San Francisco—For all the optimism, innovation and wealth that are produced here, the Bay Area can also feel like a place that doesn’t work quite right.\u00a0 The cost of housing has priced out teachers and line cooks.\u00a0 Income inequality is among the wildest in the nation.\u00a0 The homeless crisis never seems to ebb.\u00a0 Traffic is a mess.\u00a0 On bad days, transit is, too.\u00a0 And local governments are locked in conflict.<\/p>\n
Clearly, the region has not been optimized.<\/p>\n
“It could be so much better,” said Ben Huh, who moved to San Francisco in 2016 after running the Cheezburger blog empire in Seattle.\u00a0 “There’s so much wealth.\u00a0 There’s so much opportunity.”<\/p>\n
In the maddening gap between how this place functions and how inventors and engineers here think it should, many have become enamored with the same idea: What if the people who build circuits and social networks could build cities, too?\u00a0 Wholly new places, designed from scratch and freed from broken policies.<\/p>\n