How to Live in a Digital City

The shift to online education, remote work, gaming, live conferencing, and leisure is a new form of agglomeration. A leading indicator, consumers have contributed to the first period of inflation for electronic products in over a decade. Over quarantine, these purchases provided gateways to work, socializing, and play. But if these behaviors become... See more

Digital intermediation could help offer this kind of access to what Zacka calls “the lively and diverse intermingling of strangers in the public arena” and what the urban planner Jane Jacobs described as the “great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities, many of these unique and unpredictable—and all the more valuable because they ... See more

However, when it comes to the current internet we have, the city where we live digitally, I can’t feel any message of ambition. Yes, Amazon told me, “You should buy more stuff,” Facebook told me, “You should talk to your friends,” Netflix told me, “You should have more entertainment.” But the Internet itself has no strong message, but a lot of nois... See more

These two factors together make it possible, for the first time, to agglomerate economic activity virtually. Could the next big tech region be built on the internet? All it needs is one big push.