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beccaelizabethI've been thinking on how to design social housing for my offworld colony.
We'd need to do practice runs here first, of course, like the dudes that went to Mars and back without leaving theirliving room simulator. Every plan needs a test.
So we could build the first version here.
Now logically a good beta test would go somewhere pretty inaccessible, maybe up a mountain or somewhere else a little marginal for most purposes. Testing for specific planets would try and match the conditions outside to the air pressure, rainfall etc they're expecting offworld. But that's like a full on beta test, we can start smaller than that. We could put a village in a rural area and beef up the local air ambulance to cope with probable emergencies, then see if the village can stay cut off from the physical world and... hmmm, time delay or dial up to simulate limited message traffic with home? Eh, pretend we have an ansible, I don't want to live without broadband even for a year. ... yes that makes me a poor candidate for colonisation. *shrugs* But still, that's pretty hardcore, you'd need to set up a lot of things in advance as if you're launching the whole colony at once. Testing it as a whole system can wait until the compenents have been thoroughly tested.
So we set it up somewhere with easy access to Norwich Library, University, or Hospital, depending if boredom or danger is your main concern.
... yes that's my preferred place to live, but it still makes perfectly good sense ;-)
So the first thing we'd need is to set up a lot of accessible housing for people with disabilities.
If you're thinking that the Enterprise lacked many people with disabilities (unless you count the superpowered blind guy), well, that's a far higher tech level than we currently have available. Their shields protected them from almost everything, and their meds could repair even major radiation damage. We are somewhat short of that standard.
Any major offworld expedition is going to spend a long, long time getting there, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. (Probably there will be no goblin city and they'll have to build their own castle. But you never know.) This is especially true if you're sending them to another star, the kind that might have an Earth type planet around it. If you take even people at the peak of physical perfection, stick them in a tin can for the best part of a generation, and hurl that through space very fast, you are going to arrive with an ageing population who may be suffering the long term effects of trauma, both mental and physical, will have put a lot of stresses on their system that could lead to joint or circulatory damage just for starters, and could have radiation damage. I just got done reading a hard SF story where everyone got turned into brain eating zombies by radiation damage, but the everyone concerned weren't human, so I don't think we have to plan for a zombie apocalypse. But cancers and sensory and neurological damage are all possible outcomes. Space is hard, space is nasty, and the first people to disembark on a new world are likely to bear the scars of the journey.
Any colonisation effort is going to have to account for the fact of human fragility. Even if those selected are entirely without disability when they start, even if the journey goes precisely as planned, even if the buildings go up and the initial plan is followed precisely, your new world is going to end up with old people.
And they're going to need both housing and social care.
So, lets start there. Accessible flats for people with mobility impairments on the ground floor. Those ground floor flats should be at least two bedrooms, because you can't leave carers sleeping on the couch, and they need to be proper wide in case there's a double bed with a wheelchair parked on both sides. (There's a plot bunny there for how our intrepid explorers end up together. I'm hoping it's not like that answer to 'The Cold Equations' that utilised medical equipment to save mass. Or the one about how to survive on a boat where the protein runs out. Probably it's just that spacers don't adjust well to the long term g shifts, and planetary gravity is a bit too harsh for some of them.) There should be lovely wide doors they can propel themselves through (because space pioneers aren't going to want to be pushed around, not if there's an alternative), enough electric points for a wheelchair and any other equipment they might need, and proper wet rooms made with well engineered fittings suitable to space age people. Things that won't wear out - my taps with the lever handles need repair/replacing rather regularly. The plumber says it's just how they're made, those parts and materials put together in that way will need swapping out just that often. Seems daft to me. But if you're trucking all your parts in from another solar system, it's beyond daft, it's physically impossible. So a little more investment goes in up front, and the ongoing maintenance costs and requirements are brought as low as humanly possible.
