In 1979, Shenzhen was a fishing village. Today, it is a 17-million-strong megalopolis, a global tech hub, and one of the most mind-bending urban success stories in history. In Shenzhen, factories-turned dorm-room startups blossom into trillion-dollar tech giants, and a hyper-efficient transportation system
Fifteen years ago, Al Duqm was a fishing settlement on Oman's southeastern Arabian Sea coast with a population of around 6,000 people, a stretch of coastline and a geography that strategists had been quietly noting for years. Notably, it sat outside the Strait of Hormuz, on the
Cities for people or people for cities? An unlikely marriage between city planning and gene modification is reinventing the future city. It’s also pushing the technological edge of gene modification as a tool for good – potentially as a natural outgrowth of the legacy of city planning as a tool
In Milton Keynes, perhaps the most radical of Britain’s post-Second World War “New Towns,” the battle over Brexit and the culture war that it represents is raging hard a decade on. There, the consequences of EU immigration policy, of planning instituted by national authority, and of the grassroots
We’ve written about the vision for NEOM multiple times on Capital Frontiers. NEOM is the massive new city project Saudi Arabia launched in 2017 in the country’s northwest corner by Jordan, a priority project of the Crown Prince with the objective to create an unparalleled and unprecedented reinvention
As one of the most conservative countries on earth takes on the 21st century, a pair of government-initiated new cities are among its most groundbreaking and ambitious investments. With different histories and emerging trajectories, KAEC and NEOM are blazing the trail in the opportunities and pitfalls of cutting-edge
Core communities: Secaucus, Weehawken, Jersey City, Newark, Clifton, Piscataway, Carteret, and extending into Hudson, Essex, Union, and Middlesex Counties. The Northern New Jersey data center market functions as the primary digital edge of the New York metropolitan economy, anchoring one of the most important low-latency and interconnection ecosystems in
Wembley has been generating enormous crowds since 1923, when the original stadium was built as the centerpiece of the British Empire Exhibition. For most of the century that followed, the land around it was treated entirely as crowd infrastructure, including coach parks, surface parking, service roads. By the time the
Core communities: Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert, Goodyear, Glendale, Peoria, Buckeye, Surprise, and parts of Queen Creek and Pinal County. Metro Phoenix has emerged as one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the United States, transforming from a secondary regional node into a major destination for hyperscale and AI-driven
The land immediately west of Lambeau Field had never been much. By the time the Packers began buying parcels in the early 2000s, the roughly 34 acres adjacent to the stadium consisted of a gas station, a motel, and a lot of surface parking, the kind of forgettable buffer zone
Core communities: South Fulton, Douglas County, Lithia Springs, Fairburn, Palmetto, Union City, Forest Park, College Park, McDonough (Henry County), and emerging sites along the I-20 and I-85 logistics corridors. Metro Atlanta has rapidly emerged as the Southeast’s primary data center hub, evolving from a secondary interconnection market
The Ohio State Penitentiary, one of the oldest continuously operating maximum security prisons in the country, had sat shuttered and crumbling on prime downtown land since 1984. By the mid-1990s its outer walls were literally dropping debris onto parked cars. The city owned the site and had been courting