The city of the future: Utopia or a mirage?

After a long day of doomscrolling, who among us hasn’t texted the group chat to propose starting a commune off the grid?

While we might be all talk, some movers and shakers are actually making their dreams a reality. Or, at least, they’re trying:

• Serial entrepreneur and VC Balaji Srinivasan thinks society should found new countries — or “network states” — the way it does tech startups, per BBC.
• Network states would start the way most online tech communities do, around shared interests, before acquiring IRL land and implementing laws.
• While Srinivasan says network states could exist among real states for now, the final frontier would be replacing the government altogether.

If you’re packing your bags…

… Hold on a second. Plenty of eccentric billionaires are working on similar concepts — you might as well do your homework:

• Neom, the $500B desert utopia headed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, includes a ~106-mile-long city called The Line. The city’s original goal of having 1.5m residents by 2030 has been reduced to ~300k, as the project faces ongoing human rights concerns.
• The East Solano Plan backed by California Forever, a company composed of tech billionaires, aims to build a walkable city for up to 400k people on a stretch of farmland ~60 miles outside San Francisco.
• Elon Musk has allegedly purchased thousands of acres of Texas farmland to build his own town, Snailbrook.
• Billionaire Marc Lore wants to build Telosa, a “15-minute city” in the middle of the desert that would house 5m residents by 2050 in eco-friendly structures.

Notice that none of these cities of the future have become cities of the present? Good eye.

Turns out, building an entire city — or country — from scratch isn’t the easiest job, and has plenty of obstacles.

We’re holding out for whichever community normalizes nap time for adults and three-day weekends.