City of Telosa: thoughts?

Hey everyone.  I've recently learned about this project to build an ecocity in the desert (currently being considered are Arizona, Utah, and Nevada). It's based on the 15 minute city design where you could walk to anything in 15 min despite being in a huge metropolis. There's an alternate economy based on "equitism". Necessary vehicles would be electric and automated.  Standards of education and healthcare would be very high along with other social services.  Land would not be owned but structures could. The city would be filled with green spaces.  Water would be recycled. There's a lot of room for permaculture in the design, which is still being talked about in the city's forums.  (They're aiming for the first settlers around 2030.)

In many ways, this looks like the city of the future, but for me,  there are a few downsides. The first one for me is that people would be packed in and stacked in to make it work.  It looks like a lot of condos and apartment blocks.  As a permie, I currently make do with my little town lot,  but have plans for more land in the near future.  I have always had this pastoral dream that,  yes,  includes a lot of other people reaping the benefits,  but looks more like something out of a page of Fukuoka's books.  Not sure I could hack a condo anymore. That feels suffocating.  But maybe this is the way of the future that is fair for everyone.

Also have some issues with trusting the motives, etc, when there is money to be made.   Walmart billionaire Marc Lore is funding the project.   And having been active in the forums,  it quickly became clear that we all have very different ideas of what an ecocity is. Like for some people,  it's "we could place some limits on disposable containers" and for some of us those containers wouldn't even be a question. So I do wonder how much greenwashing will go on,  and how much actual progress there will be.  That said,  there's a lot of opportunity for being involved in the ideas.

I'd just love to hear what you all think about it. I know that many of you know so much more than I do, so I'd like to hear if you think it would work out not.  

https://cityoftelosa.com/

My thought is that even if they are building super-eco everything, just the fact building a whole community NEW has a massive ecological footprint, especially if this is currently open land. I would rather see resources put towards improving transit, green space, and energy efficiency in existing neighborhoods.

How about questions?

1. What is billionaire Marc Lore doing right now to fix the unfair practices of Walmart that turned him into that billionaire?

2. They mentioned water and energy, but not a single word about food - who's going to produce it, where, and how?

3. In all the pretty pictures in the opening movie, they did not actually show individual houses/apartments and whether they had plant-growing space - so what would "typical" housing actually look like?

4. Similarly, none of the models that showed green-space depicted trees/plants that appeared to be human edible. This smacks as a version of a HOA community where all the rules are made up legally in advance, which makes them hard to change, and I know of several communities where fruit trees are pretty much banned. So my question would be, how will they ensure that the community can evolve in a safe and equal way?

Maybe.   I live in an area where there used to be a good many coal mines.   Ziegler, Illinois was designed by the owner of a coal mine to be a model community.  The ideas presented may be the beginning of something great. Or, they may be the beginning of a company town.  In either case, I feel it is worth watching.

Trish said, " It's based on the 15 minute city design where you could walk to anything in 15 min despite being in a huge metropolis.

I can walk a mile in 20 minutes, so based on that I see the footprint of this city being one square mile.  How does someone cram a huge metropolitan city into one square mile?

By building up.  So how high would this city be?  How many stories will this require?

Trish said, ". Necessary vehicles would be electric and automated

If in this city a person can walk anywhere in 15 minutes, what would be the need for vehicles?

I see you have some of the same concerns.

These are great points. I did notice that the "green spaces" in the mock ups don't look very green.  That was a big red flag for me.

Food: hydroponics was mentioned a lot. Personally I'm not a fan, though it can produce food locally, which is better than importing it.  People in forums have also mentioned community gardens, and of course I said we should plant every open space with food,  permaculture style.  A lot remains to be answered.  Maybe if the city was flanked by small permaculture farms as well they would have better luck at producing food locally.  That might be a space where I'd fit in... if a lot of other things went in the right direction,  too.

Still so many questions remain to be answered.

I'm assuming vehicles would be for transportation of goods and for emergency services.  That's an assumption, though.  There was also mention of flying cars, which would be interesting.

Wow that looks very Singaporean. People do look packed in, but no more than New York, Barcelona, Amsterdam or any other big city that many people love to live in.  It looks revolting to me, but that's me! (And to me, those other cities look miserable, as well...)

But for people who really like being around people, having amenities virtually within reach, and whose lives are focused on human-to-human interactions that looks like it could be a pleasant place for them.

What caught my eye is the statement on food:

Community-Based Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture integrated into buildings and open space will provide fresh and accessible produce to all citizens using aeroponic and other high-yield, water-saving technologies.

That is not the sort of food I want to eat. I like food that comes from the ground, and I like being involved in growing it.  I think this city would appeal to people who don't want to be personally involved with these basic life requirements, people who prefer their food to come from supermarkets, but want the food to be coming from perceived ecologically friendly sources. I think that's a lot of people in the industrialized nations. And I think it is good that people with those interests concentrate together.

