kingdom of heaven
I am not a utopian. I take utopianism to be an inherently dangerous position. That disclaimer stated, on my birthday, February 24, 2018, the New York Times published an article, “Tech Envisions the Ultimate Start-Up: An Entire City.”
I want you to help me build a city from the ground up.
Literally.
Over the years, I’ve produced variations of this idea ranging from the redundant and mundane to the megalomaniacal. I hope it’s finally touching down somewhere just within the outer limits of reality. And I hope it has some relevance to you.
BUT WHY?
The purpose of this writing is not to provide a complete argument or intricate detail. For now I hope to plant this idea in your mind with the faith it is possible in your heart.
I assume some of the reasons to want what I am about to describe are self-evident, but allow me to state a few.
Like everyone else, you desire the good life.
A good life requires wealth, health, and culture. Each one is inextricably connected to the others, but each holds a distinct, irreducible value.
Wealth.
I define “wealth” as access to air, water, food, shelter, security, energy, and contact with other human beings. These are the foundation of human need. Without these, you will die in a few minutes, days, weeks, or months.
Health.
Health is a difficult concept to define. I define “health” as being conscious and mostly free from sickness, disease, and undue suffering. Health is extremely complex and depends inextricably on various resource systems.
One of these systems which need fundamental rethinking is the food system.
According to the CDC, heart disease and cancer are the two most common causes of death in the United States. According to the American Heart Association, 1 in 3 Americans is obese. It is an epidemic.
These diseases are closely related to nutrition and lifestyle.
In other words, it is most likely you will die because of what you eat and the way you live.
But if you have better access to healthy food, you are more likely to eat healthy food. This is a basic truism now supported by research.
Therefore, better access to fresh, nutrient-dense meats, vegetables, and fruits is desirable.
Now consider that the farming industry is the single largest consumer of land, natural resources, and water, and disproportionately responsible for atmospheric carbon emissions. Most of what you consume comes from a farm. Much of the environmental damage caused by humans occurs on farms.
Currently, agriculture in the United States produces commodities rather than foods that are optimal for human health. Production inefficiently (when taking into account subsidies, external costs, and waste) focuses on corn (primarily for sugar, livestock feed, and fuel), meats, dairy, grains, soybeans, and cotton that are less than fresh, clean, nutritious, and ethical.
The current model looks roughly like this. We mine petroleum and other natural resources and convert them to farm inputs, i.e., fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fuel, for large-scale monoculture farms. Farmers extract the productive capital of the soil (organic matter and micro/macro nutrients) as farm produce then ship produce to storage, processing, and distribution centers. Industrial facilities process farm produce into packaged goods (or other industrial inputs). From the distribution centers, trucks drive food to retailers. Consumers purchase and eat the food that has traveled an average of 1500 miles.
About 30–40% of all food is wasted along the stages of production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Each year, billions of pounds of organic matter and packaging end up in landfills and bodies of water. This does not account for sewage. (Fortunately, some cities and towns convert sewage to usable biosolids.)
In other words, we extract natural resources so that we can produce commodities then eventually shit them into the ocean and bury them in landfills.
This system has resulted in historically low consumer food prices. However, the tradeoff is that this system is producing low quality food with enormously costly externalities to human health and the environment, and it wastes the organic matter and nutrients that are essential for fertile soil. Soil fertility is directly related to the nutritional quality of food.
As a result, Americans suffer from a surplus of the wrong macronutrients and a deficiency of micronutrients. This is how we’ve become fat and malnourished.
To make matters worse from an ethical standpoint, posterity will look back at us with shame because of the way we make animals suffer. And the meat from factory farms is killing you.
World-wide petroleum supplies continue to diminish. Our reliance on fossil fuels makes us dependent and beholden to oil producing countries with the host of problems that entails.
Environmental pollution directly adversely affects human health and quality of life.
But it is possible to improve our food supply while closing the resource loop in order to conserve resources and keep our environment cleaner and more healthy.
The weight of the evidence suggests that local (within 200 miles), genetically diversified, biologically-dependent farms produce more fresh, clean, nutrient-dense food and preserve and cycle resources better compared to global-scale, synthesized-chemical-dependent, monoculture farms.
It is also easier for small, diversified farms to raise animals using more clean and ethical practices, which do not cause undue suffering.
(I take the foregoing claims as given so I will not argue the points further here.)
