🏙 Two entrepreneurs want to build a futuristic city-cryptostate in Silicon Valley. Here's why the idea isn't totally ridiculous.

Also: 5 Quick Questions for … city planner M. Nolan Gray on why California doesn’t have more coastal cities

In This Issue

The Essay: Two entrepreneurs want to build a futuristic city-cryptostate in Silicon Valley. Here's why the idea isn't totally ridiculous.

5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … city planner M. Nolan Gray on why California doesn’t have more coastal cities

Micro Reads: the Pentagon and geothermal energy, Chinese productivity, Amazon’s drone

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Quote of the Issue

“This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and the spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.” - Mark Twain

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The Essay

🏙 Two entrepreneurs want to build a futuristic city-cryptostate in Silicon Valley. Here's why the idea isn't totally ridiculous.

Silicon Valley is as much an idea as a place. When people talk about the broad American technology sector, they frequently refer to it as “Silicon Valley.” That, even though there are plenty of significant tech companies — Amazon and Microsoft being the two most notable — and fast-growing startups that aren’t based in the southern San Francisco Bay Area of California.

But Silicon Valley is also a definite, geographical place. It’s frequently compared to Florence during the Renaissance for its creative dynamism. Of course, Florence produced breathtaking art and architecture, not deep-learning software and social media platforms. So the Italian city-state has a clear edge on Silicon Valley for physical beauty.

No one compares Silicon Valley to Florence for its soul-stirring, humanist design. As Gawker described the tech hub back in 2014:

As a human landscape, it's a crushingly boring sunny suburban slab of freeways, fast food, traffic, and long smoggy boulevards of faded retail sprawling out to endless housing developments of sand-colored stucco boxes. It's Phoenix with milder weather, Orlando minus the mosquitos. Tech-loving travelers come from around the world to see Silicon Valley, but there's nothing to see—no Times Square, no French Quarter, just low-rise office parks and security guards circling the parking lots.

Since that Gawker piece, however, Apple has constructed The Ring, its corporate campus that resembles a spaceship, and Facebook its Frank Gehry-designed expansion. Next up is Alphabet-Google’s new canopy-covered headquarters.

And, yes, I realize how much the above image evokes the popular “future city” meme on social media.

Maybe the region will eventually evolve into a more architecturally adventurous place beyond a few corporate HQs. But some folks in Silicon Valley, as is their wont, would like to accelerate that process. Elaine Moore of the Financial Times reports on an embryonic effort to build a futuristic city-state in the Silicon Valley worthy of being described as Florentine: