Ep 31: The Future of Company Towns/Cities

Show Transcript

Seyi (00:01)
Hello, hello, hello Reza, how are you today? I am good, I am good. It is another episode of Future Forward.

Reza (00:04)
Good Seyi, how you doing?

Yeah. And we have a very interesting episode today, Seyi. The future of company, cities, slash towns is a lot of historical perspective and what's happening in the world today with it. So really excited about diving into this episode. Before we do that, let's talk to our listeners about Future Forward. Tell them what it's about. Welcome to our frequent listeners and welcome to our new listeners, Future Forward.

is a conversation that Seyi and I have been having for many years and we're bringing you into it. And we talk about cities and all the topics that are important in how we can create sustainable cities and thriving communities. And the way that we go about this is we pick a topic, we take some historical context on it. We then bring you into the present, tell you what's going on.

with that topic today. We touch on our 21 laws of cities and which of those laws apply to the topic at hand, and then provide some strategic foresight for the future. And then always wrap up with a call to action and a mailbag. And all of this comes from a place of curiosity. Neither of us are experts. We're just very curious and very interested in exploring these topics. so we ask you to share your expertise if you have some.

and share your ideas, your thoughts, where do we get things wrong, where are we headed in the right direction, and that's why we have the mailbag portion of our episode. But Che, let's jump into this topic and tell us, like, where did this come from?

Seyi (01:53)
Yes, yes. Thanks so much Reza. you just said, is today's topic is the future of company cities and towns. And this got triggered by an article that I saw in the New York Times about Tesla applying for a city, a municipality slash city license for a place called Starbase, Texas, which is where the rockets are taken off from.

which is close to Boca Raton, believe it's called. Boca Chica, thank you, Boca Chica. And as tech companies push to find ways to increase engagement, output from their employees, they're moving towards this company town approach. Toyota has one, it's called the Woven City. Tesla, Starbase, Apple, even though it's not a town, it is.

Reza (02:23)
Boca Chica. Yes.

Seyi (02:50)
in itself, the ring is almost like it has own utility systems and all the things that would make it like a town and the amenities that would make it like a town. And these are experiments in city building, but there's history that we can learn from to tell us how this might go, what's problematic or possible with them. So

thought you know what let's discuss this in a bit more detail in our own unique curious expert style.

Reza (03:24)
Yeah, and I would say, Shade, this is very related to our first episode, The Future of the Office, and episode 26, where we talked about the future of remote work. This is kind of an extension of like what, you know, work and cities, those are inextricably linked. And this, you know, this concept of the company town is something that's not just, you know,

Seyi (03:30)
Yep.

Reza (03:51)
work and living separated, but trying to combine work and the city together. So very, very interested to talk about it. And there's a lot of history about this topic. so, Seyi, let's start there.

Seyi (04:05)
Yeah, no, there is a lot of history. The idea of a company town really emerged during the Industrial Revolution, the late 18th and 19th centuries when we really started to do work in the more industrialized, process-heavy ways. And a place called New Lanark in Scotland around 1786.

established this early progressive model of company towns under a gentleman called Robert Owen. And I'll share a little bit about Lanak, new Lanak. It was a complex, cotton mill complex in Scotland. And it was started by David Dill, a banker from Glasgow. And

Richard Orkwright, an inventor, and he was one of the pioneers of industrial cutting, spinning. And they both came together, they wanted employees to be close to their mills and founded New Lanark in 1786. It was close to a river, River Clyde in Lanarkshire, which is 25 miles southeast of Glasgow. The town still exists.

And the mills were powered by the water from the River Clyde and the water also served the residents of the city. And the interesting thing about Robert Owen who then took over from David Dale and Richard Orchrite is that his perspective on, he was a philanthropist and.

utopian. He was socialist and utopian in that sense. And you can immediately see where that leads. He implemented social and educational reforms and had some humane working practices, built a village store or a town store. And his goals were, in all honesty, when we think about it, too

Reza (05:56)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Seyi (06:23)
create a space for the workers that respected the workers. He wanted them to not have to spend too much money or their earnings to get to and from work. Everything was, so there was rent control essentially. Everything was centered around this. How can I improve the quality of life of my...