Sadly, even with the growth of so-called “organic” agriculture, improvements over the last 30 years have been minimal at best. If the current model continues, we can only pray for some miracle technology or some bioengineered super foods. Maybe steaks grown in petri dishes will save us. (I want that also.)
Our existing towns and cities are not well designed for efficiently producing and distributing food or cycling resources.
Few if any existing towns or cities have the political will or resources to address this.
The federal and state governments are light years away from promoting this in any real sense.
And it is economically prohibitive for an individual entrepreneur to finance a small farm and achieve the proper economies of scale to operate profitably.
Culture.
Beyond wealth and health, a good life requires culture. Without culture, survival is not sustainable. If it is, it is hardly worth it.
By “culture,” I mean all the things that make life beautiful: ideas, values, organization, spirituality, traditions, artistic expression, science, technology, political and social engagement and self-determination, physical activities, and the meaning we give to our lives.
Culture is the framework for individual well-being and happiness.
Culture determines whether groups of Homo sapiens sapiens larger than 40 individuals survive and flourish or fracture into waring tribes.
In the current moment of human history, it is difficult for even the most stubborn optimist to deny that civilization is in a moment of danger. Our culture is in a state of pathology.
But we can make our lives better.
But, first, why a “city?” Why not a commune, village, or town?
Simply, economies of scale. Jeffrey Mason and Mark Lutter of the Charter City Insitute put it perfectly,
A city is the optimal unit for implementing reforms that can generate sustained economic growth. Villages are too small to lead to meaningful impact, and nationwide reforms can be politically difficult to adopt and eliminate choice for individuals. Cities, on the other hand, are large enough to fully exploit the benefits from economies of scale and from density.
The kingdom.
So now, let’s imagine creating a planned community of 150,000 people within infrastructure for wealth, health, and culture. (For simplicity, I’ll refer to this as the “City.”)
Imagine knowing most of your shelter, food, water and energy are provided by locally integrated infrastructure, and you own equity in that infrastructure.
Imagine taking for granted direct access to food that is fresh, nutritious, and produced using the most ethical practices.
Imagine knowing you are wasting less resources and causing less pollution because of where you live.
Imagine living and working in a City with ubiquitous internet connection and futuristic automated distribution and transportation networks.
Now imagine this 20,000-150,000 acres and infrastructure owned and controlled by a REIT like a condominium.
In the United States, a condominium owner holds title to the area between the inner walls of the residence. A separate business organization, usually a corporation or LLC, owns the common area between the outer walls. Generally this organization is then jointly owned and controlled by the individual condominium owners.
When we think of condominiums, we usually think of an apartment building with several units, or a group of townhouses with various common areas that include pools and recreation facilities.
Now imagine scaling the condominium structure up to a landmass the size of a city (Manhattan is 14,700 acres and Los Angeles is 322,000 acres). Eventually, the population would reach somewhere between 150,000 residents (roughly the population of Kansas City) to 300,000 residents (roughly the population of Pittsburg).
Specifically, imagine this City on 20,000 acres — 150,000 acres with a carefully planned, integrated infrastructure for:
- Diversified food production;
- Microgeneration;
- Land, water, parks, and resource/waste management;
- Education, recreation, arts, and entertainment;
- Basic health care;
- Transportation and distribution;
- Ubiquitous internet connection;
- Financial services;
- Security; and
- Governance/Control.
You would purchase a home in this City like you would in any other condominium, home prices ranging from $100,000 to $2 million. The condominium would provide mortgages to home buyers. Due to the ease of the foreclosure process, the mortgage terms could be very favorable to buyers and could provide homes to individuals who may otherwise not be credit worthy in other contexts.
Like many other condominiums, you’d purchase shares and hold equity in the common organization, a REIT.
This common organization would own the land and capital and manage operations.
You’d pay monthly common fees, averaging $500 — $1500 per month. (This is in excess of $450 million per year.) These revenues would provide operating capital for City operations.
In return for the fees, you’d receive a diversity of seasonal vegetables, proteins, fruits, water, electricity, waste disposal, sewer, security, ubiquitous high-speed internet, city transportation, and access to recreation facilities, parks, and hunting grounds.
This City would have elaborate, diversified farms with state of the art equipment and greenhouses, gardens, orchards, pastures, wild-open spaces, forests, lakes, and hunting grounds.
These would be integrated into world-class parks, trails, climbing courses, and sports facilities.
