to do gigs on so I've got a little backlighting there just to show you how a little bit of light completely changes what you got going on all right take you this way here's here's a room that's sort of a playroom again this doesn't apply directly to anything in the blighted areas here's a drum set and a little portable piano christina uses the piano and i'm trying to learn the drums now here's what's interesting notice that I've set the drums up across from the TV I actually take drum drum lessons online with a live person and I was doing this as sort of a test to see how useful it is to try to take a class where the video screen instead of a you know live person it's a live person he's just happens to be on video and he you know I just just send my phone he just calls in on Face.

Time I send my phone over to the screen and I'm talking to him live he shows me how to play and you know it works pretty well so that might be a model of Education in the future that you just need her you know quiet room you take you into this room and some of you already know I'm obsessed with laundry rooms and it's because laundry rooms are rarely set up to be optimized there are a million things you need to do for example notice that I've got a little garbage on there and then some fabric softeners above the dryer you always have to throw away the little lint and various things when you're doing laundry and if you don't have a garbage right there it's ineffective so this is poor design on my part because I didn't put a place to easily put a garbage pail but I need it all the time you have to have the doors lined up so that one doesn't interfere with the other you need lots of space and here's something that I like this is a movable cart that I use for taking my laundry where I need it picking up the laundry you don't want it cetera somebody just asked me do I have somebody doing my laundry I do not here's my cat box I built a separate room just for the cats bathroom and I put in it of course a floor that's easy to clean maybe all your cast supply is here and then little area that the cat can go up and look at the window if she wants but my life is so much better because my cat box is raised I never have to bend down cat just jumps up here and jumps in there and I made it super big so that I don't have to clean it as often and then all my supplies are here and I just bag it and throw it in there temporarily all right so that's the cat room come with me downstairs I'll show you a few other things all right here's whoops something just happened on my screen that I can't get rid of okay there we go so here's my main living room there is nothing to learn on this four blighted people except this one design element you see that behind the couch there's a long table with some stools this is a really good design putting a table behind a couch because it discourages people from eating on the couch because it's just as easy to sit on this little table if you're trying to watch TV but I'm not sure a modern the house needs a television now let's look at the floors my floors are porcelain porcelain is probably too expensive for inner-city homes but there there might be something that's see the best design for a floor that has the qualities this is which is you can't stay in it you can't break it it's almost embraceable unsustainable you can just you know wash anything with a rag and if you had a Roomba one of those little vacuum vacuums that is like a robot you can have your place clean with minimal effort if you build your house with a vacuum robot assumed as part of the design you could just have a place for it to be out of the way until it does its thing this is the what I call the the crap island so the the door over there is the entrance from the garage that's where were you that's where I'm usually entering and when I enter the house I almost always have stuff I need to put down so I built this as the place you put stuff down now unfortunately it gets messy pretty easily and especially when you've got electronics and you're plugging stuff in this is kind of a mess that's the mess but I probably would have built this to have drawers for this stuff or maybe some kind of a they own cover so that you've got stuff plugged in but you don't have to look at it unless you want to so this could have been designed better I'm going to show you my kitchen again very little of this will be applicable to the inner city but it might give you some ideas notice that there's an eating area that's really just part of the kitchen it's just built in this is a really good design for a family you would want this bigger at least seating four or five but it's an excellent design to have the island there what I find is that in the modern world people rarely want to use the dining table so I didn't want to have a separate room for a dining table so I just floated it out in the main part of a central thoroughfare and it'll probably just get rid of this because I've literally I don't think in five years I've had a meal at that table so I might just get rid of it all right so I would say in a low-cost home a dining room would be unnecessary and here I've got a few microwaves and microwaves are problematic some say because they don't they destroy the nutrients but I'm not I don't know the science there here's a warming drawer we've got the all kinds of burners here and a griddle in the middle so this middle thing heats up so it's like a griddle very handy I've got a couple of dishwashers you need that in the big house now here's a feature called a appliance garage when you open it up here your appliances the messy stuff has carbs and just doesn't look good on the counters you can shove it all in there and it stays plugged in and want to use them you just drag them out and they're already plugged in it's a very good feature now I'm a big fan of not putting the the oven and the cooktop facing the wall it's much better if you're facing out if if there's a television in the mix that's even better here's the back kitchen oh and here's something this little closet right here is a little broom closet these two little doors and I once lived in a house that no broom closet near the kitchen I had to go three stories to get a broom it was the worst design ever you should of course make sure that you've got a place for your animals if you have pet food here I built a little cart that I use to clean up the house if let's say there's if you've entertained you need to go pick up a lot of dishes etc.