Reza (06:28)
Hmm.

Seyi (06:53)
employees, which in all honesty, was in the same perspective, the guys who started it had. So it really, he thought, how can I combine housing, education for the children of the people who work there and improved conditions that will make those children also want to continue to work for this company?

Reza (06:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Yes.

Yes.

Seyi (07:23)
and

build a life here as we've chosen for them. So I'll park that because that is where this whole thing started. Another very quick thing in the research that became obvious is that resource intensive industries were the ones that were most likely to create company towns for their employees.

Reza (07:26)
Yes.

Okay.

Seyi (07:53)
You had as it moved to America, because this was in the original was in Scotland. As it moved to America, you had mining operations in Appalachia and the American West where people lived close to the mines and consequently towns and cities were built around the mining infrastructure. You had lumber operations in the Pacific Northwest of the US.

and then steel mills in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. And you can still see the remnants of that in like the Philadelphia area and then textile mills in the New England area. So location was critical and influenced the survival or otherwise of these company towns. So.

they were heavily dependent on the resource that was being tapped from the location. And once either industry or markets or the resource started to diminish, you immediately saw the diminishment and in some cases the death of the town. So transportation networks, access to other economic centers, access to

Reza (09:00)
Mm

Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi (09:17)
Water was super critical for a lot of these towns as I think we've mentioned in a few of our episodes. Most thriving cities either rely ecologically or economically on water being close by. The proximity to water is super important. And so as these towns grew, some of them survived, some of them stopped thriving, but...

Reza (09:20)
Yes.

Seyi (09:45)
the same thing sort of started happening across a lot of these company towns. The stores that had started off serving the residents started inflating their prices because the owners of the businesses and the company towns really didn't care as much for their workers. They wanted them to spend their money in these stores and be...

essentially indebted to the company such that they couldn't leave, even as options opened up for them outside of those company towns. Some of them implemented company script instead of actual money to buy and pay for stuff, to pay for education, to pay for. So you were essentially living in this area that exactly this bubble created by the owners of the company to keep you there.

Reza (10:16)
Mm.

Mm.

bubble.

Yeah.

Seyi (10:42)
substandard housing conditions because they stopped caring and a lot of labor suppressing organization, labor organizing suppression where the unions couldn't be formed, they could not form unions and it became a lot more monopolistic. Your utilities were coming from one entity and you couldn't bargain or try to get anything different. So,

Reza (10:52)
Yes.

Seyi (11:09)
I'll pause there because the history of company towns is one that, you built, Manchester was built on textiles as a center and a hub for them. Hershey, the chocolate, was hugely central to the building of Hershey, Pennsylvania. But in the same way, you also had

places like Gary, Indiana that were tied to the industry and consequently diminished as the fortunes changed.

Reza (11:48)
Yeah. So that's fascinating. Like that great rundown of the history, Shai, and getting us to realize that, you know, where this started was the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of work and how you needed massive amounts of labor to scale these industries and factories and towns being built around that, especially was resource intensive, really good insights into that.

It makes me think about, and I know that you're gonna explore this when you talk about where this is today and why some of these company towns have succeeded or not, but it made me think about the concept of work and even today, like we talked about in the future of the office and the future of remote work, how companies continue to try to sort of,

Control is a strong word, it is a word that applies to it. It's an apt word to ensure their success. And sometimes that control is detrimental to both the workers as well as the city, which I am sure that you'll explore. And I will give you a couple examples here, which is, I was reading this really good book over the holidays called Buildings and Dwellings.

Seyi (12:53)
Sign up to word, yeah.

