How is a city built?

Over the past year, I have spent a good amount of time in Dubai, UAE.

Dubai is fascinating given that they built a city out of the sand and have attracted so much capital and attention while doing so. In crypto-communities new cities or network states seem to be a fashionable topic to bring up (referring to Balaji’s work). Now we even see city-states popping up across the globe – all with a unique value proposition.

So let us explore the question of: how a city is built. My intuition tells me the steps to creating a new city are:

First, pick a location with suitable natural resources, geography, weather patterns, physical boundaries/borders, and local people who are welcoming to the idea of growing a (new) community/city.

Second: Ensure access to food & water to sustain human life. Next, build or acquire housing (shelter & clothing) and create gateways (on-ramps and off-ramps) in and out of the city. I assume that artistic pursuits are developed around this time (e.g. architecture).

Thirdly, form a legal system with governance, rules & regulations which thereafter allow the formation of an economy/marketplace and financial systems of equity and debt capital markets.

Next, form, cultural (and religious) landmarks that start to create a local culture and attract people from far and wide while also ensuring the founding stories are passed down to the next generations.

Fifth: Critically now, one would need to rebuild and invest in scalable infrastructure. The assumption is that one had a couple of roads, energy sources, sewers, etc. but now that you have created a place to stay, ways to get in and out, and reasons for people to visit one requires an upgrade in the scalability of transport, communication and energy infrastructure of the newly formed city.

Sixth: Given you have longer-term residents and are housing an increasing number of citizens it is important to form a sustainable healthcare system and support network for the increasingly aging population.

Lastly: This is the ‘rinse-and-repeat’ phase that ensures the city is set up for the long term. Here one needs to set up educational institutions and R&D centres to attract young and intelligent new citizens. This is when history starts to form and the city becomes a self-fulfilling flywheel.

Ultimately, when growing the city, and going through steps two to seven repeatedly it is critical to ensure diversification as with all investments. This assumes a certain amount of growth in scale from each step to the subsequent repeat of the steps!

I will conclude by saying a city is never built in such a clear-cut manner. It is a messy process where for example step 6 or 7 could come before 4… however in broad strokes, these steps seem to make logical sense to me at this time.