Walmart's E-Commerce Chief Is Leaving To Build 'a City of the Future' (vox.com) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur who sold his startup Jet.com to Walmart for $3 billion and then oversaw the transformation of the retail giant's e-commerce business over the last four years, is leaving his full-time role with the company at the end of the month, he told Recode. His next big entrepreneurial swing will be something far afield from his current expertise: a multi-decade project to build "a city of the future" supported by "a reformed version of capitalism." "It's a new model for society we'll be testing," he teased.
Lore declined to offer more details, but said he would be prepared to reveal additional information in the coming months. Some who have heard of the project say one focus will be on giving everyday citizens direct economic upside in the city's growth. "Imagine a city with the vibrancy, diversity and culture of New York City combined with the efficiency, safety and innovation of Tokyo and the sustainability, governance, and social services of Sweden," reads the vision statement for the project. "This will be our New City." "This is going to be a lifelong project," he added. "It's the thing I'm most passionate about."
Lore declined to offer more details, but said he would be prepared to reveal additional information in the coming months. Some who have heard of the project say one focus will be on giving everyday citizens direct economic upside in the city's growth. "Imagine a city with the vibrancy, diversity and culture of New York City combined with the efficiency, safety and innovation of Tokyo and the sustainability, governance, and social services of Sweden," reads the vision statement for the project. "This will be our New City." "This is going to be a lifelong project," he added. "It's the thing I'm most passionate about."
Good luck (Score:1)
Why is /. filtering the word Naz1? (Score:4, Informative)
See this article -- https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
This reminds me of those ham-fisted and clumsy "net nanny"-type filters in the hey-day of the web that ended up filtering out content that used the word breast or penis, etc.
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There should be a word for the ninnies who do this sort of lame filtering: Naz1naz1s.
Re:Why is /. filtering the word Naz1? (Score:4, Informative)
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Whatever they think they're doing, what they're doing is make it harder to discuss civil rights issues while totally failing to stop any kind of abuse.
Re: Why is /. filtering the word Naz1? (Score:2)
Ain't that the whole point of censorship and p.c.ness? I'm sorry I mean moderation.
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Not normally, except on Parler.
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There's legitimate reasons to use the word, and the filter is trivially circumvented?
Yes, with this post definitely.
My first thought was that he is promising a Utopia . . . but end up delivering a Naz1 concentration camp.
Or something like a mix of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and George Lucas' THX-1138
Re: Why is /. filtering the word Naz1? (Score:2)
Is it possible to submit patches for Slashcode? And will they actually use that on this site?
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I read this and my first thought was, it is bad enough that HOA's exist and expert the power they do over so many places....a set up like this "utopian" city would likely have MUCH more oversight and rules on what you could do with your own property, that is...if in fact, you are even ABLE to own property in this new city of the future.
I've been lucky enough I guess, to have never lived anywhere that ha
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Mind you, they can't even bring themselves to provide portable loaner transponders for the gate (no code - you have to have a transponder or talk to a guard to get in). So when my MIL's car spent four weeks in the shop (mostly waiting for parts), they had to wait at the guest entrance every time they took the loaner anywhere. Absolutely nuts. Wife goes to see them about once
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I don't live in the USA. Why do people choose to buy property in place like this? What is the downside to living in a place that _doesn't_ have an HOA?
I had a friend in New Hampshire who lived in an apartment rhat was across the road from a 24hr gas station amd two doors down from a strip club. It was like there was zero planning or zoning in his suburb. Do people move to HOA areas to avoid situations like this? Is there a happy balance between unsympathetic chaos and overly-controlling HOAs?
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Thanks for the response! I hadn't thought about the fees charged by the HOA, and I can see why you want no part of that. Where I live, issues like approved fences, cutting down trees etc is covered by land taxes ("rates") to the local government or town council. It's not too oppressive and there are plenty of exemptions if you want to build a deck or a garden shed etc. These local taxes also pay for spraying weeds, mowing around bike paths, parks etc, so the HOA landscaping stuff is taken care of by the sa
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Because twits keep using it on stories where it's not relevant?
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The word is over-used, that's all. Refer to them as the "German National Socialists in the 1930s-40s" when it's important to you. You should have enough time to type it out.
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"Grammar German National Socialists in the 1930s-40s"
"FemiGerman National Socialists in the 1930s-40s"
"Soup German National Socialists in the 1930s-40s"
Nah.