Reza (13:17)
We'll include that in the show notes. And the author talked about the Google building in New York City and how it's a closed place. People come to work over there and the company just tries to keep them in there. Like they have everything that they would need inside the building. They're driven by van to the building. So in the van, they're on the wifi working already. And then they're in the building and they have like ping pong tables and all this kind of stuff. And so they don't interact with a city like New York.

that in a way that you would like leave the office, walk around the city, interact with the people like you mentioned the, you know, that corner cafe that you go to. And so whenever you have these closed concepts, you can diminish the value of a city. And so that, yeah, that's the thought that came up as you shared this history.

Seyi (14:12)
It is so I'm so glad you, you, you frame it that way because that is the evolution of the company town now. And it all ties to exactly yes, control feels like a strong word, but it is apt. It's, it's, it's a, and that's what you're seeing now with campuses in, in our city. So, one close to us here that I can immediately talk about is how.

Reza (14:19)
Okay.

Seyi (14:41)
Dell was a, moved its headquarters to Round Rock and the city has blossomed and bloomed as a result of Dell being there. But that tends not to be the relationship that most of these campuses is what they're called now, have with whatever town or city they move into. you have Apple Park.

which is this huge ring and I won't belabor the point of Apple Park, but it is huge there, but closed. The employees do not experience anything but the 800 curved glass enclosure that they're in. And the enclosure has yoga studios.

Reza (15:38)
Yes,

everything. Everything.

Seyi (15:39)
food, everything, similar

to the Google example you gave. And the evolution is seeing another move towards something that Toyota is trying out with this idea called the woven city in close to Mount Fuji. And it's this smart city project you and I know. Yeah, yeah, we have a...

Reza (15:59)
Yeah.

this smart city.

Seyi (16:08)
perspectives on Smart City. And it's this 175 acre area of land, which used to be a former Toyota plant site. And the budget for building this city, this woven city, is about 10 to 15 billion dollars, where this living laboratory for future technologies and how we can build cities with people in it.

As I was reading and researching this, I'm working on being a lot less biased against technologies like smart city ideas, but I'm struggling. I'm really struggling because it is going to be 360 initial residents in this woven city, Toyota employees, so they're paying rent. this was anyone who listened to the first

five or 10 minutes of this podcast, we'll immediately see where we're going with this. It'll be residents who are employees. They will test and utilize all sorts of new technologies, sensors everywhere. The idea is to power it with solar energy and some hydrogen, ignoring the fact that

Reza (17:11)
Yeah.

Seyi (17:33)
Hydrogen as a technology for electricity, and I'll get a little, is the most inefficient way. You're breaking up water to get hydrogen, and then you either store it to convert it into electricity or keep it as the gas to power something. And it is the, it's just not the way to go.

in a place where you are trying to build a sustainable future state. Cause you're probably consuming so much energy that you might as well just use that energy in the city. Solar is a good option in that sense. So that will be tested there as well, but autonomous vehicles, AI enabled smart homes, but it is going to be this enclosure that is

inorganic to help and figure out how people should live in a city. I'll pause because there's one more example, but I'd love to hear your take on this, on the woven city. Yeah.

Reza (18:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, you know,

this made me think about our, the mailbag we just had on the last episode where Kelly James was responding to our Future of Architecture. And she talked about New Orleans and the rebuilding of New Orleans and Brad Pitt's involvement in that. And how the, you know, these buildings that were built were like spaceships, they just looked like they were planted in the wrong place. Like, and so that's what makes me

Seyi (19:04)
Yep.

Reza (19:16)
think like, who is designing the city and who are they designing it for? It seems like it's being designed to explore new technologies. It's not being designed for people to live in a more sustainable. I mean, they're trying things with sustainability, but I don't know if these humans that live there will be thriving. I'm very curious about the experiment. And so just like you, I'd like to suspend judgment and we should revisit

Seyi (19:20)
Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah,

absolutely.