I've got pullout drawers for recycling and garbage very handy and there they look good when they when they're closed all right let me take you down this way so I'm skipping the bedrooms there's nothing interesting in there so here was my biggest mistake when I built it's a home theater and seats 10 if I were to build a house today I doubt I would include this and here's the reason in today's modern home and the way people live almost nobody ever wants to watch the same show at the same time we all just use our phones and our headphones and it's just better so the home theater you don't need and I would question in a low-income house if you even need a television of any kind if you have smartphones so that would be a question I have down here sorry this is a little blurry I've got a central wiring closet here so you've got all kinds of stuff here it's good home designed to do a sort of a home run situation where all your wiring goes to a central place now here's the interesting thing when you've got all this equipment in here this closet gets warm so I actually have to cool it but I always thought it would be better to see if you can recycle the heat from your electronics and make it part of the house and heating this was a pool table that nobody plays on except the cat that's a cat toy in the pool table that's all I use it work and here's an example of how important it is to have the outdoors coming in so the city here is the little sunspot that I sometimes sit - right here's a little home gym I have that I use when I'm not going to the gym I prefer going to the gym just to get out of the house but sometimes I don't have time so I might use this one here's a here's my backyard there's nothing to learn here except that if you don't get enough vitamin D from the Sun you have all kinds of problems attitude problems and energy and health and whatever so you should design a home so that people are encouraged to go outside for something just to be outside to get that vitamin D so it's not going to look like this in the inner-city but there should be someplace that's sort of right outside that could encourage you to go get some Sun all right Snickers wants to go out here's a sauna you won't see that in the inner city and then this room is the most surprising room well I'll just show it to you so most inner cities homes don't have an indoor tennis court this is the reason I built my house tennis was my passion for most of my life and so I built this here I no longer play tennis because I don't like the repetitive motion it's not good for me but you can imagine something along these lines not a tennis court but some kind of an indoor facility that people can rent and run around when the weather is bad all right that's enough of that and then here we've got a dog door that goes to an outdoor area that's a smallish area that just has artificial grass so I don't have to let the dog out she can just go out there and do her thing it was real easy to clean up awfully artificial grass it's much easier to clean up the dog stuff from the artificial grass then it is from real grass all right for a second alright I'm gonna wrap up and was this useful did anybody learn anything from this no I'm not in the gated community I I resist gated communities I don't I don't love them why an indoor tennis court when you live in California I have the kind of skin that just begs for skin cancer and even though California is a wonderful climate most of the time it's too hot or too cold or too dark good all right we're getting good putt comments on this so make sure you check out blight Authority calm if you know anybody who designs communities I would love to have their input and we will talk to you later but for now I hope you enjoyed that and I hope that was useful now let's see if we can do something good for the inner cities that would be an amazing an amazing outcome if we could get there and I'll talk to you later