The planning and development of the infrastructure would include microgeneration. Solar panels and wind turbines fade into the construction and landscape as common place.
In addition to common garbage services, city vehicles would collect organic waste at every door to produce compost for the city’s gardens, orchards, and pasture.
Industrial facilities would process sewage and wastewater into irrigation and fertilizer.
Like any other city, this one will have places for sports, arts, entertainment, and community events. In many ways, it will look like any other American city, but it will be adorned in professionally manicured, fruit-bearing trees and plants, and it will have a strangely apparent organizational and spatial logic, with an integrated transportation and distribution system like something out of the future.
Fruit-trees and shrubs would decorate and provide shade for passive solar houses and buildings. In ways like this, the City development would integrate the energy system, food system, and landscaping.
As a resident, you’d walk out of your front door to pick tree ripened fruits, flowers bursting with color, and fragrant herbs from your kitchen garden.
The common fees would cover the cost and labor for landscaping and gardening.
A land-backed credit union backed by the REIT would offer home mortgages, small business loans, and other financial services.
You’d find commonplace, individually-owned shopping centers, restaurants, hotels, markets, schools, museums, medical facilities, spiritual centers, and bars.
The City infrastructure would include ubiquitous internet connectivity providing real time communication, information, data collection, and access to the internet.
This “smart” infrastructure would provide the framework for integrating city operations and for drawing upon the value of crowdsourcing and network effects. This applies to the culture, as well as the government, management and coordination of operations.
For example, most revenue for the food system would come from fees. Every household would pay per head for the given term, perhaps the year (just like it is done in the current CSA farm model). There are a number of economic benefits that arise from this.
However, without the price mechanism of a market, it would be difficult for City farmers to match production to demand. The City network would connect and gather real-time data about preferences and consumption so farmers know how much land to allocate to which crops. This City could use an internal cryptocurrency to facilitate food distribution.
To be clear, the idea is not to create a monopoly on all commercial activity within the City. And not everything would be free to every resident.
It is true the City would have an obvious monopoly on some industries. However, residents in this City would have endless opportunities to open businesses providing every imaginable (and not yet imagined) good and service.
Even the goods produced and services provided by the City would be supplemented by competing private businesses both inside and outside City limits.
For example, the City’s food production system would provide fresh seasonal vegetables, proteins, and fruits. The focus would be on providing optimal nutrition, primarily green vegetables and high-quality protein (eggs, chicken, rabbit, pork, lamb, beef, and insects).
Some individuals would also fish and hunt for game in the common hunting grounds.
These would provide baseline nutrition for the residents of the city. However, providing all the food for 150,000 people is an enormous endeavor. Currently worldwide, one person requires, on average, approximately 1/2 acre of cropland per year. This goes up to 1.5 acres when including rangeland. (It’s possible to reduce this requirement in a system with less waste and production dedicated to human food rather than sugar, fuel, and livestock feed.)
Therefore, under current production standards, 150,000 people would need at least 75,000 acres committed to farmland to provide minimum caloric needs.
But even with sufficient farmland, people are not satisfied for long by mere subsistence, and not everyone wants to eat insects. Therefore, individuals in this City would inevitably establish private businesses for importing all the foods — grains, fruits, sugars, oils, spices, and other exotic dishes — that please our diverse palates.
Following the logic of this design, whenever residents import foods from outside the City, they would be indirectly subsidizing the soil fertility by importing organic matter and nutrients contained in the imported foods. Residents would discard some food, and digested food would end up in the toilet. The city waste system would capture all the organic waste — including sewage — and convert it back into usable organic matter and soil amendments.
Above all else, this is a cultural endeavor. If this succeeds, it’s because musicians, poets, and artists lead the way. It will be fun, or it will be nothing. Therefore, the City infrastructure would emphasize the arts. Everywhere in the City, you’d find community event facilities, performing arts centers, art galleries, libraries, museums, amphitheaters, and movie theaters.
This is not only about survival. This is about making our lives more beautiful. At the heart of it, this is about cultivating and preserving the best of what makes civilization valuable — human creativity.
And LOVE must drive this. Love for family, love for friends, love for community, love for humanity, and love for the spirit that moves you.
This is about the good life.
This idea is ambitious. Maybe it’s unrealistic. I know you’re skeptical. That’s expected. But before you dismiss this as too grand, too complicated, too expensive, or naive, let me bring your attention to the Villages in Florida.