Reza (19:47)
you know Toyota's woe in city in a year or two and see where did they get and and see if you know if their intentions led to the results that they were hoping for yeah

Seyi (19:50)
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

that they desired. Yeah, no,

we absolutely have to, because it is similar to the second example I'll give. So thank you so much for that comment. And the second example is Tesla applying for city license in a place called Starbase, Texas. And similarly, this place will have initially 500 inhabitants, 219 primary residents currently.

and about a hundred children in an area that is at the very end of State Highway 4, which is by Boca Chica, as you mentioned, Boca Chica Beach. And it's about 1.5 square miles, so small by Texas city or town examples, but their desire is for it to grow. The idea is it starts small and it grows as...

Reza (20:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seyi (20:57)
The company moves a lot of its sister companies around there and builds its city out. The mayor for the city in the application will be the head of security for Tesla. That will be the mayor of the city in the application. Already problematic. The three leaders who will...

Reza (21:15)
Not a good thing. Already. Already have a problem.

Seyi (21:23)
be in charge of the city, the mayor and two other people are all Tesla employees and the schools and the facilities and the resources, the utilities will be provided by the employer, Tesla, and they are family members of the employees who live there as well who

Reza (21:28)
Mmm.

Seyi (21:51)
they haven't quite figured out how they'll manage in this, in this new town. So again, this is one I will watch closely, but if we go back to the example we got from historical references to company towns and cities, to have one entity be both the employer and the provider of all that you need in your life.

is not the way cities are set up. It has never been the right way. the labor question, union question, company badge checking approach that we have today, because we are living in a time when, I believe I heard this from USA Facts,

Reza (22:22)
Yeah.

Seyi (22:46)
that only 6 % of employees in the US are part of a union. that is the, historically, it's been the lowest since the idea of unions where employees started. This is the lowest point it's been. And by all metrics, it's not looking like that will increase. And what that leads to is the inability of the employees to fight against the...

Reza (23:08)
Yeah.

Seyi (23:17)
labor conditions that don't work for them. If your employer is also your landlord, you absolutely is your landlord, provides education to your kids, provides healthcare to your families on its facilities, and you shop in the store that is run by your employer, you better not say anything.

about your employer that is different from what they need you to say, otherwise you'd be out of a job. So what am I saying here? It's that the structure of company towns, especially in today's context, makes me very worried about just the outcome of these company towns and cities, especially since yes, these companies are thriving right now.

But as technology advances and the industries might diminish in the future, those towns will also struggle as well. And the people who really struggle are the employees who live in these towns or cities.

Reza (24:28)
Yeah, she the the the thing that comes to mind is like where are the checks and balances? What are the incentives for that city to thrive if the incentives are only aligned with that company because the if they control various aspects of that city How do you insert variability or change or you know the organic nature that cities actually thrive in?

Seyi (24:34)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Reza (24:57)
And if you don't have those, then yeah, it doesn't bode well. It doesn't bode well.

Seyi (25:04)
Yeah, it's a shame. And you're making a fantastic point because Reza, the thing we know about cities is that the diversity of sources of economic input and output, the enablement of many actors across the system is what makes it thrive. So as we...

Reza (25:27)
Mm-hmm.

Seyi (25:30)
start to move in that direction. think it's time for you to talk about the 21 laws, our laws that apply here. Yeah.

Reza (25:35)
Yeah,

so we haven't talked much about this laws. We have two laws that we're going to touch on and we haven't talked about this one, Law 21, which I think is our favorite law. have a little bit of a, this sort of came after multiple times about thinking about these laws. And this one is, emergence and entropy are required to build thriving and sustainable cities. And what this comes from is, based on the science of complex systems, cities,

Seyi (25:46)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Reza (26:04)
our systems, and we've heard us talk about this often in our episodes, and they adapt and evolve over time. And always, these cities are always operating at the edge of chaos. There's always something that's changing, allowing it to grow in ways that you wouldn't be able to control and actually make happen. order always comes from within that chaos.

without that central control, which is if we say that we have companies as a controlling factor, how does that chaos come about and how does it create this order that emerges because of that chaos? And that's what we mean by this law. And there's always non-linear things that have to happen in cities, like the creative gathering of artists and creative types in the dingy parts of a town that then

Seyi (26:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Reza (27:03)
makes it thrive and allows it to emerge as a thriving place. One of the scientific principles that this law comes from is Gall's law, G-A-L-L-S. It says, a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched.

to make it work, you have to start out with a simple working system. And that's what cities are. They start with a simple system and then they grow more and more complex. But if you have someone that's trying to control it or add complexity before it has emerged, you're not gonna have success. And so cities that survive company departures, you were touching on this, they demonstrate this emergent behavior.

