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One of the reasons I think DAOs might have some compatibility with the startup cities meme is that for an urban environment to feel authentic (more than a development), it needs to have shared ownership AND governance. It’s what makes a condo feel more authentic than a rental community. And what makes a neighborhood feel more authentic than a district. Basically the more invested you are as a resident and more decisional power that comes with this, the closer you are to feeling and acting like a ‘citizen’; which is necessary for the longevity of networks like cities.

I think there has to be some progressive hand-off process where people acquire ownership not just through property within the city but also decision making ability as things begin to harden. Progressively moving from private startup to DAO (one with real structure and hierarchy) makes more sense to me as a meme than a more traditional alternative to this hand-off. You could also think of it as the move from private company to public government; even if a very creative version of what ‘government’ means.

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Thanks for this interesting comment! Would love to explore this more.

I'm conflicted. For example, I've lived in a co-living space that was 100% rental and had a good community. Way better than the community in a typical ownership-driven subdivision and many apartment buildings. This makes me think it is more about architecture and community design than ownership (at least re: ownership by residents).

I do think that ownership in general (i.e. not having a bunch of "commons") is extremely powerful and DAOs can help there. The question is whether there is any advantage to having all (or any) occupants be owners or just tenants.

If the goal is to get people financially vested in a community, why not use traditional tools like the joint-stock corporation? A neighborhood or city could be IPO'd and owned by anyone, not just residents.

"You could also think of it as the move from private company to public government"

Why do you think this is desirable? I encounter this premise a lot: that the "mature" state of a city is a traditional municipal government. Are there good arguments for why this is true?

Why couldn't it be the other way around -- that entrepreneurial management of the externalities that define a city is the mature form and we're in an immature quasi-managed state with traditional munis? For example, multi-tenant income properties like shopping malls, casinos, marinas, and hotels do not "mature" into municipal government.

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Well, one of the reasons why I sit on the side that some sort of ‘government’ is the mature state of cities is that what makes cities interesting is that they are intense aggregations oh human interests. And so although there needs to be base (cultural/philosophical) consensus amongst participants, the interesting stuff happens when you put people with diverse or competitions interests in close proximity to one another. And my intuition is that for this to happen in a serious way, you need people to feel heavily invested not just at a community level, but also a personal level (which means forms of property that have ties to place: real estate, local networks of clientele with future value, etc).

Sure, you could to some degree relegate this stake in the game to other sectors of urban activity that are not real estate and public services (in the hands of just a couple players), but my sense is that this would inspire skepticism amongst everyone building (anything) on top to those layers. I think it’s like the difference between web2 and the promises of web3. You want to feel the least beholden to a limited number of actors at the base layer to maximize your opportunities to react to changes.

Not to say that current municipal government are necessarily great at offering the alternative. But I think in the end it’s about where you land on the spectrum between startup city, let’s say, and conventional municipality as you reach maturity, and finding a sweet spot in terms of who handles what.

I think when you say that residents could have joint stock in some sort of fund that manages a neighborhood or city, this is essentially a way of creating governance, because you presumably give each stockholder some sort of say in key decisions. This doesn’t mean that you need some horizontal DAO, but after the potential for stakeholders to reliably vote at any scale that crypto offers, I think you would end up with some sort of tiered system where people can be active participants in the management of a startup cities.

Any tech company begins as a startup and, if successful, hardens into a large, increasingly slow moving corporations that runs the risk of getting disrupted. And this is because of the scale of the network, but also the aggregation of decisions made as you confront more and more complexity. I don’t see why a startup city would not be subject to the same kind of trend. Specially since it is hypothetically a network that has much more consequence in your life than, say, being an employee at Google or Meta.

I think finding clever ways to launch new cities with disruptive models is super exciting and transformative, not just for new cities but existing cities that inevitably follow suit when they see they are being left behind (same as with big tech). It is necessary if you want to radically innovate such complex systems as cities. What I’m less convinced so far is how that escapes a form of governance that is different in essence to municipal government. Difference in form though I totally believe is possible. But if you don’t get to some kind of collective management, I think you end up with the examples you described: casinos, shopping malls, marinas, which are interesting but I would not describe as rich and complex as cities. That said, many resort towns were developed with a similar mindset, and did in fact become full-fledged cities. Miami is one good example.

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Going to send you an email.

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