The Villages is a retirement community that would not seem possible if it didn’t currently exist just 45 miles northwest of Orlando.
But it does.
The Example of the Villages
The Villages is a 55+ golf community in central Florida. It is an example that stands as proof that what I describe is possible.
In 1983 the Villages was nothing but 400 mobile-home units in watermelon fields and open space.
By 2018, the Villages grew to over 157,000 residents and 32 golf courses on an area 1.5 times the size of Manhattan. The Villages spans 3 counties covering 32 sq. miles (about 8.5 miles wide, east-west, by 15 miles long, north-south).
In other words, in under 40 years, the Villages emerged from a small mobile home park in the middle of nowhere into a spectacular golf-city only slightly less magical and unbelievable than Oz.
The Villages was one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States for several years. In 2005, The Villages sold nearly 4,300 new homes, or about one home every two hours, with gross annual revenues of more than $1 billion. (Blechman, Andrew D. (2009–07–14). Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children (p. 39). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.)
Everyone is happy. There is no crime and everything is within a golf-cart drive away. The road system and nearly 100 miles of golf-cart paths are beautifully laced together with bridges and tunnels.
In 2015, for $175 per month residents of the Villages have access to the 32 golf courses, dozens of swimming pools and tennis courts, bocce, over 1000 organized activities per year, fishing lakes, 31 recreation centers, 17 waterfront parks, and fitness trails.
Within city limits, there are three downtown areas with shopping malls where you can find Wal-Mart, Fresh Market, Target, Staples, CVS, Walgreens, Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and dozens of other stores.
There are medical facilities, religious centers, restaurants, a performing arts center, and other entertainment.
The nightly happy hours at the Villages are like sacred rituals few dare miss. There’s even a senior male escort on-call. (You read that right.)
There are highly-rated charter schools available to the children of employees even though the Villages strictly exclude residents under 55 years old.
The Villages has its own newspaper, magazine, radio station, website, and several web-based apps to navigate the land and social events.
In 2016, the median household income in the Villages was approximately $55,700. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 there were about 27,000 paid employees. These mostly included workers in construction, food and hospitality service, health care, and retail trade.
In 2016, the homes were segregated by value ranging from $100,000 to just over $2 million. In 2015, the average cost of living at the Villages per month was just over $1000. This included a contractual amenities fee ($175.00), sewer ($60.00), water ($31.00), average gas/electric ($148.00), trash collection ($19.00), basic cable television ($60.00), insurance ($100.00), taxes ($240), and the development district assessment ($191.00).
The Villages is organized under community development districts controlled by the Holding Company of the Villages Ltd. and largely independent of state and local governments.
The Morse family Holding Company also owns and controls most of the recreation facilities and many of the services and businesses within the city. The $175 amenities fees each month (more than $140 million per year) finances operations of the golf courses and other recreation facilities. (A portion of the Amenities fees goes directly to debt service for construction loans on the Villages golf courses and facilities.)
In case you wandered off for a moment as I tediously described the astounding details of the Villages, let me remind you of my point: the description you just read is of a real, quickly growing, flourishing city that was nothing just 40 years ago. If this place didn’t already exist, you’d think I was crazy when I argued it could be built.
Now consider that essentially one man, H. Gary Morse, is responsible for the conception and development of the Villages.
In 1983, Morse left his advertising career in Chicago with a vision of building a city for retirees in plaid shorts and pastel-color sweaters living out their days in golf bliss.
Morse moved to central Florida and raised private financing to develop the master-planned community and sell homes. He also established many other businesses out of simple practicality and, in some instances, necessity.
Today the Morse family’s net worth is over $1 billion, and the family still owns and controls the Holding Company of the Villages Ltd., the company that manages operations for the Villages and several other enterprises.
In the 1980's and 90's, during the earlier stages of development, Morse convinced tradesmen to relocate their families to the Villages so they could provide construction and maintenance.
Predictably, many other entrepreneurs established private businesses.Today, many of these businesses have operated continuously with tens of millions of dollars in revenues every year.
It is an all-around fantastic and awesome feat that is nothing short of unbelievable. BUT, excuse my repetition, IT IS REAL. Granted, the Villages is not exactly His Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” (unless you’re a retired golf enthusiast) but imagine the possibilities.
It is astonishing what one man can do. Sometimes apparently simple but powerful ingredients make a movement.
