What a strange thing to pin on tech. Company towns have existed forever, to the point of having laws made about how they can function. Walt Disney and ford also wanted to create a utopia city. I think this is more of a rich man's hobby than anything related to tech moguls at all. Hell, some even establish their own currency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip#Coal_company_s...
Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
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Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#32Is this really a new concept? Disney built a town Celebration, Florida near Disneyworld which has a pop of 7500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida
Henry Ford did this multiple times, even in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#33I hope they don’t find inspiration from the UAE cities... since those are built on the backs of migrant slaves.
I got bad news for you about America!
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#34Planned communities, organized by the rich and powerful around the latest and greatest in technology or political change, are not novel in the slightest and certainly not unique to tech billionaires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community We've been doing this for about the history of humankind, and many of the world's capitals are planned cities. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. For example Brasilia was a planned utopia built around the great innovations and delights of the 20th century - such being planned around motor traffic. And upon reaching a state of overpopulation, it became well known as a dystopia instead.
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#35Because government run cities are doing a terrible job? I'd love to live in a nice environment with services and smart people around me, it's just that most cities are quite degraded (at least here in Europe / UK). The choice right now is between living in a nice small town / rural settings surrounded by people who got stuck in their rural hometown, or live in a city surrounded by smart people, homeless and drug deal…
Really? I'm sorry to hear it's the same in the UK but I loved Berlin and Tallinn wasn't bad (most of what was bad was out of their control ie the weather). I've lived in SF, San Diego, northern Nevada, DC, Berlin, Tallinn, London (Enfield) and Yerevan and by far European cities were much better run in my opinion
This is a vast oversimplification on my part, but I suspect what you observed was because the European cities are run by governments that are more inclined to serve the needs of citizens, and US cities are run by governments that are more inclined to serve business interests.
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#36Not a new obsession: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordlândia Also, some have recently argued that people had to be forced to live in those first cities: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_Hi...
Not a new thing of course, but there is a big difference between trying to build a utopia and building a city to house workers
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#37Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…
As a general matter, I think Utopianism is a bad idea, and I don’t think we should be sinking huge amounts of resources into giant leaps like this. I’d rather see incremental tweaks in the right direction first, as I think those are far more effective at bringing lasting change.
Fundamentally, we’re really bad at predicting the future. Utopian projects involve making big bets on what the future might hold, which makes them high risk high reward. I think making smaller, incremental bets allows us to not only wager fewer resources, but to also begin getting feedback sooner on the outcome of our decisions rather than hoping that we’re spot on in 20 years.
More specifically, I’d like to see a lot less “we built a city for autonomous cars and hyperloops” and more “we added some bike lanes and bike parking, and converted commercial streets to pedestrian only.” These are changes we can make today to improve our quality of life, and they practically cost very little.
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#38Hamburg build from 2008 on a new district, the HafenCity, a soulless place of concrete, expensive apartments, and chain stores. I recently thought about how great it would have been to try something radical new – like building everything with wood, fantastic public transport, and as little cars as possible. My conclusion was that the only way that realistically could have happend was with subsidies from a billionaire…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury
>Poundbury is "the town that Prince Charles built." Not surprisingly, given His Royal Highness's vocal campaign against modern architecture, British critics have been merciless in their ridicule of Poundbury's perceived shortcomings.
https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/behind-the-facade-o...
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#39I am not convinced with the examples. I haven't seen FAANG and Microsoft efforts to buy a bunch of land and provide housing in large volume.
Planned Cities are nothing but rich people pet projects and it has been like that for a long time.
Re: Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed with Building Utopian Cities
#40Planned communities, organized by the rich and powerful around the latest and greatest in technology or political change, are not novel in the slightest and certainly not unique to tech billionaires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community We've been doing this for about the history of humankind, and many of the world's capitals are planned cities. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it does not. For exampl…
I'm reminded immediately of the EPCOT, which never manifested due to Walt Disney's death, but was a city planned around transportation. I don't know about the PeopleMover as a means of public transit but I love the hub and spoke ideal that the original plan had. I wish a pedestrian first city would happen in the US. Imagine how much more quickly Florida's light rail may have manifested if we had a city that was already rail-centric in the 60s?