Smoke and fire alarms are going to be considered a basic necessity, after so long with big control banks to monitor. Those are tricky to get right, flashing alarms for people that can't hear the sirens can make a different set of people ill. (hmm, is there anyone who would have mobility needs and need the ground floor but want it narrow? must be sure to hire architects who have the knowing of these things. or at least get the book out the library about accessibility checklists, and make sure the architect reads it.)
Personally I do not want to live on top of cars or bins ever again. Bastard things get set on fire, or crash into supporting walls. I've had enough of them. Granted we need more ground if we're not going to shove cars underneath stuff, but if we had a whole new planet we could totally manage that.
... lacking a whole new planet, we need somewhere for cars to pull in, and maybe to be near a good bus route.
Peace and quiet are also worth a little more initial investment, but they need to be balanced with a design that includes social spaces. People heading for a new world will be people who want a lot of elbow room, but they also need to be people who understand and value cooperation, and interdependence, and have been working together closely for some time now. (Like disabled people and our assistants. We are not under the illusion of independence, we know we don't do all the things. Once a supply chain to Earth gets cut it becomes apparent how many stages of effort went into what independence they had, how many people were supporting each and every action. Colonists need to understand how much they need each other.) And people who spent a lot of years in a ship to get to said new world will have been in close quarters with all the other people they're going to be seeing for the rest of their lives. There will be times they wish to retreat and just not hear the chatter for a while. And there will be times that silence is purely creepy. Good materials, soundproofing, and shared spaces can provide for both needs.
I'm thinking a shared kitchen and cafe. On Earth for our test run it could be run as a business too, but mostly be intended to provide meals for people with disabilities that limit their ability to cook. People that can cook could use a nice big kitchen with lots of bells and whistles sometimes, possibly only after doing the health and safety studying first. It could be someone's job to make healthy balanced meals that cater to a range of dietary requirements, like having a limited range of ingredients you can actually digest. And yes, residents would have to pay for that, but that's what disability living allowance is for, getting meals that actually work even when your cooking doesn't. Being a bit shared could make it more economical. It sounds like a high level of support, but it would be used a small amount each, and have that outward facing business side.
I don't know, I've never in my life run a business, I just know it would be awesome to have someone make things more complicated than my microwave can manage. So I'll put it on the plan.
A proper colony isn't just people being looked after and people doing the looking after, it would have all the parts and pieces of a functioning community. In my happy dreams as well as a cafe we'd have the airponics and chickens to supply that cafe. Or hydroponics or whatever actually works. Dirt gardening is traditional and most people know how it works, but higher tech can make higher yields for the same energy and water. Building in growing areas to the colony is a good investment. Areas on different levels so wheel people can help with the food too.
A machine repairs place that can fix or even build wheelchairs and other assistive tech sounds good too. Not that I personally would have a clue where to start. But that seems to be steady business, a need that's not going away.
Not all the flats would be for people with disabilities. Their carers and the cook and the farmers and the tech people could all live there too. That would be proper colony style, everyone in one place working together.
You'd also need family sized places and places for kids to play, because a sustainable colony needs to grow the next set of farmer - carer - techs too. Not just make a stack of bedsits and warehouse people in them.
Starting with the people with disabilities and working out until everyone gets what they need you get a little economy going. Granted, probably based on government benefits right now, but if the people who brought you to the planet needed looking after for the rest of their lives, it would be a sign of an already failed colony if they didn't get what they needed. Plus many people with disabilities can and do work, though it's harder to get hired in the first place. Most places don't start out designing accessbility in, so there's avoidable barriers. Having a whole little community set up this way though, some people with disabilities would also be carers, or farmers, or techs, or just do something on the internet that brings in money, I don't know. (Not being one of those can work people. I just study.) Oh, and study is another thing everyone could do, there's study for all levels of ability, it's more fun than staring at the walls. We'd need to bring teachers and make sure we had access to books. (Hence being near the Library. Or University. And not just because they're my favourite places in the world.) Plus there should be somewhere to do dancing. I like my dancing lessons. Though that does loop back to the soundproofing and social spaces items.
So, okay, design a community, get some social housing built, make it epic with this being the first step to colonisation.
