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Post by the light works on Nov 18, 2020 16:14:23 GMT
okay, this one isn't as scary soshulist as many of my ideas, but it keeps coming into my mind that if I were in the business of building apartment block towers (in a city with decent public transit), I would be inclined to put a generously sized parking garage on the lower levels, have a loading dock and freight elevator available for move in and move out; and either set up my own car rental company or collaborate with a car rental company to have a car share program available to the tenants. the logic is that first, it would add value to the rental; and second, it would remove a need for car ownership among a demographic that would only use a car occasionally. if the program was partnered with a rental agency, there would even be a bit of cushion for having everybody wanting to use a car on the same weekend. I've thought sort of along these lines. My thought is that, perhaps in the future, a person orders a year's worth of stuff, it arrives on a pallet and the side of the building can open up to take it in. With your loading dock lift set up, all that's required is a hand trolly pallet forklift and a wide front door on each apartment. Of course storage, the need for deep freezers and the continued need to get weekly fresh vegetables and fruit or whatever makes this additional concept (atop yours) a pipedream. growing up, our beef for the year arrived in the spring and we put her in the freezer in the fall, plus we canned all our fruit for the year in September. the biggest problem with your theory is the average person no longer has the generational knowledge of planning in advance. (in fact, I've speculated the whole toilet paper problem is that the average person has no concept of what a 2 week supply of toilet paper looks like) [tangent] we tried non contact grocery shopping yesterday via online ordering and pick up and they substituted a different grade of TP for the one I ordered. something that would be minor for other people, but Mrs T is very picky. the online shopping interface is funky, in that it should let people filter by brand and or size, and any product should have a "substitute a different brand" or "substitute a different size" or "don't substitute" option. [/tangent] I can definitely see a cooperative apartment complex having a central meat locker/pantry facility, and all the tenants can get together and order bulk shipments of food - and essentially get a delivery from a wholesaler. but the average apartment complex would never get their act together to that degree. consider that BIL works in a grocery store and sees some customers come in multiple times every day.
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Post by wvengineer on Nov 18, 2020 19:10:32 GMT
Something else to consider is how much do people actuallyu cook in these days?
A couple years ago when I visited my cousin-in-law who lives in Brooklyn, He had a VERY tiny kitchen in his apartment. you could count the total square footage of counter space he had on one hand with fingers left over. Most of that was taken up by the coffee maker. While this was not a high class apartment by any means, it was also very expensive by my standards. For him, the only things they ate at home were a basic breakfast and some times deserts in the evening. EVERYTHING else was either takeout, delivery, or restaurants. That is just life in NYC. Most people just don't eat at home. So there is no need for the apartment to have central food storage if people don't use it.
Maybe a different way to look at it would be for the apartment to have an in-house grocery store that residents could order food from and have it delivered to their door step? It would simplify central food storage greatly.
Here is an idea with elevators: Most apartment buildings I have been in (this includes the dorms I was in during college...) will have 2 or 3 elevators for residents to get to higher floors. Could you design these elevators in such a way that for normal use, they operate independently, but if needed, the walls of the cars could be removed and they be setup to run synchronized with each other? Basically be able to turn the passenger elevators into a single cargo elevator when needed? That would be a lot cheaper and more space efficient than having a separate cargo elevator in a building.
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Post by the light works on Nov 18, 2020 19:33:21 GMT
Something else to consider is how much do people actuallyu cook in these days? A couple years ago when I visited my cousin-in-law who lives in Brooklyn, He had a VERY tiny kitchen in his apartment. you could count the total square footage of counter space he had on one hand with fingers left over. Most of that was taken up by the coffee maker. While this was not a high class apartment by any means, it was also very expensive by my standards. For him, the only things they ate at home were a basic breakfast and some times deserts in the evening. EVERYTHING else was either takeout, delivery, or restaurants. That is just life in NYC. Most people just don't eat at home. So there is no need for the apartment to have central food storage if people don't use it. Maybe a different way to look at it would be for the apartment to have an in-house grocery store that residents could order food from and have it delivered to their door step? It would simplify central food storage greatly. Here is an idea with elevators: Most apartment buildings I have been in (this includes the dorms I was in during college...) will have 2 or 3 elevators for residents to get to higher floors. Could you design these elevators in such a way that for normal use, they operate independently, but if needed, the walls of the cars could be removed and they be setup to run synchronized with each other? Basically be able to turn the passenger elevators into a single cargo elevator when needed? That would be a lot cheaper and more space efficient than having a separate cargo elevator in a building. I see that being an engineering and certification nightmare. design of the system would be relatively straightforward: you'd want a mechanical interlock system to lock the two cars together, probably involving telescoping wall ceiling and floor sections; a clutch or a valve system to cause the drive mechanism to operate as a unit. it might be challenging having two hydraulic elevators synchronise, but a mechanical drive shouldn't be so bad. you'd want the elevators to essentially be back to back, so the door would be on the end. an alternative would be to simply have one elevator rated and sized to be able to accommodate the largest appliance or piece of furniture you'd expect to move; and be in use as a passenger elevator for normal usage. buildings with apartments above and commercial space below are getting common enough to be unremarkable.
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Post by kharnynb on Dec 11, 2020 6:11:51 GMT
Not sure about other countries, but in Finland at least, most people still cook for themselves, and especially outside of the big cities, will often do some form of vegetable/herb growing. Not to mention, every finnish person goes nuts in late summer and tries to fill their freezer with forest berries(mostly bilberries and lingonberries, cloudberries if you live in the north) and mushrooms.
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Post by the light works on Dec 11, 2020 15:11:03 GMT
Not sure about other countries, but in Finland at least, most people still cook for themselves, and especially outside of the big cities, will often do some form of vegetable/herb growing. Not to mention, every finnish person goes nuts in late summer and tries to fill their freezer with forest berries(mostly bilberries and lingonberries, cloudberries if you live in the north) and mushrooms. frighteningly, there are people in our more citified cities who don't cook. I forget if I've already said it, but my BIL who works in a grocery store "deli" (read as completely prepared food section) says he has customers he sees three times a day. this is part of the reason why you might be seeing news out of America about people pitching fits because some COVID hot zones are prohibiting indoor dining at restaurants.
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