doo-doo-doo-doo pom pom pom hey

everybody

I'll let the people coming in catch up

with us we're gonna be talking about the

blight Authority some of you already

know what that is but it's a nonprofit

effort led by Bill pulled a and I'm

helping out in which we're trying to

come up with some ideas some creative

ideas for what to do with the blighted

areas that the blight Authority has

already cleared and some that will be

cleared so there will be spaces in urban

areas that will be brought down to dirt

getting rid of all the blighted areas

that essentially nobody owned anymore so

it makes the land almost free almost so

what do you do with it

what do you do with it that would help

the inner city people I'm not talking

about building shopping malls and you

know yuppie condos I'm talking about

what can you do with that land that

helps the people in this city that that

addresses the low income world and I

like to use as a standard that if you're

building homes that don't work for a

single parent you haven't gotten it

right yet right if you're building in an

urban area if you don't have a way for a

single parent to afford to live there

and to thrive you haven't quite designed

it right so I'm going to talk about some

ideas and then I'm going to do a little

tour of my house now I know what you're

thinking you're thinking wait a minute a

rich guys house will teach us nothing

about how to build for low-income people

that's mostly true that's about 80

percent true but I'm going to use my

house as partly a reason to get people

to watch this so it's just really to

attract eyeballs but also there are a

number of things that will remind you of

a concept when you see my house there

would be useful for any kind of a house

so we'll we'll get to that after I talk

about a few ideas that are already

coming through for the blight Authority

and I've added some of my own idea

just to sort of pull it together in a

package all right so here's the idea

you've got a big patch of blank space in

an urban area in fact there are lots of

these and there will be more of them as

the blight that already exists is torn

down in the future and a number of these

already exists thanks to Bill Ponte is

good work

with the blade Authority aid nonprofit

that works with cities this is important

they work with the mayors with the with

the community they really get the

community involved to know what to do

and and you know get them excited about

what's happening Bo but the next phase

after your tear stuff down is what do

you deal with it and if you can't figure

out what to do with it that's productive

well then you've only taken it half way

it's a good half but let's see if we can

get the other half so imagine if you

will this this block of land that's in

an inner city and you're trying to think

what to do with it here are some ideas

for those of you new to watching my

periscope any idea you see me present

you should assume it's the bad version

of the idea in other words I'm just

trying to stimulate your thought so

don't get too hung up on these ideas I'm

gonna comment first on the person who

said no socialism keep in mind first of

all that these are these are very small

parts of the entire country and nobody

has to live there we're not talking

about making the entire city this way

we're talking about experiments small

experiments

some of them might look something like

this some of them might have no

socialism some might have some

experiments of sharing things like tools

or sharing rides something like that but

I'm not going to call that socialism I

think that's a great disservice to try

to label things away sometimes sharing

works sometimes it doesn't

maybe we can experiment find out where

does where it doesn't all right so that

said here are some ideas just a

stimulate thought the number one thing

that I hear about

improving urban areas is that you have

to take care of security first if you

don't do that it doesn't matter what you

build because nobody wants to live there

nobody wants a business there nobody

wants to shop there nobody wants to

raise children there so security has got

to be your absolute base requirement now

you also don't want a police state so

how do you get to a gentle security

where nobody is getting beaten up you

know there's there's nothing abusive

going on you haven't given up too much

privacy but you still got a safe space

I'll give you some ideas again not the

greatest ideas in the world necessarily

but they'll get you thinking imagine if

you will that you put a ring of homes

around the perimeter and the houses act

as part of the let's say gated community

normally you see a gated community for a

wealthy neighborhood but wealthy

neighborhoods don't have that much crime

it'd be a lot more useful to put a

little gate around a an area that's in

an inner city now of course you'd have

actual gates so that they're you know

emergency exits and services can come

through but you'd have some security at

the gates now imagine if you will that

there's external cameras on both sides

of the homes on all of the public areas

plus the homeowner has an option that

comes with the house this is important

the video security comes with the house

you don't have an option of not getting

it it's just a cheap camera goes to the

internet you can look at it on your

phone now I just saw a commercial for

ring ring calm I'm not doing a

commercial for them that I have no

interest in their company but they they

just showed a upgrade that allows you to

alert your neighbors on your phone if

something fishy is you see in your

camera so if you see somebody suspicious

at your front door you've got an option

