Cities Built From Scratch

    Some very rich people are working to build tomorrow's cities from scratch. Billionaire Elon Musk recently founded Snailbrook, a community in Texas. Billionaire Marc Lore wants to build Telosa, a city of 5 million people, operating by a new economic model. He is looking for land, but billionaire Bill Gates has already found his. He spent $80 million on 24,800 acres in Arizona to create Belmont, has since added to it, and has issued thousands of single-family residential permits.   

    In Saudi Arabia, the government is starting construction on an even more unusual city called The Line. This will be more than 100 miles long, a quarter-mile tall - and about 650 feet wide.  

   What these would be city builders are promising begins with a 'nearly blank slate of opportunity' as one real-estate lawyer put it. "The vision calls for it to be a sustainable city capitalizing on cutting-edge infrastructure," he said, a 'forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology. ... It will rely completely on smart technologies such as high-speed digital networks, data centers, high speed public WI-Fi, high-tech manufacturing facilities and autonomous vehicles."

       Planners want to eliminate pollution, respect and enhance nature; provide healthy, sustainable quality of life; conserve energy; and encourage community. They want vibrancy, diversity, efficiency, safety, cleanliness, sustainability and right governance. They abound with ideas for new technology and new ideologies.

      Mayors of existing cities and would-be inventors of utterly new ones are surveying our current communities and seeing problems - insoluble problems. 

     New cities built from scratch are their only hope for something better. The trouble is, they have no real idea of what caused our existing cities to become what they've become. - J. Hilliker