Cities are a lot like Twitter.
As David Perell puts it, “Twitter is a project of finding (interesting) people, building relationships with them, getting to know them, and ultimately collaborating on ideas with a lot of them.”
Building great cities should be the same way. And like using Twitter, the temptations in creating great cities are often to do the opposite of what leads to actual success:
In an episode of Jay Clouse’s Creative Elements podcast, Perell says this:
“The way that the platform angles you in terms of how you use it is precisely not how you want to use the platform. It tells you to follow celebrities; you don’t want to follow celebrities . . . .I am going to go find the most interesting people in the world that are thinking about the things people aren’t thinking about. I don’t care where they’re from, I don’t care what they look like, I don’t care who they are. I just care that they have interesting ideas.”
Twitter encourages you to chase the image of fame rather than success. Follower counts are such a vanity metric that people actually buy followers. Blue checkmarks, once used to verify the authenticity of celebrity and official government accounts, are now something sought out by anyone craving internet some level of internet notoriety.
Are cities so different?
What city doesn’t want to be “verified” on some “Top 10 American Small Towns” or “Most Livable Cities” list?
And that often means seeking out the kinds of businesses that provide that badge of “making it.”
South Park poked fun at this phenomenon in an episode a few years ago, when the town of South Park worked to obtain the status that comes with being a “Whole Foods Town”:
The more blue check marks became a status symbol, the less prestigious they actually became. And the same has happened with city status symbols like Whole Foods.
But that hasn’t stopped aspiring Tweeters from playing a game they can’t win, and it hasn’t stopped cities either. Both will shell out dollars to subsidize their status (if you can call it that). It’s a race to the bottom that, for some reason, continues to have thousands of racers.
That’s why Perell talks about the importance of playing games you can win instead of games you can’t.
On Twitter, that looks like curating and building relationships with interesting, not-famous people who are doing interesting things.
And in cities, it actually looks like exactly the same thing. There are smart, interesting people in every city, and they and the things they’re doing are what make that city unique.
Find them. Support them. Partner with them. Showcase them. They help their city be the best version of itself. Spending and allocate resources towards local talent of all kinds is the game you can play better than anyone else, because it’s right in your backyard.
When the game is “be the best you”, you’re the only player that can win.
One Thing to Get Excited About:
An abandoned airport in Berlin, Germany, is being turned into a 5000-apartment car-free community with retail and schools.
As large malls, warehouses, and other sprawling “build to suit” facilities become vacant and abandoned, opportunities to build these kinds of developments will become plentiful in the years to come.
One Action to Get You Started :
This may qualify as more of a “resource,” but I’m absolutely loving Ben Stevens’ book “The Birth of a Building.” It’s a short, accessible book that breaks down all the basics of becoming a developer.
If you’re an aspiring developer like me, or just want to understand more about real estate, grab a copy and spend some time in it. You’ll learn a lot.
One Resource to Check Out:
NBC4 Washington recently put together a segment where they highlighted blind zones in the front of SUVs.
They had 9 children sit down in front of the vehicle, and showed how the driver was unable to see even one of them.
It’s worth a watch, and helpful to share with others when discussing the dangers of cars to pedestrians, particularly larger vehicles.