What does the city of tomorrow look like? For billionaire Marc Lore, it’s eco-friendly buildings constructed from scratch and spread across some 150,000 acres in the Southwest desert.
Lore, 51, has recently released details for his “Telosa” metropolis — Telosa being a name derived from the Greek word for “highest purpose,” Axios first reported.
It’s one of nearly a dozen proposals across the world aiming to build sustainable and ultra-modern cities from scratch that seem more science fiction than reality.
For Lore, Telosa will encompass 36 districts across a swath of Nevada, Arizona or Utah.
It will be home to 50,000 “diverse” people by 2030. Everything they need will be located within a short walk — though, should vehicles be needed, they’ll be electric and autonomous — and every building will be green-minded with rooftop panels creating renewable energy.
“We’re not just building a new city — this is a new model for society,” said Lore at a Telosa town hall meeting in July, adding that Telosa will also be “equitable” to all.
That said, he added it will be governed by “equitism,” which Axios notes appears to be a mix of democracy, capitalism and socialism.
Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect, is behind the design. Renderings show angular towers topped with trees, multiple greenhouses, landscaped parks with walkways and exercise areas, and buildings whose large terraces look out to city and landscape views.
The nonprofit Telosa Community Foundation will buy the land where the city will rise — “land that is virtually worthless,” Lore said. But the aim is to give the land more value, with the foundation then creating a market for it, then investing the proceeds into something like an endowment to fund education, housing and more.
Beyond Ingels, Lore’s childhood friend Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, is also working to make Telosa come to fruition.
Among the other worldwide proposals for megacity development: the Neom desert complex in Saudi Arabia, which includes a $1 trillion city named the Line.
The Line aims to stretch 105 miles long encased in mirrored walls and filled with lush greenery — and to have 1.5 million people live there by 2030. However, Businessweek has reported that Neom has been plagued, by, among other factors, indecision at the top.
