Donald Trump’s proposal to create up to 10 new “freedom cities” on federal land is being met with mockery and confusion even by some Republicans, Business Insider reports.
The unusual plan was outlined in a four-minute video released by Trump earlier this month.
“We should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development,” the former president and 2024 hopeful said. “In other words, we’ll actually build new cities in our country again. Thesefreedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at homeownership and, in fact, the American Dream."
Trump said the new cities would be part of a "quantum leap in the American standard of living.” He would encourage companies to build flying cars to aid mobility in these new cities, and he would ask Congress to pursue new “baby bonuses” to spur a reproductive boom.
It’s not clear how these cities would be funded or initially populated.
“All economists would think this is a bad idea – this isn’t how cities develop,” economist Rick McGahey told Business Insider. “They don’t spring up magically out of nowhere.”
Similarities between this idea and the abundance agenda have caused skepticism even among some Republicans. Critics on the right have slammed it as a Leftwing idea.
Sources close to Trump have said he was inspired by Saudi Arabia’s 100-mile city plan.