I've been quietly working on something for a while, so I'm excited to finally be able to share it with you...

We are creating a new town called Esmeralda!

Our team has an exclusive option on a beautiful piece of land 90 mins north of SF, in California wine country If you dream of living in a small town while being surrounded by creative, high-agency people, we’re building this for you

Two key components will make Esmeralda special:
1. Our "hardware" – an Italian hill town
2. Our "software" – a culture of learning & building

The Netherlands is one of the most sci-fi places on earth

The Dutch deserve a new word: hydropunk

Over centuries, they have created & maintained one of the most advanced water management systems on the planet The Dutch flood protection system, Delta Works, is an epic feat of engineering

Not to mention, it looks straight out of a Frank Herbert book

Below, the 9km Eastern Scheldt Barrier stands guard against the North Sea’s storm surges & rising waters

I have found heaven, and it turns out it's on earth after all. It's called Las Catalinas, a small town in Costa Rica

The key design principle: cars are parked in a lot outside of the gorgeous hill town This principle leaves public spaces open for adults & kids to run around without noise, pollution, or fear of getting run over

I love how many families with young kids there are here, & they have complete freedom!

Here's a video from yesterday afternoon in one of LC's plazas:

Plans for the proposed new city between SF & Sacramento just dropped!

@CAForever published the ballot initiative that, if passed by Solano County voters in Nov, would greenlight the project

I have questions about the plan, but my immediate reaction is "hell yes!" This is exactly what my home state of California needs!



California Forever is essentially proposing the urbanist dream

It will be a walkable city that improves quality of life & brings down cost of living by:

- prioritizing public transit
- using space efficiently
- removing unnecessary rules that create waste & bloatcaliforniaforever.com/news/the-urban… #1: "[We're] focused on ‘missing middle’ housing"

This is the type of neighborhood that makes up the most beloved places in the world

Places like Amsterdam, Venice, Santa Monica, Lake Como, Kyoto, and Lisbon are all made of missing middle housing

I've been impressed by Mexico City's street design

One detail I particularly like: their streets narrow at many intersections, shortening the distance that pedestrians need to cross and encouraging cars to slow down:



CDMX has also elevated many of the crosswalks, which gives drivers the sense that they're encroaching on pedestrians' territory rather than the other way around

The saga of Israeli water management is one of the most inspiring stories of the last 75 years

Israel went from having a serious water problem to being a net water exporter to neighboring countries. Meanwhile, the population grew from ~1 million to well over 9 million With its land mass 60% desert, the region was originally thought to support a max population of just 2 million people

But with tireless work, financial support to find new solutions, and brilliant technological advances, Israel was able to blow past those limits

I've been collecting a list of recently-built places with good urban fabric. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Las Catalinas is a hill town overlooking an ocean cove in Costa Rica, built just over a decade ago with the bones of a classic Mediterranean hill town (@LasCatalinas) 2. Serenbe is a chain of villages on the outskirts of Atlanta. It's modeled after the English countryside, with clustered, walkable centers surrounded by farmland and woods. The villages are mixed use, with homes, shops, businesses, artists’ studios, and more (@Serenbe)

Las Catalinas is the most inspiring real estate project I've seen cnu.org/publicsquare/2…

built ~10 years ago, it combines modern comforts with the charm of a traditional village

I'd love to get lost in its rich network of hidden passages, stair streets, & cozy public spaces 🤗 the key design principle: cars are parked in a lot *outside* of the gorgeous hill town

this leaves the community open for adults & children to run around without noise, pollution, or fear of getting run over

it also means that more awesome things can fit in the same acreage!

gas stations in Rome are tiny! their teensy footprint made me realize I've never questioned how much land gas stations truly need

normal-sized gas stations tend to spoil the whole streetscape, whereas these pint-sized stations are only a bit more intrusive than a bus stop is anyone here familiar with the economics and land use of gas stations? I'm curious to learn about why these don't exist in the US!

I'm considering intentionally getting Covid in ~late January

is this a stupid idea?

thought process:
- get it over with while Omicron is prevalent, since it seems less severe than previous strains
- my booster is recent, so maximally effective

(1/3) - case counts should be lower than they are right now, so medical system less strained*

*I'll monitor how far we are from the peak in late January, and maybe aim for February if cases are still high

(2/3)

with my engineer hat on, it seems obvious that
(A) trustless computation &
(B) a public, trustless, immutable database
are revolutionary primitives that will unlock amazing things we haven't seen before on the other hand, I've yet to see a compelling blockchain application that isn't self-referential back into the crypto ecosystem. and I've been looking pretty enthusiastically! I expected to see at least *one* by now

the one crypto application I'm fully convinced by is decentralized money

one Argentinian grandma I know bought Bitcoin many years ago, even though she barely uses a computer. "money the government can't touch?! count me in!" Americans (myself included) underestimate this value prop, because we've (generally) been able trust our central bankers to keep our currency stable and predictable

what if we trained central bankers by having them run a video game economy for a few years first also urban planners:

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1459204096972492800

1/ countless immigrant friends have told me they make an order of magnitude more money in the US than they could've in their home country

many had to save up for months/years to buy a plane ticket. but as soon as they landed, they often made up the price of the ticket in weeks 2/ such a huge inefficiency! upfront capital constraints held them back from being far more productive sooner

are there any platforms for lending to immigrants to buy flights to their destination country?

new post! urban density is a tragedy of the commons: devonzuegel.com/post/urban-den… people aim to maximize both space & access to amenities when deciding where to live

but there's a tradeoff—high population density increases the quantity & diversity of services a neighborhood can support, but it also requires homes to occupy less land on average

brb while I pour over @AdrianopleGroup's new map of special economic zones & charter cities: openzonemap.com/map It reminds me of when I first started researching startup cities. I'd thought it was a promising hypothetical idea, but not an active space yet. I was shocked to learn there are already *thousands* of SEZs in the world!

https://twitter.com/devonzuegel/status/1452689690360958976

when planes were invented, our system of property rights had to be reinvented too

common law had established if one owns land, "it is theirs all the way to Heaven and to Hell"

so when planes began to fly, there were some interesting proposals for avoiding aerial trespass... that common law principle is called the "ad coelum doctrine" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_est…

the problem is that in its strong form, it essentially made air travel impossible

as a result, we no longer accept that property rights extend infinitely upwards

Messaging apps need more granular notification preferences

Chats are used in so many different contexts, yet we're stuck with just a few config options, which make so many assumptions about how we want to interact

chat with mom ≠ with close friends ≠ with 20 acquaintances e.g. I love the idea of group chats centered around a shared interest, but practically you're stuck between two options:
(a) mute it and forget to check back in
(b) a glaring notification badge that constantly lights up, even for low-value "welcome to the chat, Foobar!" messages

I can't get enough of this place

https://twitter.com/devonzuegel/status/1376371790696570881

It's so sweet of Miami to give me such a warm welcome!

https://twitter.com/devonzuegel/status/1376573975648727040