☕ TikTok vs. Uncle Sam

At that point, China will have to choose between A) expensive upkeep and redevelopment to keep cities looking new, or B) patching up and painting over old buildings to save money. Japan actually chooses the former, which is why it still looks nice — but this eternal construction and beautification costs a lot of society’s resources. Hong Kong and T... See more

Neo-cities : When do people start new cities vs. reforming existing ones? Is Singapore an urbanist paradise or technofascist dystopia? What can the US learn from Special Economic Zones? Can you do urban renewal right? What’s the difference between Esmeralda and California Forever? Why do most charter cities fail? How might they succeed?

Now, two things are happening.

1. Technology is making old and new ideas cheaper and easier to build.




2. There’s a reemergence of “premium demand.”

Ideas Need Adoption to Make an Impact

Ideas alone are not enough. They need to be techno-economically viable, buildable for a low enough cost that the market is able to adopt them. There is no progress without

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Of all the dots on the map that the United States would claim, few were as initially unpromising as Dhahran. The site itself was a blank spot in the desert. The nearest town, Khobar, wasn’t much more—a “few mud huts,” one observer wrote. And Dhahran was situated in Saudi Arabia, a monarchy not known for welcoming outsiders. Yet Saudi Arabia had oil

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