Welcome to Telosa: the $400 billion city built from scratch
The city of Telosa: where everyone is equal, the future is sustainable, the opportunities are innovative and the city is for everyone.
While this utopian city sounds like the perfect place to live, it doesn’t actually exist yet.
Telosa is the latest project from former Walmart executive and e-commerce billionaire Marc Lore, who wants to create the world’s first “woke” city from scratch.
He unveiled his elaborate plans with an interactive website, where he explains that the name Telosa comes from the Ancient Greek word Telos, meaning “highest purpose.”
“The mission of Telosa is to create a more equitable, sustainable future. That’s our North Star,” Lore said in a promotional video.
“We are going to be the most open, the most fair and the most inclusive city in the world.”
The city will run to Lore’s unique economic vision that he dubs “Equitism” in which the land upon which the city is built will be donated to a community endowment.
“If you went into the desert where the land was worth nothing, or very little, and you created a foundation that owned the land, and people moved there and tax dollars built infrastructure and we built one of the greatest cities in the world, the foundation could be worth a trillion dollars,” Lore told Bloomberg Businessweek.
“And if the foundation’s mission was to take the appreciation of the land and give it back to the citizens in the form of medicine, education, affordable housing, social services: Wow, that’s it!”
The city aims to tackle America’s rapidly growing wealth gap, which Lore believes is “going to bring down America”.
“While the current economic system is a growth engine, it has led to increasing inequality,” the project’s website explains. “Equitism is inclusive growth.”
The beginning phase of the project will be built to accommodate 50,000 residents across roughly 1,500 acres at a cost of $25 billion, and is targeted for completion by 2030.
The project’s planners have yet to commit to a location for Telosa, but the website identifies Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas and the Appalachian region as possible sites.
Digital renderings of the utopia show an expanse of space for pedestrians to stroll through the metropolis, as well as including aircrafts known as the electric “air taxi” start-up, in which Lore is a key investor.
Another image on the site shows a skyscraper called Equitism tower that houses elevated water storage, aeroponic farms and an energy-producing roof.
Despite the buzz about the unique city, Sarah Moser, an associate professor of geography at Montreal’s McGill University, puts Lore’s chances of success at roughly zero.
She cites approximately 150 similar projects that have been pitched, and all resulted in failure.
Image credits: cityoftelosa.com