The Sunday Read: ‘The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If Próspera were a normal town, Jorge Colindres, a freshly cologned and shaven lawyer, would be considered its mayor. His title here is “technical secretary.” Looking out over a clearing in the trees in February, he pointed to the small office complex where he works collecting taxes and managing public finances for the city’s 2,000 or so physical residents and e-residents, many of whom have paid a fee for the option of living in Próspera, on the Honduran island of Roatán, or remotely incorporating a business there. Nearby is a manufacturing plant that is slated to build modular houses along the coast. About a mile in the other direction are some of the city’s businesses: a Bitcoin cafe and education center, a genetics clinic, a scuba shop. A delivery service for food and medical supplies will deploy its drones from this rooftop. Próspera was built in a semiautonomous jurisdiction known as a ZEDE (a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development). It is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Now, the Honduran government wants it gone.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Rachel Corbett and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:05.0	This story is about a private city.
0:10.0	What is a private city you ask?
0:13.0	It's just like a regular city.
0:16.0	People live and work there, make decisions about how they want to pursue their dreams,
0:21.0	except the city is owned by a corporation.
0:25.0	It has all of the features of a government, but for a price.
0:30.0	Almost everything is privatized. private school, private security, private infrastructure.
0:37.0	And they're often built in semi-autonomous zones with their own laws.
0:42.0	That kind of freedom is especially appealing to foreign
0:45.9	investors looking to circumvent certain regulations or taxes.
0:52.8	Historically, places like this already exist, like Shenzhen, Singapore, or Hong Kong.
1:00.3	But private cities are a growing movement.
1:03.0	About 30 have sprung up all over the world.
1:06.0	Sometimes in conflict with the very countries that host them.
1:11.0	My story from the magazine is about them.
1:13.2	My story from the magazine is about one private city being built by a U.S. corporation on an island
1:20.4	off the coast of Honduras, and it's backed by a few Silicon Valley billionaires
1:25.5	like Peter Teal, Sam Altman and Balaji Sri Vassen and the city they've put their money into is called Prospra.
1:37.0	Prospra is the most advanced version of this private city phenomenon, in terms of its infrastructure and the number of businesses that have invested in it.
1:52.0	For example, medical companies there don't have to operate by
1:56.2	FDA standards when conducting clinical trials. Real estate developers don't have to
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.