New economic activities arise organically. mentioned Manchester. I mentioned the artists and creatives that colonize former industrial areas. Community organizations naturally fill corporate gaps and small businesses emerge to fill market niches. If you have a company that says, we're only going to have these businesses and we're going to take care of all the needs, you're not going to have these variety of groups and entities that make a city thrive in the way that they need to.

Seyi (28:29)
No, it's

so true. You can see it almost in every city, every city where the parts of town that become affordable for the residents that are creatives, artists, are not the most expensive parts of the city. And consequently, what you have is this.

chaotic beginnings of the creative parts of town. And as those parts of town is East Austin, it's Sixth Street, it's pick an area, Bishop Arts in Dallas, I believe it's called, those places are not because some central entity like the mayor's office or something decided, we will make this happen.

Reza (29:04)
Yes.

Yes.

Seyi (29:25)
And

what you find in these company towns, company cities is that it is very, it is inorganic and structured and stifling and stifled by those constraints that you create. as you said, this is one of our, if not our favorite law because of how we see it play and

just flout all the other lords, honestly, so yeah.

Reza (29:56)
Yeah. And the second one, Seyi I think what you're saying sort of leads into this, which is regional cooperation enhances sustainability. Cities cannot exist in isolation. They cannot control by the central authorities. Sustainable cities cannot thrive. They must coordinate with surrounding municipalities and rural areas for truly sustainable regional development. And if a company has incentives,

to stay closed, they're not gonna open up to these other areas. So that city probably will not thrive because the moment the company dies, that area will die as opposed to if that area is connected with the other places, it will thrive because other forms of energy and ideas will enter where they are. So this regional cooperation,

Law is based on research by Wheeler in 2002 that argued for the importance of regional approaches to urban sustainability. And it notes that the lack of regional cooperation can lead to inefficient resource use, conflicting land use policies, and inability to address cross boundary environmental issues. you you could be building a company town, you might build that infrastructure in an inefficient way that doesn't take into account the other

cities in that area, you could be doing things that could impact, you know, environmental issues. We already see that, you know, at the launch pad. Yeah, we see it at the launch pad, you know, for SpaceX, it's impacting some of the environmental ecosystem around it, and because there's an incentive to do what is best for the company, not necessarily for that area. And so it...

Seyi (31:25)
Gigafactory. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Reza (31:41)
This law is one that is critical because a city doesn't exist independent or an area doesn't exist independent of what's around it. Just like an ecosystem, just like an ecosystem only thrives when all parts of it are operating together and are thriving.

Seyi (31:51)
Yeah, it's-

Absolutely, absolutely.

it's so I'll touch on this and I don't have enough information to figure out if I couldn't find enough information to figure out if this is the case. But the Apple Park, so one of the resilience approaches that was built into the Apple Park is that because of where it is, a bunch of earthquakes, it's earthquake prone. They've built the Apple Park.

such that it can slide four feet in the event of an earthquake. What I don't know is how much of these innovative approaches has the company shared with everybody else and the entities, the buildings, the government. And it's this, if an earthquake happens and only that building manages to survive.

Reza (32:42)
Interesting.

Seyi (32:56)
You don't have a city. You don't have a city. don't, you don't. So people aren't going to be driving to work because only the Apple park or the ring stayed beyond the earthquake. So how can we cooperate regionally to ensure resilience and sustainability beyond just the company town is such an important aspect of all this. Yeah.

Reza (33:08)
Yes.

Yeah, that's a really good point. So Seyi, so we've touched on the laws, but let's talk about the future. Where should this go? How should we be thinking about company towns?

