Pulling the future into now

We finally got our Kanye West Joe Rogan Experience episode.

It was more of a monologue than a dialogue, which is fine, and included this great passage.

“Let me show you what a school of the future looks like. Let me show you what a farm of the future looks like. Let me show you what a monastery of the future looks like. We’re 20 years past the future. It’s 2020. We were supposed to be in the future by 2000. It’s my job to pull the future into now.“

This sentiment echoes Peter Thiel, who speaks regularly about pulling the future into now. There’s an essay on the Founders Fund website titled, “What Happened to the Future?”

It is 2020, after all. We were supposed to be in the future by 2000.

I think about this idea a lot, especially as it relates to cities.

In many ways, our cities are less vibrant and dynamic than they were 100-years ago, now that the landed gentry has mostly completed its capture of the land use planning system. We can’t tinker on the built environment like we could back then, and as a result, we’ve become complacent.

What would pulling the future of cities into now look like? I think it would involve much more land zoned for mixed use (which is another way of saying much less zoning), much more height, and much more density.

It might look a bit like Hong Kong.