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?
Yes I think that’s it. The US is already reasonably optimized. This changes elsewhere. Like for example Somaliland has some pretty obvious spots for new cities. Thai islands. Greek Cyclades. Indonesia has many sports. I will likely do one of these series, but for new states!
Actually, most borders in the world already make quite a lot of sense. Africa is more sensible than we like it to think. Ethnic subdivisions of Africa could be quite interesting indeed, not just because ethnic tensions would diminish, but also because having hundreds of new polities would allow for much more political exploration.
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.
Nice series. It was really helpful to understand why cities were built (or not built, in some cases).
Of all of these, the ones that seem convincing to me are Presidio and Satelite cities on the same area. A relevant housing crisis can drive a lot of the investment needed to create these new cities.
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?
Yes I think that’s it. The US is already reasonably optimized. This changes elsewhere. Like for example Somaliland has some pretty obvious spots for new cities. Thai islands. Greek Cyclades. Indonesia has many sports. I will likely do one of these series, but for new states!
New states would be good - a post-European world where borders actually make sense!!!!?? :D
Wdym post-European? Post European colonialism?
Actually, most borders in the world already make quite a lot of sense. Africa is more sensible than we like it to think. Ethnic subdivisions of Africa could be quite interesting indeed, not just because ethnic tensions would diminish, but also because having hundreds of new polities would allow for much more political exploration.
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.
A bigger city nearby is a death sentence.
Rocky Mountains area.
Nice series. It was really helpful to understand why cities were built (or not built, in some cases).
Of all of these, the ones that seem convincing to me are Presidio and Satelite cities on the same area. A relevant housing crisis can drive a lot of the investment needed to create these new cities.