Final: So Where Should We Build Ten New Cities in the US?
This is the 9th and final article of the series Where to Create Ten New Cities in the US.
The groundwork for this series came here:
The first eight articles in this series are:
So here are the ten cities I propose, along with takeaways.
The Ten New Cities I Propose
1. Guantanamo City
Transform the military base into a Hong Kong of the Caribbean:
2. Starbase
Boca Chica is the ideal point in the US to serve as the trading hub between the Earth and Space.
3. Presidio
It would be a new city in the middle of San Francisco, unburdened by what has been—because it’s federal land, so it could be exempt from local and state regulations. This liberation would make it the fastest source of wealth creation in the history of humanity.
4. Salton City
It could have been an amazing city if the Salton Sea hadn’t run out of water. We could revive it with more water, and make it into a walkable, futuristic city. The water would come from the Pacific, as the Salton Sea is below sea level.
5. Bombay Beach
It was a summer destination when the Salton Sea had water. Give it its water back, and push its development as the summer destination it should always have been.
6, 7, and 7 bis. Owens, Mono, and Walker Lakes
They were both deprived of water because of LA’s thirst. With desalination, we can give LA the water it needs and reserve these lakes’ water, so they can grow back into communities. Owens Lake will likely remain a small agricultural community, but Mono Lake could evolve into a new Tahoe, except on drier land. Walker City could become an outcrop of the nearby military base.
8. Lake Mohave
It’s an existing lake between Lake Havasu City and Las Vegas’ Lake Mead. It has barely any life in it. It’s all federal land, dedicated to human enjoyment. This enjoyment can be improved, many jobs created, and many great lives lived, if we incorporate it into a city.
9. New Lakes
There are dozens of valleys between California and Colorado that could be filled with new lakes and host new lives, from Dixie Valley in Nevada, to the Escalante Desert or Sevier Lake in Utah, to Green River in Colorado. Each new lake could host a new, different, original city.
10. Satellite Cities
These are new communities near existing cities. This is the most common type of new community development, which depends in a big way on local regulation. The key for these communities is to sell a grand vision, but share it with the right people only at the right time.
There are dozens of such projects in the US at any given time.
Takeaways
It’s not easy to build new cities. Most sites have been tried already; if they didn’t work, it’s because there was something wrong about them. The result is that new cities must have a strong argument going for them. They’re either
Some exceptional situation, like Guantanamo Bay
Otherwise poor sites that become important due to some new technology or geopolitics, like Starbase
Sites that are missing a key ingredient—usually water—but can either regain it or get it from scratch
Sites close to existing and successful cities
Sites that are less than ideal, but are viable and could beat better sites because they have become complacent—especially through regulation
In other words, new cities are usually water arbitrage, regulatory arbitrage, extensions of existing cities, or simply unique spots.
When you announced this series I was personally hoping for an analysis based on changing patterns of trade, resource extraction, transportation / network effects, and geography/climate to identify emerging centres of power and influence - Gitmo and Star Base were interesting to me for those reasons! I presume this would have to be a global series to be really interesting (or maybe its pointless as no new cities are likely to emerge?
Another set of locations could be currently small cities/towns that could be expanded significant. You correctly noted the incumbent barriers to growth in many larger cities, but how many small towns (10-50k people?) would actually have the political will to expand if they had outside financial support? Likewise a bet if bunch of them have favorable geography (why they exist today) but have some factor why they haven’t grown. Maybe that is just because there is a large city not to far away. But with enough development that isn’t a problem as some of the proposals in this series already note.