Probably needs a few more details before going asking for funding...
We'd need to do practice runs here first, of course, like the dudes that went to Mars and back without leaving their
So we could build the first version here.
Now logically a good beta test would go somewhere pretty inaccessible, maybe up a mountain or somewhere else a little marginal for most purposes. Testing for specific planets would try and match the conditions outside to the air pressure, rainfall etc they're expecting offworld. But that's like a full on beta test, we can start smaller than that. We could put a village in a rural area and beef up the local air ambulance to cope with probable emergencies, then see if the village can stay cut off from the physical world and... hmmm, time delay or dial up to simulate limited message traffic with home? Eh, pretend we have an ansible, I don't want to live without broadband even for a year. ... yes that makes me a poor candidate for colonisation. *shrugs* But still, that's pretty hardcore, you'd need to set up a lot of things in advance as if you're launching the whole colony at once. Testing it as a whole system can wait until the compenents have been thoroughly tested.
So we set it up somewhere with easy access to Norwich Library, University, or Hospital, depending if boredom or danger is your main concern.
... yes that's my preferred place to live, but it still makes perfectly good sense ;-)
So the first thing we'd need is to set up a lot of accessible housing for people with disabilities.
If you're thinking that the Enterprise lacked many people with disabilities (unless you count the superpowered blind guy), well, that's a far higher tech level than we currently have available. Their shields protected them from almost everything, and their meds could repair even major radiation damage. We are somewhat short of that standard.
Any major offworld expedition is going to spend a long, long time getting there, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. (Probably there will be no goblin city and they'll have to build their own castle. But you never know.) This is especially true if you're sending them to another star, the kind that might have an Earth type planet around it. If you take even people at the peak of physical perfection, stick them in a tin can for the best part of a generation, and hurl that through space very fast, you are going to arrive with an ageing population who may be suffering the long term effects of trauma, both mental and physical, will have put a lot of stresses on their system that could lead to joint or circulatory damage just for starters, and could have radiation damage. I just got done reading a hard SF story where everyone got turned into brain eating zombies by radiation damage, but the everyone concerned weren't human, so I don't think we have to plan for a zombie apocalypse. But cancers and sensory and neurological damage are all possible outcomes. Space is hard, space is nasty, and the first people to disembark on a new world are likely to bear the scars of the journey.
Any colonisation effort is going to have to account for the fact of human fragility. Even if those selected are entirely without disability when they start, even if the journey goes precisely as planned, even if the buildings go up and the initial plan is followed precisely, your new world is going to end up with old people.
And they're going to need both housing and social care.
So, lets start there. Accessible flats for people with mobility impairments on the ground floor. Those ground floor flats should be at least two bedrooms, because you can't leave carers sleeping on the couch, and they need to be proper wide in case there's a double bed with a wheelchair parked on both sides. (There's a plot bunny there for how our intrepid explorers end up together. I'm hoping it's not like that answer to 'The Cold Equations' that utilised medical equipment to save mass. Or the one about how to survive on a boat where the protein runs out. Probably it's just that spacers don't adjust well to the long term g shifts, and planetary gravity is a bit too harsh for some of them.) There should be lovely wide doors they can propel themselves through (because space pioneers aren't going to want to be pushed around, not if there's an alternative), enough electric points for a wheelchair and any other equipment they might need, and proper wet rooms made with well engineered fittings suitable to space age people. Things that won't wear out - my taps with the lever handles need repair/replacing rather regularly. The plumber says it's just how they're made, those parts and materials put together in that way will need swapping out just that often. Seems daft to me. But if you're trucking all your parts in from another solar system, it's beyond daft, it's physically impossible. So a little more investment goes in up front, and the ongoing maintenance costs and requirements are brought as low as humanly possible.
Smoke and fire alarms are going to be considered a basic necessity, after so long with big control banks to monitor. Those are tricky to get right, flashing alarms for people that can't hear the sirens can make a different set of people ill. (hmm, is there anyone who would have mobility needs and need the ground floor but want it narrow? must be sure to hire architects who have the knowing of these things. or at least get the book out the library about accessibility checklists, and make sure the architect reads it.)