to alert the neighbors and they get

ping-ping-ping and then everybody can

look through their own cameras can look

out the window

can alert the police whatever they need

to do that would be amazing

I mean I think that would really make a

difference here's another idea

again just ideas imagine if you said

we're going to build this community and

then we're going to reserve some of the

unit's they have a good view of things

for people who are either current police

police workers or ex police people who

are trained to identify problems and to

know what to do if they come up now if

this police officer moves it's still a

designated it might be a first responder

or or police but somebody who's trained

so you make sure that you've got a few

of them in key areas because if they're

if their app goes off they know what to

do all right you want somebody who's got

a legal right to own a weapon and knows

when to use it and when not in your

community very helpful I've got a

neighbor who was in the police force

down the road and I gotta tell you I

felt a lot safer knowing him personally

and knowing that he was in the

neighborhood makes a big difference then

next thing you want to do if you got

your security right is you want to get

your transportation right you could have

a lot of stuff here that doesn't require

you to leave home so if you have an

app-based community things you need you

can order on your apps if you need an

uber you can order it on your app maybe

you don't even have private cars you

might you know one of the experiments

might be let's build a community where

nobody has a car but you still need to

get places so let's say there's a bus

that takes you to mass transit on a

regular basis and let's say that you can

see where the bus is on your app so you

don't even have to go outside until the

bus is you know approaching but better

yet let's say the bus driver has the app

- and the bus driver can see all the

people who are converging on the bus so

you pull up in your bus

people get on normally you wouldn't know

if there's somebody around the corner

who's almost there and you pull off but

if you're looking at your app you're

like oh there's Bob Bob's right around

the corner I'll wait for 10 more

there's Bob so suddenly just adding an

app to a shuttle to mass transit makes

it a whole friendlier situation much the

way uber did you could add a shared

garage possibly so that maybe some

people had private cars or maybe there

were your own private rental Buber type

situation just for the neighbors you can

see if that worked that would be another

experiment and maybe there were some

shared tools as well so you don't need a

garage if you can go you can go borrow a

tool you know everybody knows who has it

you borrow it on your app you make sure

that it's there before you go borrow it

oh yeah I need one of those okay

so you could have a shared tool thing

people do that already I don't know if

it works well or not

then imagine again for those just

joining these are not the best ideas in

the world I'm just trying to stimulate

thought so imagine if each of these

residents had built into it a storefront

or office on the street side with a

separate entrance and a separate

bathroom right if you are living here

and you owned both the residents and the

storefront and when I say storefront I

don't mean a big-box I'm talking about

one room size of a small one-person

office with the bathroom for a guests

and for yourself and if you had a

business to go into there well you've

already got your job so your job in your

home become the same place and if we've

done a good job in construction and

brought the cost way down and the cost

of the land was almost free well you

could run a little shop here now suppose

you don't want to run the shop you don't

have a home business you don't want

anything to do with the business but you

like living here you could rent it out

so if you could rent the front of the

shop to somebody from the outside they

can't get in your house they're just

running their little business there

suddenly you're a landlord so you've

gone from a person who can't afford a

house to a person who's a landlord and

one move you already have a job now that

wouldn't be enough necessarily to pay

for your home you might need to do more

but if you were a person who had a good

job outside of the community you could

take your bus there somebody's working

in your home you've got two incomes

something all right now I'm imagining oh

and I'm also imagining some kind of a

way that if people have pets they don't

need to be home all day to to walk them

maybe there's a little area that your

dog has a dog door and they can do their

business in a place that isn't too you

know isn't too bad for other people to

look at easy to clean up artificial lawn

is the best I'll show you mine in a

little bit

now there are a number of ideas that

we're receiving on blight Authority calm

which is where there's a forum where you

can suggest things that you could do in

places like this and we're hoping that

we can stimulate some more ideas but

people said things like well just go

through the list suppose you had a

central food source just for the

residents and it could be simply like a

togo's it could be just sandwiches and

salads keep it simple that doesn't mean

you can't just buy your own food

anywhere you want you can still do

anything you want but if your kid gets

home before you do and they need a

sandwich wouldn't it be great if your

twelve-year-old could look at the app

and if approved by the parent they can

say yeah it's after school and I want a

ham sandwich and they just hit it

maybe the ham sandwiches dropped in a