Seyi (33:38)
Yeah, so as I was thinking about this episode I kept and the law, we landed on the laws. The emergence and entropy one is the most important one, honestly. So it almost becomes tough to recommend any technologies or approaches. So the future of company towns, if we choose to continue to...

Reza (33:56)
Mm-hmm.

Seyi (34:06)
to build company towns, I'd suggest it should be that the successful ones, and I think Round Rock Texas is actually a really good example. The example of Round Rock here is that when Dell Technologies moved to Round Rock, the agreement was signed to cooperate with the city over a 30 year period, I believe initially.

Reza (34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Seyi (34:34)
And then it got extended by 99 years. sorry, by another 60 years. So they ended up with about 99 years of cooperation between the company and the town that it became located in and grew with. So it is that reorganization of the town and the city through a firm agreement.

Reza (34:38)
Wow.

Yeah.

Seyi (35:04)
to be with the city through thick and thin. Not just say, this city is in thriving, we're gonna move or move to Silicon Valley or whatever it is. So there was a long-term commitment that within the confines or the constraints of that agreement, there was room for a lot of chaos. we need public spaces, some money, but it wasn't just, so the first part is just this agreement to commit to the town.

Reza (35:08)
Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Seyi (35:34)
for a

long time to let entropy and emergence and chaos happen without breaking that commitment. That's the first part in terms of a recommendation. And this ties to the second part. Dell brought with it a lot of other companies that also made the same commitment to the town to make it a city.

and consequently diversified the resources, financial resources, instead of it being just one company, even though that one company is sort of the big one. If that company moved out of the town and it's shrinking in that sense because Dell is no longer using all the facilities it had originally, it's shrinking, but other companies are taking up those spaces.

Reza (36:29)
Yeah.

Seyi (36:34)
and diversifying the source of tax revenues and the like for the city. So it's long-term commitments despite the chaos, a diversification of industries that provide and help to build the city, economic diversity, and just a recognition by both sides that

There will be boom times and bust times, but...

Reza (37:06)
Yes.

Seyi (37:09)
just diversifying everything, not just the economic, but making it beyond just, this company is, this town is a company town. No, this is a city, period. And the company just happens to be in it, I think is the approach that most companies, instead of these closed existences that these companies try to have within the region or the towns they show up in.

Reza (37:20)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Seyi (37:39)
It has to be more collaborative in that sense.

Reza (37:43)
Yeah,

I love that example, Seyi. I love that you brought up, you know, Dell and Round Rock because it struck me. I remember whatever the 30 years ago when Dell moved from, you know, the western part of Austin out to Round Rock and it was such a big deal then. But since then, it is no longer a big deal, which is exactly what you want, which was, yeah, Round Rock, like Dell was a big deal up in Round Rock.

Seyi (38:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (38:09)
But what you've described is the framework for how they brought in Dell and how the city and Dell cooperated is an example for how you can create a thriving city. Round Rock is not Dell anymore. But Dell is still an important part of Round Rock. that, there's like the symbiosis between this, you know, this company and its system and the city and its system.

Seyi (38:22)
It's not.

Exactly. Exactly.

Reza (38:38)
that is working as opposed to trying to create this monoculture, which we've talked about before, where we're just gonna have this town and it's gonna be all about the company. Well, that ecosystem is not going to thrive, but one that recognizes the diversity, the organic nature, the entropy of a city growing from these changes that are invariably gonna come about. And as you said, it's gonna go up and it's gonna go down.

Seyi (38:40)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Reza (39:08)
but all through it, it works within this framework of both sides recognizing what's best for that community. And Round Rock is a thriving community. You live there. You've talked about the parks. You've talked about the youth sports. You've talked about all the good things that are still occurring in Round Rock and being a good place to live. And so I love that you brought up the example. It's great. Great one, Seyi.

Seyi (39:17)
residents. Absolutely, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, thank you. As I kept researching and because I hope our listeners know this, that even as we have opinions about some things, we are open minded about what's possible. And as I kept thinking about, man, I have no examples of company towns that are working.

