Published: 2025-08-09
Last Updated: 2025-08-09
You are here: /blog/peaceful-enjoyment-and-smart-cities
Public policy has been to have people live in cities for over a hundred years now. New York for example is over 400 years old and accepts people from all over the world migrating to America.
Living in rural areas is acceptable for many people but they've started moving to cities because eventually, that will likely be acceptable and there are safety in numbers.
This has brought up many points in conversations about peaceful enjoyment, the amount of noise in the city and concepts about why people choose certain rural areas over other rural areas.
Most people do not want to live in a place where they are constantly aggrivated, where everything is annoying, where the things they like are unavailable, and where the only available things are things don't like or don't want to participate in.
This indicates that housing selection is limited, and that a specific group makes all the rules and nobody else has any freedom of choice or expression.
These types of policies often lead to bitterness, loneliness, lack of friendships, and isolation because the isolation removes the bitterness and there is likely not any loneliness because nothing is compatible with the persons interests or desires.
An interesting context of this observation is that highly insulated and possibly isolated homes with vast virtual environments and many options that are not too annoying to view, select, and try without fear of obligations might be one of the best designs for the future.
There are other contexts to this observation, such as being a possible adaptation or evolution in preparation of spacetravel because our world is overcrowded and there are limited environments to form new homes that are peaceful, comfortable, and enjoyable.
A trip to the moon would take 3 days. Not much different than a road trip across the US in an interstate road vehicle. And a trip to Mars, that would take six months on a space shuttle. Similar to a liveaboard for 1 month or a cruise across the ocean lasting more than 1 day or a week. There aren't many experiences for living in isolation for 6 months yet. It would be necessary to prepare for a trip to Mars.
Peaceful enjoyment is a topic, such as traveling on an airplane for long distances of more than 5 hours. Living in a hotel room for more than a weekend, or migrating from place to place on short notice with only small rooms as accomodations instead of big house, a multi-story apartment, or even a place to live that is small but has a very long hallway to add dimensions to the space.
Topics that are popular for peaceful enjoyment include work similarities, and gene expression groups. People that are quiet and work mostly virtually and don't leave their home very often can live together with grocery stores nearby and event webpages where they can view interesting places to go have fun.
People that are loud and like to be outside all the time might benefit from being near amenities and industrial zones so they can be outside all the time.
Those that like driving back and forth to work everyday and drinking lots of coffe can live in groups near a highway. It doesn't have to be next to the freeway but it can be nearby. They would all get in their vehicles and drink coffee on the way to work without causing much congestion. Then they can work and drink coffee and drive back home at the end of the day on the long highway that leads them back home.
This adds context and texture to new cities and living areas. People that don't live nearby would different and more interesting to meet. And if an area needs an expansion; there would be other similar areas that can be found virtually to ask about a geographical consolidation or long distance friendships.
Overall, when thinking about future living areas with 5,000 person skyscraper apartments; whats important is insulation. Not only from noise, but from atmosphere, from vibrations, from disturbances, and from telecommunication anamolies.
Many homebuilders and retrofitters are working on this now in the form of soundproofing and indoor air insulation. Its an interesting concept because per unit circulation is still required and there needs to be a dissipation pathway to an environment that does not disturb the peaceful enjoyment of others in the skyscraper but also does not remove the atmospheric insulation of the unit.