[camikazeg]

I've spent too many hours day dreaming about building a city from scratch in the middle of the country. An ideal spot would be around Wilson Lake in Kansas. It is almost equidistant from Denver, Oklahoma City (with a straight shot to Dallas) and Kansas City right in that sweet spot where high speed rail is more attractive than air travel. Bonus: there isn't an existing city there with existing governance.

I've always thought that if you are building a city from scratch, founding a University would be a great way to start. If you found it with strong programs in any or all of "architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning" then you get a major draw in that people studying these areas would be able to be instrumental in implementing them in a real way. When people are going to University is also one of the major pivot points in people's lives when they are willing to relocate.

[jessaustin]

Kansas State University isn't far from Wilson Lake, and it hasn't happened there. I'm hoping that rail technology will keep improving until the Great Plains as they actually exist will be in the "sweet spot". It wouldn't have to be as fast as air travel, but if travelling from KC to Denver were 3 hours rather than over 8, we'd live in a different country.

I'm not suggesting that TSA should just get worse and worse until air travel takes as long as train travel.