The Case for Miami
By: David Doswell
Tags: Relocation, Miami, City Living, Technology, Silicon Valley

Photo by Antonio Cuellar

The story of the future is one of optimism. It is the best story, because there is no ending, only the narrative: “…yes, things may be terrible today, but they can be better tomorrow!”

The impossible becomes possible when we learn to create the knowledge to make it so. If we understand nothing else about ourselves, this is the human condition: a fragile and infant existence on the continuum of life marked by some inexorable need to improve. It’s almost a moral imperative.

Humans have migrated to every known continent and have settled the vast majority of the planet. The historical scale and scope of our ambitions have become our curricula. We have since learned much about our world, and its history, with the knowledge and subsequent tools we’ve invented to survive and progress.

Since the advent of modern cities, and more relevantly of democracy, humans have been trying to compose a harmonious relationship between their ambitions and the governments they elect to administer policy.

American elected officials have more recently fought or belied the will of their people, at federal, state, and local levels, for a smattering of reasons.

Sometimes the purported reason is to keep you safe.

Other times, the reason is to protect you from other people.

The reality in the Bay Area is even more severe. Local officials and residents have raised their voices about the relationship between technology industry workers and themselves. It’s an unfortunate stalemate mired in misgivings.

Photo by Julien Borean

There have been many civilizations, from Indus to Egypt, from Maya to Mesopotamia, and they have all collapsed, for one reason or another.

One reason seems to be their lack of fortification against inevitable change. I believe the question we should always be asking ourselves is, “What’s the big idea?”

What are we doing? I don’t think we know, anymore.

Are we content today with maintaining the bridges and buildings of the past, laboring for a base subsistence? Should we no longer question the progress of science, technology, culture, because we have food, clothing, and shelter?

Would my ideas about the veracity of experts be dangerous if they knew what they were talking about? What is America’s North Star, today, the undeniable unifying theme of a nation, whose heart “vibrates to that iron string?”

Having absolved ourselves of our sins, do we now simply dance in delight over free trade and fair elections, over mien and manners, molding every child into a properly middle-American? Should said child not question that she is being told to aspire to mediocrity?

Unfortunately, these questions only expose what might be broken about our consistency. They answer nothing about how to fix it. I have a few questions about how we might arrive at a “big idea,” how to migrate from consistent to interesting.

Why did Elon Musk invest his PayPal fortune into a fledgling rocket company that he believed had a 10% chance of succeeding?

What possessed a young man with a dream and no technical background to teach himself programming on YouTube, before flying across the country to attend a coding bootcamp he would later fail?

Why do thousands of would-be entrepreneurs from across the world apply to Y Combinator, and OnDeck Fellowships, with maybe a prototype and a little hope? And why do so few of them give up when the chilling winds of failure whisper they should?

The answer for many of us is a belief in the human story.

We push harder when things get hard, because we believe that story can evolve. We want to create an even better world for our grandchildren than the world our grandparents created for us. We want to build the future.

Photo by Muzammil Soorma

We want functioning cities, excellent bridges and buildings, enamoring skylines and clean streets. We want kind and eccentric neighbors, diverse cuisines, and responsive city governments.

We want the future to look different than it does today. We want to build, and to be encouraged, because we need that.

We want to eradicate infectious diseases. We want to build smarter systems of commerce and communication. We want to design healthier foods and drinks.

We want more green spaces, better air quality, family-friendly science fairs, and a delicious adult nightlife. And we want to agree to disagree, without disintegrating.

We believe our ability to innovate and to emancipate, to absolve ourselves of our imperfect past, is a team effort. A great city recognizes these values and could not pretentiously dismiss them.

Where are citizens smart and sexy, independent and helpful, free and civically engaged? Where is the city transcending false dichotomies?

A great city is not a utopia or a dystopia. It’s just great.

The future of Silicon Valley is decentralized. There is no such thing as “The Next Silicon Valley.”

The very phrase is a misunderstanding of the big idea behind it. What makes Silicon Valley great is not any one place, or company, but people.

Silicon Valley is less of a place and more of an idea. There is a loop of high-energy people helping other people here, based on mutual benefit and active policies, such as a ban on non-competes and not taxing shares while they’re vesting.

And this loop creates an agglomeration effect, where suppliers, customers, talent, the very cost of doing business, decreases with scale and efficiency.

Getting a startup off the ground, and into motion, further reducing its drag coefficient that it might reach escape velocity, needs the additional kinetic energy of a great city.

Startups need to believe they are doing the right thing when they are, and to be confronted with the reality that they’re not when they’re not.

Just being a startup and subsequently being told you’re awful is not helpful. It’s also a damaging notion if said startup has the initial wherewithal to make a difference.

One problem the great city will solve is the two cultures of business and art, and the history of their incompatibility. Business is verily perceived as not in the people’s interest to artists. To business, art is what you do or enjoy when you’re not working.

The great city is a blended family of artists and capitalists, where artists can afford to ground us in human stories and capitalists intuitively create better experiences because of them. A great city wouldn't even acknowledge these terms, as they are ruinously divisive and outmoded.

Great citizens are not artists or capitalists. They’re just great.

Photo by Juan Carlos Trujillo

The point is not to look for the next Silicon Valley, but the next great city. The big idea will follow them. Look for people who are generative, open-minded, anxious but earnest, imperfect but good.

You will find them migrating across the world. They are not just Americans. They are scattered, connecting to the internet in search of people like them.

They are builders and helpers, risk-takers and team players, all trying to find each another. And when they do, they are hoping to connect with one another in real life, someplace nice, someplace near.

They are, like you, in search of a great city. Where is this 21st century city, a city born to take risks and to tolerate failure without celebrating it? Who are the people who are there?

I want to be there with them. I want to contribute to the progress of that city. I want to be encouraged. I want to be useful. I want to be proud of that city and I want that city to be proud of me.

I imagine it is a city rich with diversity, abundant in good weather, attractive, clean and competent.

I imagine it dresses interestingly, maybe because there are good cults there, maybe as to distinguish it from less interesting places. I imagine indigenous slang, dances, music, films, fringe science, and bizarre technologies.

I imagine a city where there is too much innovation to commit petty crimes, too many developers to justify not housing people.

I want a city that is fortifying itself against inevitable change.

I want a magical city.

A city from the future.