Imagine a city (Score:4, Funny)
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Without elitism and classism.
Re:Imagine a city (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine a city -- Without elitism and classism.
So there aren't any people there?
Re:Imagine a city (Score:5, Funny)
He should base it in Detroit and develop a robot police force to guard it.
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Re: Imagine a city (Score:3)
Every city in Germany, mate.
Malls are just not a thing here.
Walmart failed in lamest way.
(We have lots of small shops, about the site of mall shops, but spread on the streets. So you can usually walk to the most necessary shops, and take the bicycle or public transport to a shopping street for things you don't buy that often. So nobody sees the point of getting in a car and drive halfway through a tight city, to get the same things from a more evil company.)
Re: Imagine a city (Score:1)
Cry harder, tumpette!
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And if you add a few more people in various locations, doesn't that start to get pretty complicated?
I do hope architects aren't involved. (Score:4, Interesting)
Please make a city with NO involvement from architects.
Make buildings designed by people for people and built by engineers for people.
No arty wanker architects needed or wanted. Leave them in their miserable Brutalist hovels.
Re:I do hope architects aren't involved. (Score:4, Insightful)
Good idea. We can build it like Bangalore, or Pristina, Kosovo.
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Bangalore is a poor city, how much of it was designed by its inhabitants ?
Pristina was designed by a wanker architect, Andrija Mutnjakovic.
2-0
Re:I do hope architects aren't involved. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please make a city with NO involvement from architects.
yeah! I only like buildings that fall down in earthquakes!
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This might be a location thing, but in the united states, plans from an architect aren't enough to get anything built.
You need to get an engineer to stamp drawings, saying, "Hey, yeah, this is safe, it can be built, etc."
It's not uncommon for architects to build dumpster fires. Frank Lloyd Wright homes are notoriously awful to maintain, for example.
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Fallingwater.
Built by a renowned architect.
Falling down since it was built.
https://www.inventionandtech.c... [inventionandtech.com]
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Make buildings designed by people for people and built by engineers for people.
So a city full of homermobiles but buildings? Homerings if you will.
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Brick! No engineer in his right mind would build a decent sized building out of brick!
Concrete, man. The ideal building material. Faceless grey concrete walls and floors, and no ceilings because all those pipes and ducts are *beautiful*.
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Because governments never employ wanker architects to scribble shitty plans for their shitty buildings ?
BzzzzT WRONG
Re: I do hope architects aren't involved. (Score:2)
I think you mean: Don't build them for planes and rendered birds eye views like Brasilia, nor add ridiculous art installation buildings like Valencia thar ae gonna rot away unused in a few years, nor some kind of artificial SoDoSoPa that didn't grow organically, but build it for actual humans and actual life.
Given what he said he wants it to be, ... fat chance. /dev/null. Better than lobby for even more anti-human neo-libertarianism.
But hey, let him waste his power on
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Please make a city with NO involvement from architects.
Make buildings designed by people for people and built by engineers for people.
No arty wanker architects needed or wanted. Leave them in their miserable Brutalist hovels.
Errr. If you don't like Brutalist hovels then you *want* architects. Engineers are typically a horrible option to build something for people. Yes I'm putting myself down. We're great at solving complex problems in all sorts of weird ways, but as a profession we're f-ing terrible at actually considering the end user, be that Open source software producing a settings page with checkboxes that run right off the end of the page "for the user", or just building a solution without ever actually looking at the pro
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Architects keep calling for them, though, thinking of their product in terms of artistic quality, which should be interesting and thought provoking, even if the thought provoked is is immediate revulsion. The problem with brutalism is that it's not just a functional box. They play up the imposing visuals with features like narrow windows tall flat walls.
Textured concrete structures are practical and can be made attractive. It's just a failing of the architectural community that they occasionally go through
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Architects keep calling for them
They do nothing of the sort. If they did you'd see only brutalist buildings being built and that really hasn't been a trendy thing for a long time. If anything architects should be told that glass doesn't exist anymore. :-) In fact I dare say if an architect was to design a current trendy building it would literally be a glass house.
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You seem to really don't understand the job of an Architect is do you.
Sure we have some who really focus on the building as being a work of art, who are hired by people or organizations with deep pockets who wants to make something that will stand out, but for most of them, their job is to balance form and function.