Imagine what a group could do with the communication and collaboration tools at our disposal.
The Villages is by no means the first time hyper-ambitious individuals and groups of people, with various motivations, developed cities out of nothing. This belongs to a rich and diverse history.
The Villages was inspired by earlier retirement communities, Youngtown and Del Webb’s Sun City. Irvine, CA was built by a private corporation as a master-planned city starting in the late 60s. There are many examples from which to draw.
The early growth of the United States often consisted of small, brave groups who cultivated new towns out of bare American land.
At the end of the 19th C., Ebenezer Howard spawned the “Garden City Movement” in the United Kingdom.
Around the same time, Brigham Young led the Mormons to Salt Lake City. The United States was home to many similar utopian experiments. The most interesting and lasting being the Oneida Community.
The 1960’s, ’70s, and '80s saw the “intentional community” movement in the United States.
Israel has the kibbutzim, co-op City in New York, and the list goes on, and on.
Another striking near success story, in 1981, the Rajneeshees purchased Big Muddy Ranch, 64,000+ acres in Central Oregon, for $5.75 million. Within four years, they turned an open ranch into Rajneeshpuram, a city of 7,000 residents with the beginnings of basic city infrastructure.
The Rajneeshees finally succumbed to internal turmoil and political, legal, social, and cultural pressures from nearby residents and government. (Former Big Muddy Ranch has been home to a Christian youth camp since 1999.)
Ideologies aside, all of these examples stand as incontrovertible evidence that human beings have the capacity, with sufficient motivation, to intentionally reorganize their interactions in large groups.
Before we go further, first consider there are currently huge pieces of land for sale in the United States.
Location is crucial. This city may need to be close enough to a major U.S. metropolitan area balancing land costs with proximity to markets for imports and exports of goods, services, and employment. Preferably, the state, like California or Texas, would allow for the establishment of charter cities.
The largest example of land, in early 2016, Stan Kroenke, billionaire owner of the L.A. Rams, purchased the Waggoner Ranch for just under $800 million. The Waggoner Ranch is 530,000 acres (about 3.5 times the size of Chicago) in Northern Texas, just south of Oklahoma and 2.5 hours drive northwest of Dallas. It is the largest contiguous piece of private land in the United States.
Another property, Sandow Lakes Ranch, is a mere 34,000 acres (more than 2 times the size of Manhattan) 60 miles east and north of Austin, TX. It is currently on the market for $250 million.
There are quite a few others around the United States.
In late 2017, Bill Gates, together with other investors, purchased 25,000 acres 50 miles west of Phoenix, AZ for $80 million. There is little public information. However, the long-term plan is to build a “smart city.” (Columbus, Ohio initiated development of a smart city in March, 2017. Not nearly to the same extent, but the City of Chattanooga, TN, has had success implementing ubiquitous wifi.)
As I wrote above, there are others talking about this idea in Silicon Valley.
This is further evidence of the possibility of raising a new city. And who better than Bill Gates and Silicon Valley to design the infrastructure for ubiquitous web-connection, information, data, communication, transportation, and distribution?
In an attempt to eliminate some confusion, let me state (and reiterate) some distinctions.
As much as Mr. Morse and the Villages impress me, this is not about creating a dictatorship. This is an endeavor in democracy using all the resources currently at hand.
I am not claiming to have a fully conceived, perfect plan. I don’t have the depth of expertise in the various fields that are necessary to design and develop a plan of this complexity and magnitude.
This is a starting point to open dialogue. I invite you to first imagine the possibility, then enter the conversation, then join me in building a new city.
The problem is that even if these improvements are highly desirable, the costs for any one individual to make the structural changes I propose are too large. This is the coordination problem.
However, the internet has fundamentally changed the way humankind can organize, communicate, process information, and cooperate. I believe this technology is no less significant to human history than fire, metallurgy, agriculture, writing, or science.
We can harness this power, and the power of crowdsourcing, from the beginning of this adventure.
On the other hand, while I am not claiming a finished plan, there must be a foundation. I cannot overstate the importance of this point. Given the essential role that culture and ideas play in human well-being, I invite you to accept that some cultures and ideas are better than others.
I propose we develop a culture that can accommodate a diversity of worldviews and lifestyles but embraces free, open dialogue constrained by critical thought and the scientific attitude.
