
A City Is A Startup: The Rise Of The Mayor-Entrepreneur - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/14/a-city-is-a-startup-the-rise-of-the-mayor-entrepreneur/
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moocow01
When seeing the title, I was a little afraid this was going to be an article
about Bloomberg making an MVP after going to Codecademy.

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nyellin
Nir Barkat, mayor of Jerusalem is another example of the startup mayor.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Barkat>

In the states, Republican politicians often have entrepreneurial backgrounds.

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ThaddeusQuay2
Um, no. Your example, and the article, really stretch the meaning to the
breaking point. An existing city can't be a startup. You may be an
entrepreneur who then becomes a mayor, but it's not a startup unless you
personally started the city. Callously throwing around the term "startup" does
a great disservice to people who actually start companies, and historically,
to those who started cities.

EDIT: An example of "city as a startup" might be what Stan Gale is doing with
his "instant city" concept:

Outside Seoul in South Korea, Songdo International Business District bills
itself as the world's smartest, greenest city and the most expensive privately
financed real-estate project in history, with a price tag of $35 billion. It
was originally commissioned by South Korea's government to be a magnet for
attracting foreign direct investment. The American developer Stan Gale was
hired to a build an instant city the size of downtown Boston on a man-made
island connected to Seoul's airport via a 13-mile-long bridge.

What was imagined as a hub for Western expatriates—not a Korean city, but a
mini-Manhattan floating off the coast of South Korea, complete with a "Central
Park"—has been settled instead by families from Seoul. The city won't be
finished until 2015, at the earliest, but Mr. Gale is convinced that he's
"cracked the code" of urbanism and aims to sell 20 more just like it to mayors
across China. Chongqing and Changsha have already expressed an interest.

The aerotropolis arrives at a moment when urban centers seemingly have started
to rule the world. Just 100 cities account for nearly one-third of the global
economy. "If the 20th century was the era of nations," South Korean President
Lee Myung-bak pronounced at New Songdo's christening in 2009, "the 21st
century is the era of cities."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870340860457616...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164703521850100.html)
(Cities of the Sky - From Dubai to Chongqing to Honduras, the Silk Road of the
future is taking shape in urban developments based on airport hubs. Welcome to
the world of the 'aerotropolis.')(2011-FEB-26)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerotropolis>

EDIT: I am reminded of architect Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, an experimental
city started in 1970, in Arizona. He came up with the term arcology (combining
architecture and ecology), started a city based on the principles represented
by that term, and actually lives in it, effectively as "mayor" (given that he
is head of the foundation which owns the city).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Soleri>

EDIT: Lastly, I want to point out that even though Arcosanti appears to be a
failure, it has, over the last four decades, influenced how cities are viewed
and built, as well as continuing to propel Soleri's arcology into vast,
proposed projects such as the Shimizu Pyramid.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimizu_Mega-City_Pyramid>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology>

