Migrations, reversed
Thoughts on startup nations, cities-as-climate-solution, and millennial burnout
Cities are serendipity machines, and among the most important and effective engines of economic growth ever invented. It’s easier to build anything, whether companies, snow tires, residential real estate, or software, when lots of people live in close proximity and need something to do all day. Cities are also, and perhaps counterintuitively, mostly great for the environment. Here’s a recent, and fascinating podcast on the subject from David Roberts of the wonderful Volts. Please do listen to the whole thing, but in short; Cities allow for smaller and more efficient power grids, multi-family buildings are easier to heat and cool in aggregate than tons of freestanding homes, and proximity to amenities and jobs means that people need less driving and cars. These are all desirable outcomes.
There’s also been a recent focus, at the sorts of parties we don’t get invited to, on cities as startup states; Freedom Cities groups have been meeting with the Whitehouse, and indicate that there is receptiveness to their… creative (?) proposals. If you can’t already tell, the venn diagram between freedom cities boosters, crypto bagholders, and dark-enlightenment techno anarchists is a circle. Shocking, we know. On some levels, this one may, weirdly, not be the worst idea (they are absolutely the worst people to do it, however). *Note that we’re not talking about the proposed deregulation, utter disregard for safety standards, and opting in to vast amounts of mind and body altering drugs as potentially good concepts. Those are all dumb. We just mean the idea of founding new cities in general.
Here’s a fascinating internet rabbit hole if you want a break from doom scrolling; When was the last new city founded in the United States? It’s a more complex question than we thought. A “city” is legally defined only as a municipal area with an independent system of government, and there are varying regulations state by state as to how large a population is needed to apply. The numbers are mostly quite low, in the hundreds or single digit thousands. If we tighten our definition, according to the comprehensive legal principle of rules I just made up, and look at newly-populated communities that have grown to over 100,000 population, the answer appears to be Irvine, California, founded in 1970. It’s been a while!
With that age in mind, it may not surprise you that cities were largely sited where they are for practical reasons; Access to ports, rivers, timber, farming, resource extraction, and military defense of all the above. This made great sense at the time but the paradigm may now be outdated. We’re interested in the example of college towns, and in the idea of company towns based on white-collar knowledge work. There is, again, some precedent. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all experimented with the idea of corporate-subsidized housing near their vast campuses. It never appears to have worked well, which we understand. Job security, especially in tech, is at all time lows, and workers understandably don’t want to place something as critical as their family housing in the hands of a corporate overlord who can tell them to piss off at any time.
We have suggestions on making the model viable, which we’d love to see a thoughtful and ambitious politician begin to champion.
Let’s pass legislation that, any time a technology company is a partner in standing up grid-scale electrical production, they’re required to provide power to 1,000 low-income homes in their local community. Any part of this housing can be rented to employees of the company, but with rent control in case of the employee losing their job. Yes, this applies to AI data centers, why do you ask?
Anyone remember the HQ2 beauty pageant from Amazon a few years ago? You know, the one where executives made various cities around the US play a humiliating game of who can grovel the lowest, and also offer the biggest tax break? No more of that, ever, and instead go the other way. Governors and Mayors, no tax breaks. Instead, if a company wants access to your local talent, require a donation to a local fund for building more affordable housing. Let’s say $10m for every $1bn in revenue?
Instead, give tax breaks, and huge ones, to grocery stores and childcare centers opening anywhere in the city. Housing is a critical thing to solve if you want more people living in cities, but far from the only one.
Congestion pricing is working beautifully in New York. We hope every city in the country adopts similar programs. If you do, take part of the revenue and figure out a way to buy an ebike for anyone who wants one. Even if this makes the program cost neutral in the first couple of years, it’s money well spent.
These four simple ideas are relatively low lift, require the building of no new infrastructure, and can help with the current state of our cities. But what about building new ones? We’d love to see it, on the condition that the “Freedom Cities” nitwits aren’t allowed within 50 miles. Like many millennials, we’ve struggled with the balance of affordable housing and proximity to our careers, especially when not wanting a multi-hour daily commute. It’s tough. Supply and demand are undefeated, and it will be hard to build enough units in our established cities to drive down prices nationally without a small miracle or 6.
Is it workable? Honestly, probably not. Building a city is a many-year process and will require continuity between political regimes. We can’t imagine a smart builder taking on the risk of being left high and dry when the political tides change, as they always and inevitably do. This is also the hole in the Freedom Cities silliness. The backers of these projects don’t have the money, patience, or guaranteed freedom from prosecution to see their projects through. We imagine their plan is simply to raise a lot of money from public and private partners, and draw large salaries until wandering off like spastic children to other projects.
Clarity is important. We have great opportunities to improve our living conditions through upgraded construction practices, slapping down NIMBYs (they need it), adding greenspace and tree cover in our neighborhoods, pushing heat pumps, local transportation, and so much more. Let’s keep the goal, the goal.
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