
Ask HN: How to Build a New City from Scratch? - pmohun
Food for thought:<p>* Where do you start (continent, geography)<p>* How do you pay for it?<p>* Who joins first?<p>* What is the political system?<p>* What type of housing?<p>* What type of transportation?<p>* What industries do you promote?<p>If anyone has resources that focus on the future of cities I would love to read.
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eesmith
Your question is asking something other than the obvious. Could you explain
more?

"The obvious" is to look at how your state or country handles city
incorporate. In the US that's at the state level. See
[https://legalbeagle.com/4913925-a-city-
incorporate.html](https://legalbeagle.com/4913925-a-city-incorporate.html) for
one of many resources I found by a DDG search for "how to incorporate a city".

Beyond that, China is making many new cities. A DDG search for 'China "new
city"' finds many links.

There have also been many created cities. Wikipedia, for example, has a list
of planned cities created to be national capitals, at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-
built_national...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-
built_national_capitals) as well as planned cities in general, at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planned_cities)
.

Creating a new city from scratch has been popular for a long time. Eg, the
"Plat of Zion" from the 1800s,

A DDG search for '"urban planning" "new city"' finds many links, including one
from our Y Combinator hosts described at
[https://www.wired.com/2016/07/y-combinators-plan-build-
new-c...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/y-combinators-plan-build-new-city-not-
actually-crazy/) :

> Last week, Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that helped
> launch companies like Dropbox and Airbnb, announced it was launching an
> ambitious project of its own. The “New Cities” initiative will study freshly
> minted cities, and how to plan, design, and build them from scratch.

I'm sure you could find more scholarly references in Google Scholar using
similar keywords.

------
oftenwrong
I don't know about "from scratch", but ... Incrementally, as lean and
resiliently as possible. An incrementally-built city is not a city in the
beginning. It's a village at best.

Here are some things that speak to this approach:

[https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php](https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA)

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/12/the-power-
of-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/12/the-power-of-growing-
incrementally-series)