drop box at your house imagine building

these homes so that they're optimized

for drones maybe there's a place on the

roof for a drone to land

maybe there's a hot box for a hot meal

if somebody's dropping off that once

it's dropping off nobody can get into it

maybe there's a cold box for your milk

so those are some ideas so you might

have a simple place now the beauty this

is also a number of these things I'm

going to talk about would provide first

jobs in some cases a second you know

real jobs but at least teenager or first

jobs

for a lot of people without leaving the

community so if you've got an app to

find a babysitter or an app to find a

pet walker and you know an app to find

somebody who does various services you

could you could have a lot of jobs that

exist just within here now I'm guessing

that the size of this might be more like

a hundred homes but there's probably

some optimal size a size where you could

sport a let's say a school of some sort

a gym some shared business services and

and such you wouldn't want it so big

that nobody knows their neighbors and

you don't want it so small that you

don't get the advantages of scale let me

tell you why scale is important

depending where you put this you might

have a lot of a lot of expenses for

heating or cooling if you start with

blank land which is what the the blight

has been torn down to you can trench it

more easily for lots of houses and then

you can put in geothermal heating now

geothermal takes advantage of the fact

that the earth is about a constant 56

degrees once you go down I think 10 feet

whatever it is so you run pipes under

the ground and those pipes I think with

water in them picks up the temperature

of the earth and then brings that up

above so if you're trying to heat your

house from what it would be which is

zero in the winter to what you want it

to be that's maybe 68 the first 56

degrees are free because you're just

using the heat from the earth and

likewise if you're trying to cool it

from 100 down to 75 the 56 degrees that

you're taking from the earth is going to

help a lot but it's far more economical

if you do it in the first place

it's not as economical if you're doing

it for one house right so you want it

this big enough to get the economies and

and not too big that you have other

problems

I say school but I don't think we have

the right ideas about school I don't

love the

idea of school the way it exists so I'm

not necessarily thinking of a public

school maybe it's a place you got to do

homework and maybe that's all maybe it's

a place that's a home schooling maybe

it's a maybe it's an experiment in video

schooling maybe there's a remote school

so there's a lot of creativity that

could be tried out here for training but

at the very least you want somebody is a

place that's quiet that people can go to

kids to study and have some help maybe

with a tutor you want some training

facilities imagine that you start this

community by training people to build it

if you've if you've seen a video it's on

the blight Authority right now of these

insulated concrete forms ICF's insulated

concrete forms there's big blocks that

one human can pick up without too much

trouble and they they fit together like

Legos and you can see videos of people

building an entire house in one day once

you have the foundation so once you have

the foundation is just boop boop boop

so imagine some different ways that

people could build their homes in a

modular fashion suppose instead of

painting the interior of the house you

could take you know modular little

blocks and just stick them onto the wall

and if you want to change them out you

just take out the blocks you have reuse

them resell them to somebody else likes

that color put up some new blocks make

it interesting your house doesn't if you

have to be one color it could be

different blocks whatever you want so

imagine all those possibilities somebody

suggested shared business services for

all of the home businesses in the area

or anybody who wants to start a business

anywhere that's a great idea especially

if there are mentors that can help you

find funding it turns out there's tons

of government funding if you know how to

get it but it's not easy you'd have to

know how to get it and you'd have to

know which of the many government

programs fits you you

have to know how to fill out the forms

it's hard so suppose this community

comes with its own business experts they

could be on site it could be an

association of people just sharing ideas

we're in business

you could have external people you can

have apps that connect you to experts

some people suggested food farms and

indoor farms basically so might be

depending on the climate indoor outdoor

indoor farming is probably not as

economical as it needs to be for an

inner city situation but it's getting

close and there may be some companies I

listed a few at light Authority calm in

the forums some that look like they're

getting close so you can see those names

in there I've invested in one of them

they have some experimental wall farms

but they don't grow every kind of

vegetable so you'd probably need some

Milt's now one of the big issues in the

inner city is something called food

equality if you haven't heard that term

refers to the fact that if you're eating

the wrong kind of food your energy is

low you're literally not as smart you

might even have behavior problems or all

kinds of problems health problems of

course from eating the wrong kind of

food but if you had some kind of

centralized food source even though it's

optional you don't have to eat there you

would at the very least have something

