On The Other Side ep 71 - Building a network city w/ Jon Hillis
Primer: Why are our cities stagnating and what can we do about it? In this episode of On The Other Side, Jon Hillis of Cabin introduces his concept of the Network City, compares it with Balaji’s Network States, and situates it with what Cabin is building in the world today.
Background
Is building Cabin, a global network of co-living neighborhoods that are out in nature and have high-speed internet
What Is A Network City?
Started thinking about the idea of a network city 2 years ago
A city is just a densely settled area with clearly defined boundaries, whose members work on primarily non-agricultural tasks
“Cities are really about people and relationships between people.”
- Jon Hillis
Throughout history, people have come together to build new economies and ways of life
In the US, the youngest major city, Phoenix, was founded in 1868
Cities have been stagnating for the past 100 years
Trying to figure out how to reverse that trend and create new types of cities
Stagnation Of Cities
People are less happy with their lives than 50 years ago
The two main causes are increasing loneliness and decreasing standard of living
People have blamed the decline of social associations, suburban living, and the rise of social media for this sense of loneliness
The cost of housing, food, education, and healthcare in the US has increased over the last 30 years, accounting for inflation
Cities have stagnated due to regulation that drives the high cost of living
There’s a long history of people rejecting the high costs of living in urban areas and moving back to other areas
The difference is that this time, we have a new tech stack that enables us to go outside urban areas and build something different
The main reason why people live in cities is because that’s where the jobs are located
This is no longer the case as people can work remotely
When you combine remote work with developments and infrastructure like satellite internet, solar power, DAOs, etc., opportunities to build network cities are created
The Impetus For Creating A Space
As a kid, he spent a lot of time in online communities
Was involved in the Boy Scouts and found a deep sense of community there
When he went to college, he found a community of people living in an exurban residential living environment
When he left college, he did a start-up with his best friends from college
After that, he joined Instacart and was there for 6 years
He experienced burnout
His boss, David Hahn, advised him to go on a holiday
While on holiday in Thailand, he reflected and realized that he was passionate about communities
Left his job at Instacart to build a cabin in the woods and invited other cool people from the internet to join him
Balaji’s Network States VS His Network Cities
Network states are very theoretical
Cabin’s distinct advantage is that they are building from the ground up and learning through that process
He has a lot of respect for Balaji for making high-conviction bold predictions that often turn out to be right
Need to have more open and nuanced conversations in this area
Helpful to imagine a 2 x 2 matrix:
On one axis, you have single locations vs networks of locations
On the other axis, you have territorial sovereignty vs layer 2s being built on top of existing states
Historically, city and state building has been focused on a single location
The internet enables us to maintain distributed communication and coordination networks. This is the root of both the idea of network states and network cities
The other axis is where they differ:
The end goal of network states is territorial sovereignty
Network cities are interdependent entities/L2s of the world
In the last decade, city-building attempts tended to be built around special economic zones from a top-down approach
Over the past 10 years, people have become more open to the bottom-up approach of creating polycentric governance structures
What Does Living In A Network City Look Like?
The initial cohort of people living in Cabin are primarily digital nomad types in their 20s and 30s
They are the ones that can most easily pick up and move to a new spot
If you are going to build a city, it cannot just be a city of 20 and 30 somethings
Jane Jacobs has written a lot about diversity being one of the key defining factors of cities
There’s a classic truism that it takes a village to raise a kid
Living in a community of people makes it easier to raise kids, socialize them, and trade-off parenting duties
The Infrastructure And Culture For Network Cities
Jane Jacobs made the case that the core built environment is what creates the culture and that there is a need for different types of housing in terms of price points and styles to support different living arrangements
Right now, their environment is largely traditional co-living where individuals come together into a community
There are tools that are making communal living easier over time:
Advancements in generative AI
An educational environment where kids are supported/mentored by older kids
Personalized AI tutors
Sometimes, people leave and come back again. This is healthy and natural for a city
The City As An Emergent Framework
In the history of human civilization, new technologies come along to enable people to create a new way of living
People gather in small groups and build villages, cities, and federated networks of cities
Eventually, centralizing forces like kings or nation-states come along
Building Your Own Infrastructure Vs On Top Of Existing Ones
The most important question is to ask which laws you actually care about changing
If you start from the libertarian perspective that all laws are evil and the slate has to be wiped clean, it will be very difficult
If you start from, practically speaking, what you care about, then you can take a different approach
Their first co-living neighborhood is in Texas because it has minimal building regulations
In contrast, the direct democracy of San Francisco has too many regulations
One of their goals at Cabin is to produce 10x cheaper and better housing than what’s available in urban areas
On Monopolizing Violence
Practically speaking, he likes to avoid dealing with violence as much as possible
Small groups of people can solve problems in more peaceful ways
People can create different enforcement mechanisms that are more peaceful (e.g. rely on the blockchain)
Conference At Zuzalu
Was a fascinating conference
Was an experiment in co-living and pop-up city building. It’s still going on in Montenegro
Was there for the new cities and network states week
The goal was to bring in incredible minds to discuss some of these big ideas
What’s Coming Up At Cabin?
Recently rolled out their vision document
In a few weeks, they are going to launch their citizenship and city directory
Citizenship is Cabin subscription membership and it is distributed through a web of trust
Citizens will be able to access their city directory which has both co-living experiences and work/stay exchange residencies
Cabin members can earn different roles by contributing to their cities:
Builders building the physical environment
Naturalists who help grow regenerative systems
Gatherers who bring people together
They are rolling it out in their Census app and it is structured as a token-curated registry that’s managed by the DAO
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