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Silicon Valley elites revealed as buyers of $800m of land to build utopian city
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Neoliberal
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Lol. This always makes me laugh. What do they think? This would actually protect them in case of an "apocalypse"?
Good question! Planned cities always sound great, but very rarely do they actually become anything without some form of organic growth (and I think they are missing this). And even then, the masterplan needs to allow for that.
Cities need a reason to exist beyond being a vanity project for some really, really rich tech bros lol.
Exactly. I see so many things that WILL go wrong here. If they're all just rich people, how are they going to live? Who's going to make their necessities? Are they going to have slaves? Are they going to do it themselves? Another one, if the whole world goes down, what do you think the other part of the world will do, watch them sit there in their utopia without just coming in and drag them in the streets? How are they going to prevent that? Will they have armies? So many questions and impossibilities.
My reading of the article doesn't suggest it's a city particularly intended for rich people, or that it's intended to survive the apocalypse - when rich people want to try that, they buy remote islands and build nuclear bunkers. I think what they're going for sounds more like a modern version of the garden city movement.
In this case, the 'utopian' aspect seems limited to building a city with good public transport (which, outside the US, might not be considered especially utopian!) and clean energy.
Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard absolutely comes to mind.
Oddly enough, the Garden City movement was a partial inspiration & justification for American and Canadian suburbs. Poorly executed, of course, and it really is a shame the automotive industry was so effective at lobbying during that same time period becuase they would be so much better executed if they had utilized railroads and streetcars.