that the parents could say look kids

you're eating here you know food

equality is over you know I mean we have

food equality you just have to eat the

centralized stuff less variety but

you're mostly going to have an option

for that there are probably other ways

to get there as well you want some kind

of shared gym or exercise area and maybe

a dog park the reason I throw them in is

that you want to also you want to manage

this area for natural connections

there's nothing cooler than a dog park

where you take your dog to run around

down doors with other dogs to get you to

meet your neighbors because you always

have something to talk about it's like

hey is that your dog I love that

and a dog how old is your dog so I've

bent about dog parks and they're great

for socializing same with the gym so you

want a place that people can go maybe

somebody suggested basketball courts

that you could rent on your app so maybe

you just reserve it I don't know if

renting is right but suppose you had an

app where you could find nine other

people to play basketball and then the

nine if you could schedule a time and

then you've got an hour so that would

optimize your court people would not be

monopolizing it and everybody would

would get something a imagine that you

organized to make bulk purchases of the

things that everybody uses so it could

be things like milk and paper products

so since you don't want to drive

wherever you got a drive to Costco and

have a Costco membership maybe the

community is big enough that they can do

some bulk purchases now that bulk

purchasing might include wireless access

it might include cable it might include

insurance you can imagine a lot of

things that a hundred families could

negotiate for and get get better prices

imagine if you will and I'll just take

you through this thinking I'm not saying

this is the idea again these are just a

stimulating thought

imagine if you started with dirt and the

very first thing you built right in the

middle was a training facility to train

people how to build how to be builders

specifically for this community so you

train them and then you have them built

now let's say the next thing you do is

have Elon Musk's company called the

boring company Bo are ing it bores holes

in the grounds have them bore holes for

the for the geothermal that produces a

lot of dirt that you got to do something

with Elon Musk has said they've already

figured out how to turn that dirt into

bricks on site

so now you've got bricks you've got

geothermal you've got a training

facility that you're creating jobs and

they're and they're building the homes

so they feel some feel some connection

to it so the idea here is that your

community should help you with your jobs

your social life your livability your

transportation your food and if you

haven't designed all that into your

community it's just it's just homes all

right and plopping an existing style

home into the middle of the inner city

and not doing anything else with the

community you were security or anything

else not making it affordable it doesn't

get anywhere you've got to be able to

make sure that they can sustain

themselves in every possible way from

health to security to jobs to

transportation all right I'm gonna take

you on a little tour of my house

oh and here's another thing if you get

the right kind of mix of people so that

the kids have other kids to play with

the adults have people who have

something in common

you you improve the social life

immensely just by having people your

same age in your same situation all

right would you like to see my home I

know you would that's why you're here

I'm gonna turn the camera around and

then I'm gonna take you around my house

now keep in mind here's here's the idea

I'm not suggesting that the things you

see in my home would make sense in an

inner city my house was not built for

that but it will stimulate some ideas

and let's look at that

all right let's start with this lamp

this lamp seems kinda random and not

important but it is because with the

addition of that little bit of accent

light which you can't see too clearly

here it completely opens up this part of

the room the point of that is that if

you spend just a little bit on lighting

it completely changes how people

perceive the livability and it costs

almost nothing to put in a little bit

extra of accent light next point is the

view I did not optimize my house for the

view so you have to kind of get up to

the windows to look out now in this in a

community you wouldn't have this kind of

view of course but you could easily

organize it so that you're always

looking at something interesting whether

you're looking at your window at the

let's say the park or you know you're

looking at interesting architecture

across the way people's lives completely

change if you get that right here's my

workspace this is where I do all of my

periscopes from typically I'm in that

chair and the iPad I hold it in my hand

would be right in front of that chair

here's where I do all my work this is a

Wacom Cintiq it's a computer screen that

is a drawing pad at the same time so I

draw directly on the computer monitor

and here's a Dilbert that you won't see

for a month or two in the papers one of

the things I do is that I hate desks

that face the wall because you feel

claustrophobic so I put my desk area so

that it's facing out to the room and the

view alright I'm gonna take you down the

hall oh here's a big old TV and I'm

going to make a point about how that

might not be it might not be useful to

have any kind of TV screen in modern

homes here are some books I'm reading

you don't care about that

[Music]

