Earlier this week Marc Lore, fifty-year-old billionaire, spoke in an interview of the future city he is planning in the western USA. Not a small project: 400 billion dollars and 5 million people.
The name chosen for this future “city state”? Obviously a Greek word: Telosa, which means “higher purpose”.
And how would this new “promised land” be governed? Between project details, Lore coined the word “equitism” for the occasion: a sort of portmanteau between equity and capitalism. Nice ideology, which as happened recently covers the "simple" need to make one's own rules to escape the injustices perpetrated against poor billionaires.
And so we see a whole flourish of beautiful videos and beautiful renderings of highly advanced "sovereign" cities teeming with greenery and solar-powered flying machines.
Telosa and other “cities of the Sun”: (im)possible utopias?
The utopia of Lore's future city, like other similar projects (mostly abortive) between presentation videos, "fundamental values" and "sustainable urban design", seems more dictated by the fact that its "creator" got tired of to pay taxes. At least in the traditional way.
“Purpose” taxes and the future city as a startup
In the future city that Lore wants to build, the land will be owned by a private trust on which citizens are free to build and sell their own homes. The taxes will be paid primarily for citizen-voted infrastructure improvements in the city. A rather banal idea, presented as a "battle of ideas" to be voted on.
If you go to the desert where the land is worth nothing, you create a foundation that manages the land and people go there to live and pay taxes to build infrastructure, as the future city grows the value of the foundation increases. It could be worth a trillion dollars. And everyone would know exactly what the taxes they pay are being spent.
Marc Lore in a recent interview
Future city: a technology gym
The imposition of startup culture on every aspect of a Telosa citizen's life would obviously be accompanied by a plethora of technologies that would supposedly support this “fiscal cathedral” in the desert.
Photovoltaic roofs, elevated water tanks, aeroponic farms, regenerative eco-services, energy innovations and fuel-efficient cars autonomous driving.
Among the first companies to officially collaborate with Telosa are those in the field of electric air taxis, a bit like in Dubai.
Self made city
Lore says he is fascinated by the idea of "something that comes from nothing". It sounds like a praise to himself: a man who started his career in the bank and today owns a 40 million euro penthouse (with a life-size bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin).
Yet physics has taught us: nothing comes from nothing and grows like this, by magic. The challenge is daunting, and seems like a nightmare in terms of sustainability. It goes without saying that the desert is very hot, and water is scarce: things that don't seem to stop the desires of Lore and many other wealthy people. Why?
For some time, in fact, the dream of generating new-concept future cities using more or less artificial intelligence has pushed a surprising number of companies and billionaires to attempt the feat. And they all seem to insist on territories with significant structural problems that are difficult to resolve except with an environmental "bloodbath".
The “new founding fathers”
Before Telosa, examples abound. Bill Gates he has his own little future city project that he's building in southwestern Arizona, in 2017 bought nearly 100 square kilometers (25.000 acres). There he hopes to install a data center and launch a self-driving car-based transportation model.
Earlier this year, in Nevada, an entrepreneur in the bitcoin industry called Jeffrey Berns initiated the procedures for found a self-governing territory called Painted Rock. Almost a techno government, spanning 270 square kilometers (67.000 acres), where services would be based on blockchain.
Akon City instead is the name of the future city project launched in 2018 by the Afro-American singer and entrepreneur Akon. It should be built in Senegal, and this has earned the project the official qualification of "real-life Wakanda" (the hyper-technological African state told in the Marvel universe).
Saudi Arabia is the place chosen for the foundation of Neom, “linear” city which stretches for the length of 170 kilometers (105 miles) into the desert. The founder, Saudi prince Mohammed Bin Salman, says the future city will be accessible in just 20 minutes with futuristic means of transport.
Biodiversityinstead, it is a future archipelago city for 16.000 inhabitants designed by Bjarke Ingels that wants to come to life off the coast of Malaysia. Three islands connected to each other by land, sea and sky by autonomous vehicles, boats and aircraft.
Ingels is also behind the pompously named technology village project (70 hectares, less than a square kilometer) Woven city and announced by Toyota in January 2020. There too autonomous vehicles, home automation and robotics for all citizens (employees of the Japanese company).
Future city: the "highest purpose" is another
In some of these scenarios, despite all the bluster about a sustainable future and fairer societies, the shortages are gigantic, especially the water shortages. A circumstance that qualifies many of these future city projects as waste paper. Or it shows widespread certainty on the part of tech billionaires of overcoming problems that seem insurmountable.
Or again, it makes us understand that these moves are dictated by another type of urgency.
Every man for himself
In 2018, to the futurist Douglas Rushkoff an exorbitant amount was offered to speak to what he believed was a panel, but in reality it was a small investor conference.
These investors didn't want Rushkoff's ideas about the future as much as his opinions. On what? On which countries would be least affected by climate change and above all on how they would "maintain authority" over their security forces "after the degradation of the social fabric".
They have since emerged meaningful reports about the tech industry's attempts to insulate itself from impending disaster, preparing gilded exiles with the money earned through an industry that has sometimes done just that. It has accelerated political instability and ecological decline.
Take the Money and Run
There is certainly something evocative about the idea of Telosa, 5 million people living in a future technological garden city. An oasis in the desert where everyone lives, works and votes via app.
The more likely dark future, though, is that these “new founding fathers” will use their money and talent to hedge when the problems the world is trying to address become particularly severe.
The super rich, in other words, have water reserves (the aforementioned Jeffrey Berns who is building Painted Rock purchased 200.000 litres, 7.000 cubic feet, in two separate underground basins), private jets and bunkers in New Zealand. And they want to make them count.
At the very least it is obvious that these glorious visions of the future city, with their garnish of inspiring slogans about a “higher purpose,” are very different from their private contingency plans.
