Ambition markets & building new cities

The author argues that the next ambition market for ambitious people will be a return to the public sector, through building charter cities, city expansion projects and new cities. The argument follows a sequence in which finance, then 9/11-era government and intelligence work, then software and startups each drew ambitious young people in turn, and AI may now reshape work enough to open a new frontier. Examples cited include New Cairo, planned in the early 2000s and holding 300k residents per the 2017 census against a projected 5 million, and Rutgers professor Jason Barr's proposal to expand Manhattan, which Barr argues is needed because the city "can't tinker its way out of its problems." The piece also predicts that American development will tend toward abandonment rather than local reform.