there's some Dilbert awards I've wand

and some Dilbert dolls alright I'm not

gonna show you the bedrooms they're not

very interesting but look down here

here's a piano you would not have these

in inner-city homes but I can't imagine

that you would have some homes that are

optimized for different life styles you

might have a homeless guy they a

soundproof room for people who are

musicians that might actually be your

job maybe you're a professional musician

they need a room to practice or two to

do gigs on so I've got a little

backlighting there just to show you how

a little bit of light completely changes

what you got going on all right take you

this way here's here's a room that's

sort of a playroom again this doesn't

apply directly to anything in the

blighted areas here's a drum set and a

little portable piano christina uses the

piano and i'm trying to learn the drums

now here's what's interesting

notice that I've set the drums up across

from the TV I actually take drum drum

lessons online with a live person and I

was doing this as sort of a test to see

how useful it is to try to take a class

where the video screen instead of a you

know live person it's a live person he's

just happens to be on video and he you

know I just just send my phone he just

calls in on FaceTime I send my phone

over to the screen and I'm talking to

him live he shows me how to play and you

know it works pretty well so that might

be a model of Education in the future

that you just need her you know quiet

room you take you into this room and

some of you already know I'm obsessed

with laundry rooms

and it's because laundry rooms are

rarely set up to be optimized there are

a million things you need to do for

example notice that I've got a little

garbage on there and then some fabric

softeners above the dryer you always

have to throw away the little lint and

various things when you're doing laundry

and if you don't have a garbage right

there it's ineffective so this is poor

design on my part because I didn't put a

place to easily put a garbage pail but I

need it all the time you have to have

the doors lined up so that one doesn't

interfere with the other you need lots

of space and here's something that I

like this is a movable cart that I use

for taking my laundry where I need it

picking up the laundry you don't want it

cetera somebody just asked me do I have

somebody doing my laundry

I do not here's my cat box I built a

separate room just for the cats bathroom

and I put in it of course a floor that's

easy to clean maybe all your cast supply

is here and then little area that the

cat can go up and look at the window if

she wants but my life is so much better

because my cat box is raised I never

have to bend down cat just jumps up here

and jumps in there and I made it super

big so that I don't have to clean it as

often and then all my supplies are here

and I just bag it and throw it in there

temporarily all right so that's the cat

room come with me downstairs I'll show

you a few other things

[Music]

