Comment by 6510

The reasons people do chose to live some place are mostly man made. The reason to buy a property somewhat overlaps but not entirely. The giant machine alone delivers enough hype for some to just buy one. Take care of the boring things and lure them in with killer features. The line is/was planned to have way to many of them. In Japan real estate people already get excited if there is a subway station planned.

Houses are horrifically boring all over the world. There are so many data points that people building stuff are happy when all the boxes are checked. As you've pointed out they usually follow demand but it's not a rule, it doesn't have to be that way. We do living room, kitchen, dining, bathroom, bedroom but you could do many different rooms. Say a proper office with all the trimmings perhaps a network connecting coworkers. You could do a space for home manufacturing. If you could just dock a truck properly and roll pallets in and out it would go a long way. Could do a district cooling system and/or a centralized pool pumping station. Could have a fee to gradually green the desert behind the homes.

But the true killer feature is lack of red tape.