The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down
August 29, 2024 at 03:47AMFor The New York Times Magazine, Rachel Corbett takes us inside Próspera, a private start-up city on the Honduran island of Roatán that was founded in 2017 and is backed by Silicon Valley billionaires. Like Praxis, a proposed autonomous city in the Mediterranean, or even California Forever, the project to build a new city east of the San Francisco Bay Area, Próspera is an experiment, a vision. It promises prosperity, a better future, and “good times and Caribbean vibes,” but neighboring residents are skeptical and the Honduran government wants it gone.
Próspera has become particularly well known for the zone’s experimental medical facilities, which run clinical trials unburdened by F.D.A. standards. The week of my visit, Patri Friedman, grandson of the economist Milton Friedman and the founder of a start-up-cities fund that invested in Próspera, had a chip with his Tesla key implanted into his hand. On a previous trip he brushed his teeth with genetically modified bacteria purported to prevent cavities. Another time he was injected with a protein booster intended to make him “stronger and faster,” as he put it at a conference in Roatán that weekend.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/08/28/the-for-profit-city-that-might-come-crashing-down/
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