all right here's whoops something just

happened on my screen that I can't get

rid of okay there we go so here's my

main living room there is nothing to

learn on this four blighted people

except this one design element you see

that behind the couch there's a long

table with some stools this is a really

good design putting a table behind a

couch because it discourages people from

eating on the couch because it's just as

easy to sit on this little table if

you're trying to watch TV but I'm not

sure a modern the house needs a

television now let's look at the floors

my floors are porcelain porcelain is

probably too expensive for inner-city

homes but there there might be something

that's see the best design for a floor

that has the qualities this is which is

you can't stay in it you can't break it

it's almost embraceable unsustainable

you can just you know wash anything with

a rag and if you had a Roomba one of

those little vacuum vacuums that is

like a robot you can have your place

clean with minimal effort if you build

your house with a vacuum robot assumed

as part of the design you could just

have a place for it to be out of the way

until it does its thing this is the what

I call the the crap island so the the

door over there is the entrance from the

garage that's where were you that's

where I'm usually entering and when I

enter the house I almost always have

stuff I need to put down so I built this

as the place you put stuff down now

unfortunately it gets messy pretty

easily and especially when you've got

electronics and you're plugging stuff in

this is kind of a mess that's the mess

but I probably would have built this to

have drawers for this stuff or maybe

some kind of a

they own cover so that you've got stuff

plugged in but you don't have to look at

it unless you want to so this could have

been designed better I'm going to show

you my kitchen again very little of this

will be applicable to the inner city but

it might give you some ideas notice that

there's an eating area that's really

just part of the kitchen it's just built

in this is a really good design for a

family you would want this bigger at

least seating four or five but it's an

excellent design to have the island

there what I find is that in the modern

world people rarely want to use the

dining table so I didn't want to have a

separate room for a dining table so I

just floated it out in the main part of

a central thoroughfare and it'll

probably just get rid of this because

I've literally I don't think in five

years I've had a meal at that table so I

might just get rid of it all right so I

would say in a low-cost home a dining

room would be unnecessary

and here I've got a few microwaves and

microwaves are problematic some say

because they don't they destroy the

nutrients but I'm not I don't know the

science there here's a warming drawer

we've got the all kinds of burners here

and a griddle in the middle so this

middle thing heats up so it's like a

griddle very handy I've got a couple of

dishwashers you need that in the big

house now here's a feature called a

appliance garage

when you open it up here your appliances

the messy stuff has carbs and just

doesn't look good on the counters you

can shove it all in there and it stays

plugged in and want to use them you just

drag them out and they're already

plugged in it's a very good feature now

I'm a big fan of not putting the the

oven and the cooktop facing the wall

it's much better if you're facing out if

if there's a television in the mix

that's even better here's the back

kitchen oh and here's something this

little closet right here is a little

broom closet these two little doors and

I once lived in a house that no broom

closet near the kitchen I had to go

three stories to get a broom it was the

worst design ever you should of course

make sure that you've got a place for

your animals if you have pet food here I

built a little cart that I use to clean

up the house if let's say there's if

you've entertained you need to go pick

up a lot of dishes etc I've got pullout

drawers for recycling and garbage very

handy and there they look good when they

when they're closed all right let me

take you down this way so I'm skipping

the bedrooms there's nothing interesting

in there so here was my biggest mistake

when I built it's a home theater and

seats 10 if I were to build a house

today I doubt I would include this and

here's the reason in today's modern home

and the way people live almost nobody

ever wants to watch the same show at the

same time we all just use our phones and

our headphones and it's just better so

the home theater you don't need and I

would question in a low-income house if

you even need a television

of any kind if you have smartphones so

that would be a question I have down

here sorry this is a little blurry I've

got a central wiring closet here so

you've got all kinds of stuff here it's

good home designed to do a sort of a

home run situation where all your wiring

goes to a central place now here's the

interesting thing when you've got all

this equipment in here

this closet gets warm so I actually have

to cool it but I always thought it would

be better to see if you can recycle the

heat from your electronics and make it

part of the house and heating this was a

pool table that nobody plays on except

the cat that's a cat toy in the pool

table that's all I use it work

and here's an example of how important

it is to have the outdoors coming in so

the city here is the little sunspot that

I sometimes sit - right here's a little

home gym I have that I use when I'm not

going to the gym I prefer going to the

gym just to get out of the house but

sometimes I don't have time so I might

use this one here's a here's my backyard

there's nothing to learn here except

that if you don't get enough vitamin D

from the Sun you have all kinds of

problems attitude problems and energy

and health and whatever so you should

design a home so that people are

encouraged to go outside for something

just to be outside to get that vitamin D

so it's not going to look like this in

the inner-city but there should be

someplace that's sort of right outside

that could encourage you to go get some

Sun

[Music]

all right Snickers wants to go out

here's a sauna you won't see that in the

inner city and then this room is the

most surprising room well I'll just show

it to you so most inner cities homes

don't have an indoor tennis court this

is the reason I built my house tennis

was my passion for most of my life

and so I built this here I no longer

play tennis because I don't like the

repetitive motion it's not good for me

but you can imagine something along

these lines not a tennis court but some

kind of an indoor facility that people

can rent and run around when the weather

is bad all right that's enough of that

and then here we've got a dog door that

goes to an outdoor area that's a

smallish area that just has artificial

grass so I don't have to let the dog out

she can just go out there and do her

thing it was real easy to clean up

awfully artificial grass it's much

easier to clean up the dog stuff from

the artificial grass then it is from

real grass all right

[Music]

for a second alright I'm gonna wrap up

and was this useful

did anybody learn anything from this no

I'm not in the gated community I I

resist gated communities I don't I don't

love them why an indoor tennis court

when you live in California I have the

kind of skin that just begs for skin

cancer and even though California is a

wonderful climate most of the time it's

too hot or too cold or too dark good all

right we're getting good putt comments

on this so make sure you check out

blight Authority calm if you know

anybody who designs communities I would

love to have their input and we will

talk to you later but for now I hope you

enjoyed that and I hope that was useful

now let's see if we can do something

good for the inner cities that would be

an amazing an amazing outcome if we

could get there and I'll talk to you

later