I propose this begins with commitments to values and ideas that descend from classical liberalism and the classical Enlightenment.
And we will need to remain vigilant against the cognitive biases and bad ways of thinking that result in destructive ideologies and cults.
This IS NOT an “everyone grab a pitchfork and go back-to-the-land” concept. It is not about being completely “off-the-grid” or “self-sufficient.”
The food/ energy/ resource/waste management/ land/ culture/ health services/ transportation/ distribution/ internet/ security/ financial services/ governance-control systems will supplement, not fully supplant resources from the outside world.
The goal is to provide a baseline quality of life, not to be sequestered in utopia.
(And, by providing a baseline quality of life, this city will also provide a baseline level of security if the flesh-eating-zombies come knocking.)
Other than the “common area,” all enterprises are owned and operated by individuals. Repeating what I wrote above, competing private businesses both inside and outside the city will produce overlapping goods and services.
Homeowners will be eligible for employment by the condominium organization, but this will not be a requirement or the only option. (Again, think liberty and free-association.)
The majority of residents, in fact, will operate private businesses in the city, work remotely (via internet), or commute to work in places outside the city. Some will retire there.
Each homeowners’ obligations arising out of home ownership will be limited to:
- Pay monthly mortgages, insurance, taxes, common fees, and other expenses; and
- Adhere to covenants, conditions, and restrictions relating to home construction and management.
All operations up to the outer walls of each home will be managed by professionals employed by the condominium organization or by private businesses.
I draw upon concepts from corporate organization, as well as cooperative and condominium ownership and control models. Consensual association and cooperation are paramount.
However, this is not a socialist, communist, communal, or Utopian arrangement. This is not about religious ideology, command economics, forced redistribution, or equal shares for all. I hold markets as the best mechanism as of yet discovered to efficiently allocate production and consumption.
On the other hand, I hold zealous, religious adherence to any ideology, including free markets, is inherently insufficient and dangerous. Reality does not neatly conform to any of our ideas.
In order to be lasting, this city would need to be more sophisticated, more elegant, more efficient, and more beautiful than predecessors, not less. This is an investigation and celebration of the culture, values and ideas necessary for maximizing human potential.
It is a conception based on the primacy of wealth, health, and culture with the need to create systems in the proper economies of scale. This is an acknowledgment that current political and economic institutions are inadequate and inefficient.
At the highest abstraction, this is about human well-being and excellence.
I invite you to imagine with me what it would look like if we create a new city upon a hill.
The time is ripe.
Imagine the effect on the world if hundreds of thousands of individuals intentionally and fundamentally changed their own lives for the better.
Organizing Goals:
- Create a culture of love and eudaemonia that accommodates a deep diversity of world views and autonomy, but is constrained by a firm grounding in values and ideas evolving out of classical liberalism and the classical Enlightenment.
- Create infrastructure with proper control, alignment of incentives, and economies of scale for providing the baseline of wealth, health, and culture.
- Produce the highest quality, nutrient-dense food using biologically diverse, clean, responsible, and ethical practices that minimize suffering.
- Economic efficiency and stability (which necessarily entails a commitment to land stewardship, an accounting of negative externalities, and resource management).
Strategy:
- Create a social media community — including this Facebook group — of real people in conversation about this possibility.
- Use the web to assemble core group of expert-leaders to develop the concept. If this is you, sign up for our slack group here. Create a governance infrastructure for the group, and create agreements and contracts for the group.
- Each member “resident” commits $1000 held in a crowd-managed crypto-REIT contingent on specific funding targets funding and development of the city.
- Grow cloud-based mutual-aid community organized around core values, governance infrastructure, agreements, and contracts.
- Finance the development. (Before I discovered Bill Gates’ 2018 purchase of 25,000 acres in Arizona, my plan was to gather the first 100 “residents” of the City and $100,000, then sell this concept to a billionaire capable of financing the development. How fitting that Bill Gates and other techies already independently came to a similar idea? And, again, who more perfect to create the ubiquitous web-connection, information, data, and communication infrastructure? I repeat, THE TIME IS RIPE!)
- Purchase and develop land and infrastructure, begin operations, and sell homes.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but at its peak of wealth and pomp, Rome crumbled nearly over night.
It may sound crazy to say it is possible to build a city in pursuit of the good life. But let me remind you, one man, out of nothing, built the Villages in Florida so retirees could golf.
Imagine what we could do.