And we're driving past the baseball complex, which is called the Dell Diamond, the baseball complex. But if you don't see the name on it, you just know it's the baseball stadium that's right behind the 20 or so soccer fields that's right by the volleyball pitches and the about 20.

Reza (40:04)
Yeah. The L-diamond. Yeah.

Yeah.

Seyi (40:27)
miles of walking parkland. It's just no longer Dell. I was like, oh, here is a company town, but that's not the point is that it stops being about the company. And it's, I, my, my, my wife, Michelle, she, she would go to bat for, for Round Rock any day.

Reza (40:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Seyi (40:57)
because of how well it's transitioned from being totally dependent on one company and it's got diversified industry and residents as well.

Reza (41:08)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great one. Seyi, so as we wrap this, you know, my call to action, I don't necessarily have a call to action, but it's more like a call of curiosity. I'm curious about other examples of company towns that we haven't heard of that I'd like to hear from our listeners, both ones that you think are examples like the Toyota, Woven City or Starbase or ones like Round Rock and Dell.

Seyi (41:21)
Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (41:38)
This is an interesting kind of contrast and I'm curious to hear from our listeners what other examples are out there for us to talk about and understand.

Seyi (41:42)
Yeah.

I love that, yeah, because in our research we can only find what we find, but when we hear from our listeners, we always learn. It's the beauty here. So that's good call to curiosity. I'll use that.

Reza (42:05)
Yeah.

So Seyi, let's wrap with Mailbag. I think we have a really good one from one of our favorite listeners. So yeah, share.

Seyi (42:11)
We do. Yeah,

we do. So Tyson, thank you for the mail back this week. And we're talking about the show and over the holiday period. And he mentioned, you know what, you guys have some really great ideas about what the future of City should be. He's a long time listener. He's probably listened to every single episode we've released and had conversations about it. And he goes, one thing that I find missing.

that I believe your curiosity and your creative approaches will have some good ideas about is how do we fund our cities? We want all these changes in our cities, but the tax system that we currently use to generate revenue for cities are defined by the intentions that the cities already have. So if we're bringing new ideas or new recommendations about how cities should run,

Reza (42:51)
Mm-hmm.

Seyi (43:09)
we have to come up with innovative or creative ways to fund the cities, different from the system that it's been constrained by right now. And I thought, wow, yeah, we absolutely have to do an episode on that. So thank you, Tyson.

Reza (43:22)
Yeah. Yeah,

that I, you when you mentioned this question to me, I was like, wow, that's a powerful question. I don't know the answer. We don't know the answer. But boy, you know, piqued our curiosity. Well, how does this, how do we do this? Like, yeah, we have a ton of great ideas, but like you mentioned, like, you know, markets and money really make these things happen. And so we can't just be spouting off all these good ideas.

Seyi (43:30)
Yeah, we don't. We don't.

Yep.

Yeah.

Reza (43:52)
without really thinking through what can actually happen. So thank you, Tyson. That was a really good one.

Seyi (43:57)
Yeah, and we'll definitely now add an episode on that. We'll do some digging, maybe find some experts and do an episode on that for sure.

Reza (44:06)
Yeah. So let's wrap. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of our Future Forward community. Please take a minute to rate and review. Reviewing the podcast actually makes a meaningful difference in other listeners wanting to listen to the show. Like and subscribe. It helps the YouTube algorithm. YouTube is now, just read an article, it's taken over podcasts.

listen to podcasts by watching it on YouTube even more so than on a podcast app. So please, if you're a YouTube watcher, please like and subscribe, that really helps. And then the last thing, the best way for a podcast to grow is if you share it with someone else. if you have someone in your life that you think that would find this interesting, please share with them. We'd love for our community to and you to help us do it. And so with that, Jay,

Seyi (44:38)
Wow.

Reza (45:04)
Another great show. Thank you for talking through this one. Fascinating, fascinating topic. Can't wait for our next show as always. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you the next time.

Seyi (45:13)
As always.

See you next week, thanks.