For example, my parents had their home built, They wanted the stares to go down in one direction, but the Architect pointed out by doing that, the home would be more dangerous, as it would be mu
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No, architects invented Brutalism. And they are such up-themselves wankers that they give themselves prizes for it.
People made this village: https://www.wedreamoftravel.co... [wedreamoftravel.com]
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It will be as beautiful as Pripyat - jewel of Eastern Europe.
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Pripyat is UGLY.
Because Pripyat was designed by wanker architect.
Here's her picture.
She probably got loads of prizes for it. From fellow wanker architects.
People don't want their cities to be designed by pompous wanker architects.
And all architects are pompous wankers.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/a... [atlasobscura.com]
Re: I do hope architects aren't involved. (Score:2)
Marc is a master.... (Score:1)
at building a business that has no hope of making a profit and then flipping it to a deep pocketed entity and cashing out. You can only do that so many times before you run out of gullible buyers with deep pockets. Hopefully, he takes the windfall from Walmart and does something good with it.
Love long timelines (Score:2)
A project that is never complete can never be criticized and usually has no meaningful deadlines. Plus the goalposts can be constantly moved out further.
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Very insightful. Those traits are not compatible with Walmart's culture at all. I don't think anyone was surprised to see him "jet" when he finished his 5 year pay out stint at Walmart. He was able to shake things up and give an enema to the Ecommerce business there, but it remains to be seen if that was enough to get them on a trajectory to meaningfully compete with Amazon.
Re: Love long timelines (Score:2)
Oh right, because German airport BER never got criticited before it was finished. Which was so long that they had to replace all the LCD displays again because they had reached their end of life!
Look at us: We are criticiting it even before he started!
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Yeah, but if they had said up front its gonna take us 20 years and 10 billion euros up front it would have meant much less criticism.
Two corporate profile puff-pieces today Beau? (Score:2)
Re: Two corporate profile puff-pieces today Beau? (Score:2)
Just look at his profile picture.
What more did you need to know.
"Guy"'s never gonna come anywhere even close to a girl, or another real human being
If WalMart's website is any indication... (Score:2)
Is it built on a river? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then ones like Lore think they can translate what they did in business to building human society; they go into politics or education or in this case city building. they think they can build these things through drive and human will alone.
But no city was built on human drive; it's a society and all people have to work together. It's a culture, it's politics, it's social constructs that can partially be engineered but partially are built organically because they only work if all people agree.
And most importantly, the most successful cities are built on harbors or rivers, and serve a geographic purpose. You can't mix New York and Tokyo, and you can't engineer them; those cities are what they are because they are by-product of their cultures and geography. New York sat at the mouth of the Hudson River and controls the entire Hudson river basin, which could generate large amounts of food to support the city, allowing it to focus outwards on exports, and the history of the city encouraged immigration (because they needed labor) which led to a large multi-culturalism and mixing of ethnicities. Economic needs led to societal needs, but the economic need bore out because it was in a great location.
Japan is mountainous and fractured; it's difficult for nearby cities to integrate with each other. THe land produces a lot of food which helps create a lot of people, but they are distinct polities for most of Japanese history. Coastal travel was the cheapest and easiest way to integrate (and control or go to war with) the other cities. Tokyo sits on a good harbor that is the outlet of the Sumida river, which allows for all the river basin around it to produce food and transport it easily, making Tokyo powerful (but it wasn't guaranteed; Kyoto is historically it's competitor city). Tokyo is organized because the city was able to bring everyone under control by force, and forced all of Japan to follow a unified culture; it is distinctly not a diverse, multi-ethnic city, but rather a planned from the top down entity.
Every city can be traced to this; it's multi-culturalism is a by-product of it's geography, economic and cultural situation; you can't engineer that. This is a doomed to fail project; cities exist where they are do to macro-level forces; you can't just engineer one out of thin air.
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It will be more like every previous attempt to do this very same thing.
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> It will be more like every previous attempt to do this very same thing.
Brazilia or Fordlândia?
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They used New York and Tokyo as analogies. So I used those, but I could use virtually every city in existence. No city has ever been successful by forcing it to happen from the top down; engineering. Cities exist because people gravitate there for specific reasons, and those reasons are mostly defined by geography.
The point of my deconstructive analogies using their own anal
re: no city was built on human drive (Score:2)
I think you're stating the historic truth about most cities... but not sure that proves it's impossible to create one with a good comprehensive vision for it and drive + funding to see it to fruition?
