Techies have been the biggest boosters of the idea in recent years, in part motivated by the problems of San Francisco, which suffers from punishing housing costs, rampant homelessness and sclerotic government.
In 2016, Y Combinator, the famous start-up backer that has supported Airbnb, Stripe and Instacart, said it would study building new cities. “We think it’s possible to do amazing things given a blank slate,” a blog post said at the time. Proposals included limiting the city’s laws so they could all fit onto 100 pages and banning human-driven…