Personally I do not want to live on top of cars or bins ever again. Bastard things get set on fire, or crash into supporting walls. I've had enough of them. Granted we need more ground if we're not going to shove cars underneath stuff, but if we had a whole new planet we could totally manage that.
... lacking a whole new planet, we need somewhere for cars to pull in, and maybe to be near a good bus route.
Peace and quiet are also worth a little more initial investment, but they need to be balanced with a design that includes social spaces. People heading for a new world will be people who want a lot of elbow room, but they also need to be people who understand and value cooperation, and interdependence, and have been working together closely for some time now. (Like disabled people and our assistants. We are not under the illusion of independence, we know we don't do all the things. Once a supply chain to Earth gets cut it becomes apparent how many stages of effort went into what independence they had, how many people were supporting each and every action. Colonists need to understand how much they need each other.) And people who spent a lot of years in a ship to get to said new world will have been in close quarters with all the other people they're going to be seeing for the rest of their lives. There will be times they wish to retreat and just not hear the chatter for a while. And there will be times that silence is purely creepy. Good materials, soundproofing, and shared spaces can provide for both needs.
I'm thinking a shared kitchen and cafe. On Earth for our test run it could be run as a business too, but mostly be intended to provide meals for people with disabilities that limit their ability to cook. People that can cook could use a nice big kitchen with lots of bells and whistles sometimes, possibly only after doing the health and safety studying first. It could be someone's job to make healthy balanced meals that cater to a range of dietary requirements, like having a limited range of ingredients you can actually digest. And yes, residents would have to pay for that, but that's what disability living allowance is for, getting meals that actually work even when your cooking doesn't. Being a bit shared could make it more economical. It sounds like a high level of support, but it would be used a small amount each, and have that outward facing business side.
I don't know, I've never in my life run a business, I just know it would be awesome to have someone make things more complicated than my microwave can manage. So I'll put it on the plan.
A proper colony isn't just people being looked after and people doing the looking after, it would have all the parts and pieces of a functioning community. In my happy dreams as well as a cafe we'd have the airponics and chickens to supply that cafe. Or hydroponics or whatever actually works. Dirt gardening is traditional and most people know how it works, but higher tech can make higher yields for the same energy and water. Building in growing areas to the colony is a good investment. Areas on different levels so wheel people can help with the food too.
A machine repairs place that can fix or even build wheelchairs and other assistive tech sounds good too. Not that I personally would have a clue where to start. But that seems to be steady business, a need that's not going away.
Not all the flats would be for people with disabilities. Their carers and the cook and the farmers and the tech people could all live there too. That would be proper colony style, everyone in one place working together.
You'd also need family sized places and places for kids to play, because a sustainable colony needs to grow the next set of farmer - carer - techs too. Not just make a stack of bedsits and warehouse people in them.
Starting with the people with disabilities and working out until everyone gets what they need you get a little economy going. Granted, probably based on government benefits right now, but if the people who brought you to the planet needed looking after for the rest of their lives, it would be a sign of an already failed colony if they didn't get what they needed. Plus many people with disabilities can and do work, though it's harder to get hired in the first place. Most places don't start out designing accessbility in, so there's avoidable barriers. Having a whole little community set up this way though, some people with disabilities would also be carers, or farmers, or techs, or just do something on the internet that brings in money, I don't know. (Not being one of those can work people. I just study.) Oh, and study is another thing everyone could do, there's study for all levels of ability, it's more fun than staring at the walls. We'd need to bring teachers and make sure we had access to books. (Hence being near the Library. Or University. And not just because they're my favourite places in the world.) Plus there should be somewhere to do dancing. I like my dancing lessons. Though that does loop back to the soundproofing and social spaces items.
So, okay, design a community, get some social housing built, make it epic with this being the first step to colonisation.
Probably needs a few more details before going asking for funding...