Futurism Fuel

It seems like every month, there's a new futuristic city project being announced by a billionaire, country or corporation. While ever-growing, here’s a short list of the current roster in some stage of development:

  1. Telosa (Nevada/Arizona desert) - backed by billionaire Marc Lore

  2. Belmont (Arizona desert) - sponsored by Bill Gates

  3. The Line (Tabuk, Saudi Arabia) - part of the much larger multi-billion dollar NEOM project backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt

  4. Masdar City - a cleantech hub in Abu Dhabi

  5. Maldives Floating City (Maldives)

  6. Starbase (Texas) - sponsored by Elon Musk

  7. Net City (Shenzen, China) - sponsored by Tencent 

These projects are new and exciting but are based on ideas that have been around for a century. All tout some combination of the following ideals:

  • Green infrastructure that enhances natural environment

  • Well-designed housing developments that are genuinely affordable

  • True 15-minute-city design (everything you need within a 15 minute walk)

  • City-wide Interconnected buildings and transit

  • Circular operating design

  • More socially and economically sustainable operating models (ie. equitism)

These are all based on the Garden City concept, which was invented by a guy named Ebenezer in the late 1800s. While Ebenezer Howard was a visionary, he wasn’t without his contrarian leanings - the Garden City concept was an ideal that stood in stark contrast to the congestion, squalor, and inefficiency of major cities of the day. If that sounds familiar, it should. 

This ideal has produced many Garden Cities all over the world in the past century - you very likely know of a very prominent one near you (or at least in your country) - see the list here. They have, however, drastically ranged in technological “audaciousness”, with some of the more extreme listed below that are truly worth a look:

These modern projects are just incorporating Garden City elements with varied weightings and technological “modernization”, and we’re seeing them unveiled on Instagram and in tech blogs instead of at a World’s Fair/Expo as in the 1900’s. These projects are the latest update of the march of progress in urban development, bolstered by century-old ideals. 

So why don’t we see even more of these projects built? Several challenges have felled these types of projects historically:

  1. Funding - either can’t attract enough investment to start, or face challenges and burn through existing funds prior to completion

  2. Political or social backlash (ex. Jeddah Tower, Sidewalk Labs’ Quayside, Disney’s city designs)

  3. Inability to attract tenants to the new developments

In today’s hyper-connect society which idolizes the super-rich individuals and corporations that are driving these projects, we may very well find a deeper well of a particular fuel to drive these projects beyond historical roadblocks - ego:

  1. Funding isn’t a concern - project owners have deep personal resources, and likely avenues to secure more if needed - they also get paid (at least partially) in media exposure

  2. Using their social cache and pedestals of success, they can skirt political and social barriers that would otherwise hold a project back

  3. The branding they’re using to flex through social media and bountiful news coverage serves as marketing - a “like” could very well turn into a tenancy

Let’s not forget, at the end of the day there's tremendous financial, cultural, and technological upside potential in pursuing these types of projects. Technological breakthroughs during design and implementation could push the boundaries of what's possible and be applied to existing areas. As eloquently laid out in the B1M's piece, these projects have immense potential, especially those building in regions that are tough to inhabit, like deserts and bodies of water. Water filtration systems, localized energy generation, high-efficiency waste management and recycling, floating modular developments, and completely circular and self-sustaining technological ecosystems are some of the necessary breakthroughs for these projects to achieve (innovations that the BIG Group is creating for Telosa and the floating city are of awe-inspiring - see BIG’s body of work here). Even if these ideas don’t see completion, we would argue that there is still value being generated in the form of new ideas being tested or at least thought through, to iterate current models of understanding and push society forward. 
So, while it’s easy to discount agencies perceived to be "doing it for the likes", it's that very nuance that may help these projects to see completion, or at least achieve material technological breakthroughs. And that’s a good thing! With the right approach, modern-day projects could represent a new chapter in the Garden City concept that is more technologically innovative, sustainable, and equitable than ever before. The governance of such areas, however, could be another story…

From your friends at GroundBreak Ventures

Scott Kaplanis