Not every meal is a burrito.

all joking aside i sent myself a « pneumatique » a year or so before the system was shut down. I had to go to the post office to send it and I picked it up from the other one (rode the Métro to get it). Otherwise a courier would have transported it, I suppose (I don’t remember). In any case it was pretty inefficient by then and the ramification due to subsequent construction makes it impractical.

The most awkward delivery meal is the pizza box, which is totally reasonable to transport on a bike with the right setup (I do it all the time).

Wait. What? Was that a thing? I've only ever seen them in supermarkets to send cash upstairs. Was this in Paris?

Many cities had bulk mail pneumatic systems from the late 1800s into the post-WWI era, but Paris had a specific class of mail which was like a cross between a courier and a telegram served by the pneumatic system (which was big for handwritten love letters[0])

Pneumatic tubes interestingly started out as a bandwidth problem for telegraph operators. You couldn't cram enough operators and telegraph infrastructure into the stock exchange of London or Paris so the telegraph companies would have a dedicated pneumatic tube for sending paper dispatches from the stock exchange a few blocks to the telegraph headquarters, where hundreds of operators would then relay the information over wire.

IMO, pneumatic technology peaked in 1920s Berlin where at the Resi night club you could give someone presents and recreational drugs delivered via pneumatic tube directly to their table.[1]

I collected a bunch of ephemera about pneumatic tube and cash railway systems a while back. Highlights include a viscious scalping, notable passengers (cats, mice, spiders, kids, and the 3rd Duke of Buckingham), and many videos and pictures of surviving systems in operation. Here are my notes.[2]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1925/11/21/archives/grandson-of-bret...

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pneumatic-tube-table-p...

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FHI8AMI74jPrVXBHLjBCwz2x...

In Berlin too: https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/Rohrpost_in_Berlin

Looks like an alternative would be to make the suburbs mixed use. Are these new companies taking advantage of this ancient zoning?

> Are these new companies taking advantage of this ancient zoning?

Somewhat? Overall I'd argue no. We know gig economy companies are most "profitable" (i.e., light less money on fire per transaction) in dense cities, so I imagine if they have a magic lamp they'd wish for people to live in denser environs generally.

But the inefficiencies of suburbia does in some ways resemble a "broken window" kind of economy - entire businesses and industries to fulfill needs that only exist because of an intense root inefficiency.

This is not unlike health care, where entire industries spring up around inefficiencies that arguably should not exist - and the industries will fight any systemic reforms that make them obsolete.

>>> I don't know about Europe, but in the US a lot of this relates to the fundamental inefficiency of the suburbs.

Indeed, the analogy that comes to mind is the growing use of air conditioning worldwide to cope with global warming.

But I think it's not just the suburbs. I live in a neighborhood of detached houses, yet I don't need delivered meals or a cleaning service.

you might be interested in a startup working on pneumatic tube delivery. Sadly there is not a lot of info yet but they are hiring

https://www.pipedreamlabs.co/

I'm afraid I think this is something like rail that only the state can accomplish well.

Labor isn't anywhere near expensive enough to make it succeed as the network bootstraps.