I just moved from a small town in Maryland that was originally created by the B&O railroad. The company needed a place for a lot of employees to live, close to where their booming new business was located with a big rail yard, so they built a planned community for the purpose. Today, the railroad still run
Nanci Pelosi is the President *for now* (Score:1)
Re: Nanci Pelosi is the President *for now* (Score:1)
Well what would you do if people had raided your job site to steal your shit, take you hostage, and literally murder you with gallows?
Regardless of your views, she is a human, and a fellow citizen of you.
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The new Congressional White Russian. Vanilla Ensure + vodka. Have some. It'll take the edge off.
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Why worry now? There hasn't been a President in DC for four years.
Re:Nanci Pelosi is the President *for now* (Score:4, Informative)
So Biden hasn't been sworn in, and Trump is flying off (leaving no president in DC). So is Pelosi the President right now?
Not sure if you aren't from the US or if the education system failed at civics horribly, but no. That's not how it works at all.
There is no requirement for the President to be physically present in DC. He's still the President regardless of where he's at.
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Trump is still president (At the time of this post), there is a lot of access to need to know and do his job (If he chooses to) on Air Force One.
Also Pence as the VP will still kick in if there is a problem within this time frame.
Neo-libertarian Epcot? (Score:3)
I think he's lost it. Covid got to him, and now he's going all South-Park parody of himself.
Weeell, at least we got another thing to watch crash and burn, in these desperate times. We really need it. No new South Park, and the Presiclown is gone. We can't go back to Playboy^Wnormal now!
Rapture. (Score:1)
Will it be underwater?
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Come on, nobody gets my clever Bioshock reference?
Fail (Score:2)
*Getting an education takes motivation, which can't be purchased.
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Is he going to restrict the (numbers of) uneducated*?
If he did that, who is going to do all the work? Robots?
Then his new city is not going to work as the failure point is the nature of people, not the buildings and sidewalks. *Getting an education takes motivation, which can't be purchased.
It will end up like any other city, because people make cities the way they are. Even if you educated everyone the same amount, your city will eventually end up like any other.
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Like education can save anyone? It is utterly naive to think 'enough education' will make a better world. It smacks of the same kind of 'positive progressivism' that Walt Disney was famous for but that has been all but totally discredited by WWII and communism. Even if every person in the world was equally educated to a high degree there would still be significant disagreement about what was ethical and moral. There is no human science that can discovery and prove morality so no amount of 'education' is
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From a pragmatic viewpoint, the unproductive population can't be allowed to grow in numbers. Once you get too many in one place, it brings everything down through expensive social programs (taxes) and crime mitigation (assuming a city even tries), then those who are able to leave, will, leaving behind an unsustainable, crime-ridden mess.
That all sa
all for vision, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for vision, but the idea makes Elon Musk's strategy look conservative. A whole frikkin city? Wow, kudos to the guy for trying but that might step over the line into fantasy.
Musk's start was this: "I'm gonna start a battery company, a car company, a solar company, a rocket company, a digging company, and a neuro-implant company, start small on each, and see which ones take off". He was able to seed each company with 10s of millions of dollars and see where they went. He was able to start them with around 150 million dollars, and it only worked because he worked hard AND got exceptionally lucky in using one success to fuel the next.
An entire city? A single skyscraper is gonna run you around a good fraction of a GIGADOLLAR. You can't do that with seed money and grow slowly, unless the plan is to start a small town, let it grow into a larger town, which then grows into a city. That's likely to take more than a few decades, but maybe it could be accelerated. It's not just the buildings and infrastructure. The people make a city as much as the physical stuff. Maybe it could be catalyzed by a climate change scenario, where suddenly 250,000 productive people get displaced and need a place to live.
https://www.capitalfrontiers.c... [capitalfrontiers.com]
A large, powerful national government could accomplish this if it has the willpower, resources, and ability to steamroll its citizens. Say, China, for example. There you go, this guy would need China-level power to make it happen. The US could do this but hasn't since 1911 (Las Vegas).
What religion? (Score:2)
So , will there be on official religion in this 'brave new city'? Maybe 'commercialism'? I'd be up for Catholicism but seriously I wonder how you enforce laws within a 'city' when you are not a government.
Been done: we call it Singapore (Score:2, Interesting)
Clean, capitalist, authoritarian in a way mostly invisible to the average citizen, corrupt government but well run so no one cares, incredibly safe streets, amazing food, hot easy girls. What's not to love?
