I blogged some time ago about a perfect city design in which the homes were above ground and all the transportation (people and goods) was below. In another blog posts (that I can’t locate now) I predicted that the big sleeper technology that will change everything is tunneling technology.

Elon Musk is on it. He owns a tunneling company that is just getting started. Now imagine the tunneling technology improving at a normal rate, and the cost-per-mile dropping. Now add robots to build the above-ground housing right on the site. Elon musk invests in that technology too. The future will be new cities, built from scratch, with homes costing about $100,000 that offer a middle-class standard of living. That’s the only way society will survive the age of robots (taking jobs) and the glut of retirees on limited income. The cost of a quality life has to drop by about 90%. Thanks to Musk, that future seems likely to me.

And if that doesn’t work out, Musk has a Mars option in the pipeline.

Oh, and tunneling technology is probably similar to canal-digging technology. Expect some fun there too.

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