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by Hexayurt 3956 days ago
Hi, I'm Vinay, the hexayurt guy, a Hacker News regular, also the release coordinator for Ethereum. You might remember me from a post I did about Ethereum recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977146

I'll be around if you have any questions.
3 comments
cagenut 3956 days ago
I just watched one of your youtube/talks, and you address the rural-vs-cities issue by saying half of everyone lives rural and its much harder to solve cities so its a place to start.

But as the suburbs have taught us, sprawl is incredibly costly. Raising the standard of living for spread out peoples is harder because by definition its going to involve more transport energy cost and less economies of scale.

Also, at an almost philosophical sense, the single-family dwelling is itself a symptom of the problem. Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that. Shared walls mean shared lives, or more importantly, acknowledge the fact that we have shared lives and need to make the best of it.

I don't think we solve this via 1-unit structures housing <10 people a pop. And history shows that hundreds-unit structures over did it. How do we create cheap, open-source 10 - 100 unit, 2 - 6 floor, structures. Something that could actually go in those slums you mention (which these yurts would get destroyed in).

Anyway hope this didn't come off too critical, I really appreciate that you're even working on this problem and presenting it so clearly.

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Hexayurt 3955 days ago
Ah, you want to take a look at https://angel.co/houslets which is looking at multi-story stuff with much the same design philosophy as the hexayurt (use whole panels, get modern materials deployed in sensible ways, keep the building process simple and so on) but pointed at urban densities.

I like this project a lot.

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PopeOfNope 3955 days ago
> Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that.

Careful. You're fighting millenia of human nature here. That typically doesn't end well.

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PhasmaFelis 3955 days ago
You think single-family homes are human nature?
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PopeOfNope 3955 days ago
Why focus on housing? Housing is one thing that people will find no matter where they are. It's hard to beat corrugated steel and tents in terms of cost. The bigger issue is land. Where are you going to put these yurts, aside from burning man?
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PhasmaFelis 3955 days ago
> It's hard to beat corrugated steel and tents in terms of cost.

From TFA:

> In disaster relief applications the hexayurt can cost less than a tent, and be constructed in far larger quantities than tent supplies allow.

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ilaksh 3955 days ago
Reminds me of an idea I had http://runvnc.github.io/tinytenthouse/

How do you handle ventilation, heating/cooling, bathroom, fuel for cooking, etc.?

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