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In 2020, the rapper Akon secured 136 acres of land to build his own eponymous city on the site of the coastal village of Mbodi\u00e8ne, not far from where he grew up in Senegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Akon envisioned Akon City as a real-life Wakanda, the Afrofuturist utopia from Marvel\u2019s Black Panther<\/em>. But his extensive plans\u2014100% solar power, Africa\u2019s most advanced hospital, a high-tech university, an economy running on Akon\u2019s personal cryptocurrency\u2014omitted one crucial detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How Akon City would be governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Akon\u2019s failure to plan for governance of his own city created questions about the project that he never could answer. Last month, the Senegalese government confirmed the project no longer exists<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Akon\u2019s combination of ambition, and disinterest in governance, is remarkably common. With the world seeming stuck, a growing number of celebrities, oligarchs, and governments are seeking to create futuristic, paradigm-shifting new cities. From the seaside cliffs of Borneo to the deserts of Saudi Arabia to the swampy delta of Northern California, the rich and famous and powerful are proposing visionary metropolises that advance new aesthetics, pioneer technologies, or surpass previous milestones in sustainability or energy efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for all their awesome grandeur, these proposals typically fall down for the same reason. They offer no new ideas\u2014and often no details at all\u2014about how their dream cities will be governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why this void? Some urban creators are authoritarians, who offer no vision of government because they believe they can dictate to the future residents of their grand cities. Others see governance questions as difficult and divisive, and thus avoided in service of completing projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the bigger problem is ignorance. In failing to include governance in their future visions, the world\u2019s rulers demonstrate that the planet Earth is suffering from a lack of imagination when it comes to local democracy and government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This fundamental failure to think about governance is perhaps most evident in the project known as California Forever. An enterprise called California Forever, backed by venture capitalists who pride themselves on world-changing ideas\u2014including LinkedIn\u2019s Reid Hoffman, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Emerson Collective\u2019s Laurene Powell Jobs\u2014secretly purchased land in Solano County, on the eastern outskirts of the Bay Area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the purchases became public, Jan Sramek, the founder and CEO of California Forever, promised a 21st-century city (population 400,000) to embody the \u201cCalifornia Dream\u201d\u2014and prove that great things can be built here. His plans include North America\u2019s largest site for advanced manufacturing, job centers integrated with plentiful housing, and the most walkable and sustainable neighborhoods possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Sramek has yet to offer is any clear idea on how this city would be governed. In response to questions, California Forever has said they needed to get the city built first. But that failure to figure out governance has already stalled the project. At first, they sought voter approval for an unincorporated community, only to drop that idea when it appeared a ballot initiative might lose. More recently, they\u2019ve been exploring having California Forever combine with existing cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a similar trajectory to Bill Gates\u2019 cutting-edge tech city of Belmont, proposed for Arizona in 2017, and stalled since. Gates\u2019 plans are heavy on tech innovations to reduce traffic, and light on any governance plans that go beyond the billionaire\u2019s personal beliefs<\/a>. (Belmont also has never found a reliable source of water.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, California Forever at least is operating in the mostly democratic realm of local government. Other technology visionaries reject democratic governance as they pursue their own utopias. Among them is Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder who purchased most of the Hawai\u02bbian island of Lanai, to turn it into an even more exclusive place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s Peter Thiel\u2014a Trump supporter who declared, \u201cI no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible\u201d\u2014and provided the seed funding for the Seasteading Institute, which supports the building of cities that float in international waters, beyond democratic accountability. Thiel also backed the corporate island-state of Pr\u00f3spera, which the Honduran government wants to shut down because it won\u2019t follow the country\u2019s laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Pr\u00f3spera\u2019s investors was San Francisco venture capital firm Pronomos, which invests in \u201cprosperous cities that grow to empower entire nations.\u201d Pronomos\u2019 most high-profile project, the network state Praxis, has registered more than 2,200 citizens but has yet to find a territorial home (it\u2019s looking in the Mediterranean, Greenland, and Ukraine). Perhaps that\u2019s because its plans\u2014which don\u2019t describe governance but declare a commitment to \u201cvitality\u201d and opposition to \u201cmediocrity\u201d\u2014have been called fascist by critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The narrator of a promotional video for Praxis offers this rebuttal: \u201cContemporary media proclaims that having any ideals is fascist. Everything of conviction is fascist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, it isn\u2019t just tech bros who foreswear democratic governments for their dream cities. National governments have shown the same distaste for democracy in new metropolitan developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indonesia is a decentralized democracy with strong local governments, but its increasingly autocratic national government<\/a> has decided that the country\u2019s new capital, now under construction on the east coast of Borneo, will have no local government at all. It will be administered by an agency of the national government, under rules as yet undrafted. Meanwhile, construction is dogged by delays and scandals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s government is developing a series of future cities\u2014most notably, Chengdu Future Science and Technology City\u2014that are supposed to demonstrate new ways of living, but don\u2019t include any new methods of governance. Mexico and Malaysia have proposed new \u201cforest cities\u201d to demonstrate a more ecological future, but the plans skip the governance details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Saudi Arabia has said not a word about the governance structure of The Line, a planned city in the northwest region of Tabuk. Renderings of The Line are mesmerizing\u2014two skyscrapers that stretch 100 miles across the desert, with space to house 9 million people\u2014but they do not include any sign of local autonomy. The best bet is that The Line will be governed by a corporation owned by the Saudi ruling family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all visions of future cities exclude governance. Plans for the former Walmart executive Marc Lore\u2019s city of Telosa call for transparency in all government decision-making, participatory democracy, and an inclusive economic system in which residents would share in the city\u2019s wealth. One caution: you would have to survive an application process to become a resident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At smaller scales, a few new places have experimented with new ideas in liberal democracy. One pop-up city, Zuzalu, which appeared on Montenegro\u2019s coast for a few months, had its residents create laws to encourage longer lifespans. Mexico City\u2019s award-winning \u201cutopias\u201d\u2014experimental neighborhood developments in the borough of Iztapalapa\u2014are models of shared participatory governance, with authority divided among the mayor\u2019s office, civil society groups, and local residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democratic eco-villages, where small groups of people create democratic and environmental alternatives to civilization, are also on the rise. In Schloss Tempelhof in Germany (which I\u2019ve visited), all 150 residents make decisions and share the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But many visionary cities, without clear governance, will never be anything more than dreams. Indeed, in Switzerland, the packaging mogul Daniel Model\u2019s Avalon, the libertarian town-republic he declared within the rural village of M\u00fcllheim, remains imaginary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Akon\u2019s city in Senegal is not a total fiction. But the rap star managed to build only a welcome center and a basketball court, which is why the Senegalese government reclaimed most of Akon city\u2019s land. On a small remaining patch, Akon may build a resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps someone can hold a giant conference there, to think up the new models of city governance that elude today\u2019s would-be urban visionaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe Mathews<\/strong> writes the Connecting California column for Z\u00f3calo Public Square<\/a> and is founder-columnist of Democracy Local<\/a>, a planetary publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen, and Even Akon Are Envisioning Utopias Without Considering How They\u2019ll Be Governed By Joe Mathews August 19, 2025 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org) In 2020, the rapper Akon secured 136 acres of land to build his own eponymous city on the site of the coastal village of Mbodi\u00e8ne, not far from where… Continue reading \n
But many visionary cities, without clear governance, will never be anything more than dreams.<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
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