The utopias of Musk and Bin Salman: their dream is to make cities grow like mushrooms

Near the factory, my factory, so that you can work, happy and protected, for me. In the heart of my capital, so that you can see and appreciate how I build the future for my residents and for those who want to enter the new world, of which I feel I am a prophet. Two billionaires, two projects for the future of the planet. In Texas Elon Musk wants to build a laboratory city on the outskirts of Austin where employment and social life mix harmoniously with the help of digital technology. Employees of the plant that builds Tesla electric cars, or of its other industrial ventures, will live there. In Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, crown prince and leader of the monarchy that floats on oil and the wealth that derives from it, completely overturns modern urban trends, which want to reconnect the suburbs to the city centres, and he builds a second urban centre, a capsule, a satellite at the cost of billions in the center of Riyadh where it wants to marry culture, entertainment, shopping, tourism in an artificially uncontaminated environment protected from climate change: with many houses to live in, in an immersive reality that will make inhabitants and visitors navigate between holograms and virtual experiences. That they will lock the rest of the planet out of their golden gates. Both Musk and Bin Salman have a vision: humanity is tired and in crisis, let’s change the way we live and work, scrap the old cities and rethink the concepts of urbs and civitas that have accompanied the history of agglomerations over the centuries. They believe in it and have the money to turn projects into reality. They want their utopia to leave a mark on history. For urban planners and intellectuals, on the other hand, the initiatives are above all a bold bet, with a strong commercial flavor, and which reflects the personality of their creators: visionaries, yes, but above all autocratic and self-referential, moved by personal interests. But the challenge has been launched. Are these the model cities of the future?