Throughout the two months of fundraising for “Where Is the City of the Future?”, I’ll write regularly about what the project intends to do, how the project intends to do it, and how you can play an important part in it. You already know one important part you can play: the part — and a considerably important one indeed — of becoming a supporter on Byline. But if you’ve already done so, or plan to do so soon, chances are you live in a future-minded Pacific Rim city yourself, or at least you’ve got one or two such places you especially like. And so you might wonder this: “How can I make my city the city of the future?”
So far, we’ve come up with a few different ways you can make your preference heard. The most effective — as well as the most fun — would be to choose the top supporting option, which entitles you to not just my writing one of the series’ reports on your Pacific Rim city of choice, but my getting your thoughts on it (ideally over whatever you would consider the city’s most interesting food or drinks) when I arrive there. But given the expenses related to time and travel that method involves, it admittedly won’t fit into every supporter’s budget.
If, however, you support at any amount from $40 and above, you’ll have the chance to vote in each “election” of a potential city of the future, which will happen between each report I write after the first two (on Los Angeles and Seoul) and any chosen by top-level supporters. At the conclusion of one report, I’ll put up a poll listing out the candidates for an upcoming one, and you can in that way raise the chances of a report appearing on your favorite Pacific Rim city.
You might, of course, also try to convince me through other means, such as Twitter, one of the prime platforms of our time for making one’s case. I’m @colinmarshall over there, so feel free to send me an @ reply that lets me know why I should consider your city a possible city of the future. Is it do do with its architecture? Its culture? Its commerce? Its transit? Its food? Its very location? Send a compelling enough tweet postcard, and your city might well appear in the list I post next time, which will reveal all the Pacific Rim cities for which you’ll definitely be able to vote in the first round after Los Angeles and Seoul.
But who knows? The city of the future might turn out to be some place none of us have yet thought about — except you.