Disney syndrome (Score:2)
This will be a an experiment/vanity project like Walt Disney's EPCOT and meet a similar fate. It can't be truly self-governing while imposing his social experiment.
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At least disney has probably broke even on that investment.
Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
This has been done before. Many times. The result is always the same: A company town. The company owns the town, the company controls all business in the town, and they don't let competition in on equal terms. The company generally doesn't sell housing, they only rent it, and will kick people out who don't abide by the owner's rules.
Celebration and EPCOT come to mind - and those are just the ones Disney tried. Celebration became infamous as a creepy corporate dictatorship that forced residents into strict conformity and maintained artificially high housing prices to keep poor people out, and EPCOT failed so hard it was turned into a theme park and all hopes of being a city abandoned.
If you want the real horror stories though, look at the ones set up to provide a place of residence for the mining industry. Homes provided as part of pay, so that residents would lost their home if they lost their job, as a way to deter unionisation. Company-controlled stores charging excessive prices even for basic foodstuffs, and no competitors permitted.
Then you've got the paternalistic ones, like Fordlandia (you can guess who built that one). Where the founder has a vision of his ideal society, and a determination to make sure everyone who lives there comes to understand why his judgement is best. Ford's helpful insistence upon micromanaging everything down to what foods were considered healthy enough to be sold was so bad it lead to a worker revolt. Exactly the same thing happened in Pullman, where founder Pullman (Notice a pattern here?) was so determined to raise the moral character of his captive community that he wouldn't even permit any plays to be performed without his personal seal of moral approval. As he didn't sell any housing,only rented it, anyone who disagreed with his rule was swiftly evicted.
You see the problem here? It's always the same: Wealthy industrialist has a vision of a utopian society, and uses his wealth to try to make it happen. Then the real people move in, who do not share the founder's dream. Founder resorts to iron-fisted control to enforce their vision, confident that people will come to understand if only he can force them to comply a little while longer. Eventually either the founder gives up control (Usually by dying), or the community collapses.
So, just another real estate development scheme..? (Score:2)
Living around Orlando and Florida, we hear enough about future cities, either already built (Deltona) or will be (Tavistock's and the Mormon Church's city on US-192). And they all devolve into the same thing. More land torn up and concreted over, more destroyed wildlife, polluted environments, roads mindlessly laid all over going nowhere, and promises to the local development boards for approvals that come to nothing except no property taxes will be paid. Thoughtless sprawl all over the place. And the origi
There is a lot going against him. (Score:2)
If you go and ask a person what would be their ideal middle class life style, you will get a lot of different answers.
You may have the Urban Extrovert, who would love good sized city loft, where he can host parties.
You may have the Rural Introvert, living in a home in the middle of nowhere away from all people.
You have people who wants to live like in "Leave it to Beaver" where they are in a small well connected community, where all the homes are well cared for, and people go to one church every Sunday.
You
Bishock (Score:1)
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In a utopian future, there are no cities (Score:2)
Usually when people do this (Score:2)
A city springs up in the middle of nowhere, becomes abandoned and all the money is wasted.
The Hubris of the Successful. (Score:2)
I'm really good at a narrow specific business model. This leads me to believe I'm superior at everything.
Therefore, I'm going to be good at a subject that the smartest people on the planet have been unable to conquer, experts in that field.
Because I'm specially gifted.
Good luck, Walmart Ecommerce is terrible. (Score:1)
Inquiry (Score:1)
I played BioShock (Score:1)
Milton Keynes? (Score:2)
I was waiting for some Brits to chime in with that example but I guess it would have to be me.
In Good Omens it is mentioned that both Aziraphel and Crawley claimed Milton Keynes as a success to their respective headquarters. The footnote states:
Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.
How about a machine intelligence mayor? (Score:2)
Only half joking. I think part of the problem is that when people/politics are involved the city budgets and how money is allocated gets messy. It'd be nice to have some logic say...X% goes to collecting the garbage, X% goes to fire department, X% goes to street repair, X% to parks and rec, X% to snow removal, etc with of course the inputs determined by...how many fires there are. How old a street is and/or how many calls about pot holes. Generally speaking people just want quality, consistent, service
From walmart (Score:2)
How about a city of the future where the Walton family is actually taxes, and forced to hire people full time, rather than telling them how to apply for food stamps?