As for rehabbing existing cities into more liveable, walkable spaces - a great point, as it does save a lot of resources to reuse rather than build anew.  There are big projects like this across the world.  Take a look at this one in Barcelona.



Or this smaller neighborhood going in in Tempe, AZ.  It's called Culdesac Tempe: Culdesac Tempe, a car-free neighborhood development in Arizona


I think more people will probably stick with the older cities which are redeveloping both for social, familial, financial and mobility reasons.  But it does seem likely that concept cities like Telosa will develop in the US and I'm sure they will have a devoted group of residents who like that lifestyle.

It seems rather fragile and technology-dependent to me, but it's the hands-off way of living that most people in industrialized nations seem to like.

My first thought is that it is a con. Get backers, scoop up venture capital and down payments and grants for studies and sell shares for this lovely dream city that'll start in 2030 (how long can we extend that before the legal issues build up?) , and ride off into the sunset with bags of coin.

I'm not who their marketing is aimed at though. Younger folk who rent, starting their careers, looking to find a mate and maybe raise kids, who prefer urban living, and who want to help the planet. A very top-down urban utopia.

They do have a point with walkability, most cities in the US ( other than in the core )  were built assuming car ownership. Vehicle ownership is personally expensive, and commutes are expensive in a lot of ways. Freedom from the post World War vehicle infrastructure of most US cities would have many advantages. Roads, water and sewer infrastructure, streetlamps, all that stuff has maintenance costs and if the population density isn't high enough to support them, bills don't get covered and systems decay. And populations that don't walk or bike much tend to have more health costs.

The beautiful green lawns and large deciduous trees in a desert bothers me. Recycling water helps, but unless that city has a giant dome over it, it will need outside water sources. Las Vegas is further north, up the river, and they're having to say goodbye to their lawns. If I was planning to follow a job and stay a couple years that might not bother me, but if I'm thinking decades, that matters.

Financially it sounds like a "company town" of yesteryear. Large stakeholders own all the land, the land and buildings are rented by the people who use them. And money (presumably taxes?) are generated from the rent of the land to pay for social services. That can work if there's enough different stakeholders? But if there's only a few large ones, we know what happens to a company town if they decide to squeeze the profit out of the employees or leave. I also didn't see anything about seniors or eldercare on their site, which adds to the "company town" feel.

City of Telosa
Population of 5 million
15minute commute city
(15min commute to me means 10miles edge to edge aka 100sqmiles (10miles by 10miles) or more up to ~200sq mile (14mile by 14miles).
(population density of 50,000/sq mile to 25,000/sq mile)
(NYC's population density is 26,403 people per square mile, Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile)

TRANSPORTATION
They want all daily neccesities to be within a 5min WALK, is work also suppose to be within a 5minutes walk?
I like all the talks of public transit and all-electric vechiles

TAXES
Cities already kind of own the land that house are build on and collect a 2% property tax/rent/lease every single year.
Land is usually 20% of the total property value, are they trying to charge an extra 20% document processing fee/sales tax when properties change hands?

FOOD/VEGETABLE PRODUCTION
I think that 1,000sqft could feed each vegan adult. So if we focus on just the vegetables we would only need 100sqft per adult and with grow light it could be as little as 50sqft. I ddon't envision this city growing their own meat or grains (rice/flour/etc) or even root crops. So all their vegetable grown locally could really happen. (john Jeavon, how to grow more vegetables). Maybe the ceiling of the study room can be lowered 1 section at a time to reveal the growing vegetable. Or 10% of a high rise could be a hydroponic farm vs a parking garage?

ENERGY
HVAC: Insulation, ERV, Heat Pump, can lower energy needs
Kitchen, Laundry, Lighting and Elctronics can be energy smart and lower energy needed
It is in the desert, so I can see it all being powered by solar roof, and then pumped hydro and electric vechiles storing the electricity that is generated in the day.
Solar Energy Production: 1000 MWhr/day/sq mile for 50,000 to 25,000ppl/sq mile aka 20-40KWhr/day/person

WATER + Sewage
90% water resuse is possible because Isreal does it. Here is a cool distributed unit https://www.fluencecorp.com/aspiral/

I tried to wade through the Telosa website. The utopian descriptions read like the disconnected ramblings produced after a lot of bong hits on a Saturday night. I took a stab at deciphering just the economic model. It's so simple and obvious!

According to the website, there will be an Innovation Ecosystem based upon a Culture Of LifeLong Learning which will have Key Areas which themselves will have Zones, which themselves will have Hubs. This glorious structure will be created by an Incubator and Accelerator under the guidance of an Institute for Entrepreneurship, Apprenticeship and Innovation.

Ultimately, I have to agree with this news article:

A billionaire wants to build a utopia in the US desert. Seems like this could go wrong.

What would make society better? Is it skyscrapers in the desert? Or would it actually benefit the world more if billionaires had less influence over the way society operates?