A city for the future but devoid of people

2015-10-06T18:07:00-04:00

In the arid plains of the southern New Mexico desert, between the site of the first atomic bomb test and the U.S.-Mexico border, a new city is rising from the sand. Planned for a population of 35,000, the city will showcase a modern business district downtown, and neat rows of terraced housing in the suburbs. It will be supplied with pristine streets, parks, malls and a church. But no one will ever call it home.

Planned by the telecommunications and tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings, the CITE (Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation) is a $1 billion plan to build a model city to test out and develop new technologies.

With specialized zones for agriculture, energy, and water treatment, the city would also play host to tests for new tech like self-driving cars, responsive roads, and "smart homes" of all kinds.

CITE would have built-in sensors throughout, as well as a central control room to oversee operations.

CITE does not plan to have humans inhabiting the city to allow for faster testing and fewer potential mishaps. But that presents its own issues: after all, these technologies are ultimately intended for social use, and even "smart cities" have to be populated by humans.

"The inhabitants of cities are not just interchangeable individuals that can be dropped into experimental settings," Professor Steve Rayner, co-director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, tells CNN. "Th...

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A city for the future but devoid of people