Enclosure and exit in new tech urbanisms

The growing political and economic influence of tech elites is not limited to computerising the city, but more territorial and monumental strategies, emblematised by lavish ‘future cities’ like Praxis Nation. These speculative urban projects advance a logic of radical separation from public space, visibility and accountability, underwritten by tech elites’ consistent and increasingly explicit denunciation of the very idea of democratic governance. I examine two distinct and interlinked genres of these speculative projects. First, enclosures for the tech industry’s coding elite carve out effectively privatised communities away from public governance and scrutiny. Apple Park thus features a lush artificial garden, literally severed from the surrounding neighbourhood, while Elon Musk incorporates a new town of Starbase, Texas under de facto corporate governance. Echoing American company towns of the 19th century, like Lowell and Pullman, these are model utopias that seek to bypass public infrastructure and oversight, towards paternalistic control of the worker population. Second, ‘escape pods’ seek more radical forms of exit from the planetary commons. I examine the tech billionaire space race as the pursuit of a literally blank canvas for sketching a hyper-technological urban future. Meanwhile, the same elite quietly invest in doomsday bunkers as individualised escape from fears of social breakdown and ecological collapse. The rockets and bunkers thus serve as ‘temples of the future’, materialising deeply nonpublic visions at both societal and individual scales.