[sneak]

Everyone productive and working can afford a house with a yard now. You’ll be a few dozen miles from others.

If you want everyone to be able to afford a house with a yard within walking distance of downtown Palo Alto, there aren’t enough of them for everyone that wants to do that, and AI (and utopia) can’t change that. Proximity to others creates scarcity because of basic physical laws. This is why California is expensive.

This is something I always wondered about in Banks’ post-scarcity utopian Culture novels. How do they decide who gets to live next door to the coolest/best restaurant or bar or social gathering place? Does Hub (the AI that runs the habitat, and notionally is the city) simply decide and adjudicate like a dictator or king?

[woile]

In Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota, part of what transforms society into an utopia is the development of some kind of flying car that can take you anywhere in the world in under 2hrs, making borders irrelevant. This transit system is coordinated by a special group.

I would suspect The Culture would have some means to travel very fast. But you are right that it's never explained. In "The player of games" I think the main character lives in a beautiful house with an incredible view, and I always wondered, how did he get that house?

If you think about, the problem could be solved even now, you could use fast trains to connect small cities, and replace cars completely.

[Ekaros]

I think in that same book there was scene about going far fast. Essentially doing that was still huge energy expenditure and done rarely. Just it being done for main character told that it was something Minds considered important.

Culture is bit weird post-scarcity utopia. The space habitats are big and housing in such are plentiful. And basically just given away as toys to placate the fleshbags.

[woile]

You reminded me that in the culture series a mind can teleport people through "Displacement". It's a very fast, but at the same time I don't think it serves for what OP wants, as it's very risky. It's like planes, we don't hand them spite of being very fast haha

[sneak]

It’s “very risky” in that it kills or fucks people up one in a million times. This is roughly 10x more dangerous than the average car trip in the USA, so, quite dangerous.

As TPOG is basically a scathing social commentary of the global west, the fact that something as low risk as driving to and from work for five days in a row was regarded as so dangerous as to only be undertaken in life or death necessity was not lost on me. Cars are insanity.

[daemonologist]

I think base case yes, Hub just assigns you something (appropriate, and accommodating your requests as much as possible), but highly desirable locations would be bartered/traded for favors/given to a friend.

I also think that in such a utopia the maximum density would just be a lot lower - no pressure to live near a job or amenities, better transportation, and it'd be easy to move.

[gpderetta]

In "look to windward", on an orbital, limited tickets for a concert for a famous composer are assigned randomly. A black market forms for those tickets, mostly based on barter as of course they don't have money.

[sneak]

Unless they’d outlawed money, some unit of account and medium of exchange must emerge naturally, even in a post-scarcity society.

[edem]

Yeah they can, if the want isolation, no internet or water and no friends around them.