For cities to scale they need higher density. You get higher density by building taller buildings. While could make small one-family houses moveable you can’t make big apartments buildings moveable.
It’s not clear to me why you expect it’s easy to rent the space to put 50 houses of friends next to each other in a city in a way that it isn’t nowadays. Why should renting land for putting your moveable house so much easier then renting a flat today? Most circles of friends have different employers that need them to be at different places.
I suppose the sci-fi answer is to build something like a giant server rack and slot your living podule into the nth floor. But then you would need to knock down an existing high-rise building and build a lot of other infrastructure. Infrastructure!
For cities to scale they need higher density. You get higher density by building taller buildings. While could make small one-family houses moveable you can’t make big apartments buildings moveable.
It’s not clear to me why you expect it’s easy to rent the space to put 50 houses of friends next to each other in a city in a way that it isn’t nowadays. Why should renting land for putting your moveable house so much easier then renting a flat today? Most circles of friends have different employers that need them to be at different places.
It was attempted in Japan: to built a highrise with capsules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower
Moving such a thing still seems very complicated. Moving individual capsules will be even harder.
I suppose the sci-fi answer is to build something like a giant server rack and slot your living podule into the nth floor. But then you would need to knock down an existing high-rise building and build a lot of other infrastructure. Infrastructure!