Might be worth mentioning that a bunch of these Chinese supercities are on the coast. Nebraska is… not.
If you really want to turn, say, Omaha into a Supercity, the best approach is to do what Americans did a century ago to make it a Regular City. Build more rail infrastructure through it. Build more power and communication infrastructure through it. Chattanooga’s municipal fiber plan transformed the city by offering businesses and residents a cheap and reliable utility. Austin’s Google Fiber plan achieved similar results. Las Vegas grew up alongside the Hoover Dam (a big reason why it has so much relatively-cheap water and electricity). Houston’s the 3rd largest city in the country because it has a port that can survive a hurricane and a bunch of its neighbors don’t. Dallas? Rail. Chicago? Rail and canals that link up the Great Lakes. New York? Boston? LA? San Fransisco? All big port cities.
All these cities are a consequence of their business infrastructure. And if you go down the line on Chinese cities - from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing to Taipei - they all tell the same story. Junctures of critical infrastructure attract people like a magnet.
How do new supercities get built? Typically, by staging a big transportation hub in their center.
All the consumerist crap comes on later. It’s the decorative fringe around an industrial core.
Novosibirsk, one of the largest Russian cities, was built literally around railway bridge and station.
Would building a high speed rail line (plus a bridge if needed) between two medium/large cities in the US work, if the new city could be created in between with a station?
A lot of couples work in two different cities and often both deal with hellish commutes. I think they’d be willing to move to an apartment to avoid that.
That’s called a commuter suburb, which is different (in that the people who live there don’t tend to work there) but yeah that can happen. If you live on the east coast there are a lot of walkable towns that did that when trolley companies bought out land to run tracks to.
I’m an occasional player of Cities Skylines and I love the concept of building the city around the transportation network and not the other way around. I’m not very good at the game so I’m still just kind of fucking around but the idea makes so much sense to me. I’ve had a hard time trying to squeeze in a rail transportation system into an already-existing city.
Off topic, but the way you make it sound, it seems like Xinjiang has a bright future, being the gateway of BRI and all.
Given the unqualified success that Chattanooga’s municipal internet has been, I’m kind of surprised at least a few other cities haven’t tried to emulate it. Like, it’s a ridiculously simple formula: offer people very cheap and very fast internet and you’ll get businesses and people wanting to move there.
I mean, I get why it doesn’t happen, because the telecoms will fight tooth and nail to stop it. And they’ve pre-emptively bribed enough state governments to pass laws that ban cities and counties from making their own ISPs. Jesus America is so v cool, isn’t it…
Given the unqualified success that Chattanooga’s municipal internet has been, I’m kind of surprised at least a few other cities haven’t tried to emulate it.
For all the talk of being “business friendly”, American politicians have been hell bent on strangling economic growth in the cradle at every opportunity. Because economic growth requires the democratization of capital and that’s not good for the folks that bankroll elections.
People will move there when it’s a unique benefit. When tons and tons of towns have free broadband, eventually it stops being a benefit and becomes a burden for local governments who are always strapped for cash because they’re run by corrupt moguls or complete morons who read the shit that leftwing podcasters mock and take it as gospel.
