Decentralize America: The case for cities that don't need Washington
Cities should be richer than the federal government. Mayors should matter more than the president.
f we want to create more utopian cities, we should borrow from the models we’ve explored so far in this series.
Communities should buy cities (Scaling Eigg)
Eigg and Stornoway, alongside 500 community-owned territories in Scotland, have created Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities at scale, as well as given us a path to create a whole lot more of them. In the year 2000, only 52,354 hectares were community-owned in Scotland, but today 208,597 hectares are community-owned.
That’s roughly 6,727 hectares a year being put into community trusts. Imagine what would happen if other countries decided to do the same?
Community right-to-buy laws are already under consideration in Wales and the UK, and could easily be implemented by countries worldwide as one after another creates a wave of community-owned neighborhoods, towns, and even cities!
We could create a world of self-sufficient micro sovereignties!
Subscribe for free to keep reading.
Get every essay in your inbox
Weekly essays exploring a utopian future.
Join 23,254 subscribers