Alexis Rivas
@alexisxrivas
Making quality custom homes for everyone with algorithms and robots. Cofounder & CEO @coverbuild
I drive the same car (model 3) and have the same phone (iPhone) as billionaires. Mass production can produce at a quality that is really hard to beat. With @coverbuild this will soon be true for homes too.
This is a mainstream view in California. Except on housing.
"I support taco trucks in my district - but we also need every fourth taco to be sold at a loss to a low wage worker, all employees need to be union, and the truck should have to give X% of sales to the city to pay for public parks."
It sounds strange, but some regulations make things too safe. Take commercial aviation: it’s 200x safer per mile than driving. A 500 mile flight every day for a year gives you a fatality risk of ~1 in 100,000 years of flying. Yet safety rules keep tightening. And that’s a…
50 million people have walked the Guggenheim spiral. Zero fell over its 36" parapet. Today's code deems it unsafe, demands 42". When 50 million safe visits can't clear plan check, the real danger isn’t the parapet - it’s bureaucracy.
50 million people have walked the Guggenheim spiral. Zero fell over its 36" parapet. Today's code deems it unsafe, demands 42". When 50 million safe visits can't clear plan check, the real danger isn’t the parapet - it’s bureaucracy.
A culture of excessive focus on safety erodes at the art in architecture. These iconic works are illegal to build today.
Call me crazy, but I think people should be able to build what they want on their own land. I just want freedom zoning.
Robotaxis are exploding. Waymo already has 1500+ driverless cars and doubling. Yet zoning still mandates enclosed parking on every home, the 1908 version of mandating horse stables as Model Ts rolled off the production line. We’ve got to scrap parking minimums now.
Garages are the size of 1 bedroom apartments. Every new home could be less expensive if including garages was optional. With robotaxis taking off, this change needs to happen now.
Robotaxis are exploding. Waymo already has 1500+ driverless cars and doubling. Yet zoning still mandates enclosed parking on every home, the 1908 version of mandating horse stables as Model Ts rolled off the production line. We’ve got to scrap parking minimums now.
PSA. Roads in America aren't designed by urban planners. They're designed by the fire departments.
It would indeed be bizarre if fire chiefs had the ability to dictate road design.
This is maybe a harder path than “Make something people want.” But it’s good for the soul.
Make something civilization needs.
NIMBY has always bothered me as an acronym because they’re never talking about their own backyard… they’re always trying to control yours. “Not In Your Backyard” is way more accurate.
City says it'll take them 3-6 months to refund our fees, and required pages of paperwork dropped off in person to start the process. It's 2025. Bureaucracy like this is a huge waste of human energy. Government needs modernization ASAP.
Day 108: Great news! Plan checker approved our permit for Ready to Issue, pending payment of fees. Bad news. They didn’t default waive the $6k+ in permit fees. So we have to call them / email them to figure that out. Almost at the permit finish line.