I don’t agree with much of Casey Handmer’s politics, but I do like his fantastical vision of new cities. I’ve bought into the idea of using cheap solar for water desalination. It could transform areas of the world that don’t have enough water. We need to think bigger.
@manton This reminds me of what the Tech Bros in Silicon Valley are trying to do in California. Of course they wouldn’t venture into the middle of the country to do it and I’d imagine their vision wouldn’t be for the good of everyone; cheap housing, etc, but rather for the ultra wealthy billionaires and folks somewhere on the extremely rich scale.
@manton this is basically filled with crap that ignores an incredibly long history of people trying to do things like this and how they become terrible places for people — like Brasília or the monstrosity in eastern Cairo.
We can build incredible places where we already are, the problems are not technological. And deciding the solution to politics is to clean slate reimplement is another way of saying “ignore the political problems” which is a great way to recreate them, generate new ones, or simply end up with no people forever. Because people generate politics.
@fahrni I don’t know all the details, but I’m pretty sure part of the goal with that is to have more affordable housing. The extremely wealthy don’t need a new city because they can afford San Francisco! But you’re right there is an overlap with the blog post I linked to and the techno-optimism folks in California.
@jsonbecker Hawaii was self sufficient wirh over 1 million people prior to western contact. It was like a fine tuned machine.
@manton What makes us think that in order to be “great”, we have to keep building new stuff and blazing new frontiers? I’d rather we be “great” by making more space for other species on our planet, recognizing that we are the ultimate invasive species, and consciously changing our role.