Picture of the Das Parkhotel in Austria
Back in the days, Malaysia used to have a lot of these in our playground, probably slightly smaller than the one shown in the pictures. They would stack 5 or 6 of them into 2 or 3 levels, and let the kids climb up and down of it. Frankly, it was one of my favourites as climbing the often very smooth surface of the huge pipe was super challenging for a short kid like me. These days they are no longer a common sight in the playgrounds, but we can use it for something better. :)
I want to show you the picture of the sewage pipe in action because, I believe it would be the answer to providing free shelters. As you can see from the picture, someone converted the sewage pipe into a very nice bedroom. Not just any bedroom, it's actually a hotel room of Das Parkhotel in Austria. You can have a look at their website here.
I know you must be wondering, "no way we are going to provide such a nice shelter for those lazy homeless bums", okay... maybe not like a hotel room. But we don't need the beds and the furnitures. Even at its very barebone, which is pure concrete, it's fine as it is. People want a shelter as a mean of escaping from the rain, hiding from the chilly wind, and basically just a safe place to sleep in.
The sewage pipe in the picture is slightly larger than the version I have in mind. For a slightly smaller version, it should be no larger than a single bed. Now imagine stacking 20-40 of them together, in say 2 to 4 levels, It would be a fantastic free shelter to the desperates to sleep in. No it doesn't have to have beds or furnitures. No it doesn't even have to be comfortable. But for the homeless, it would be godsend regardless.
Now if we extend these sewage pipes into multiple stacks, we get a camp. In fact, all these sewage pipe stacks don't take up a lot of space. Anyone's house area could easily accommodate a few of them. And so we can easily house a few hundreds people today just by building a few of these camps! Complete it with a huge roof covering all the sewage pipes, and maybe public toilets too, and finally some police guards for peacekeeping, we have just taken care of all the homeless people you may have in a city!
I would have called it the sewage pipes camp if it doesn't sound that awful, hence I prefer to name it the Capsules Camp as it is more pleasing.
The catch with every capsule is that, it doesn't have an ownership and it will not be allocated in that sense. Every night, anyone can drop by, grab a capsule and just rest in there for the night. This is obviously to prevent hoggers from wasting any capsule spots. But the long term effect is that, you may travel from cities to cities and just check into capsule camps, and you would not have to worry about any accomodation problem.
Now if one does not have to worry about food and accommodation, I bet half of the population would spend their time doing things that truly matter to them. A whole new era of spiritual awakening will slowly take place as people no longer find satisfaction in blindly performing tasks for capitalism. Essentially, more and more things will be converted into free exchange where deeds are rewarded by gratefulness, and the world would be such a wonderful place!
Note: I really should blog more often lol. Getting a little rusty writing articles like this.
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