By Futurist Thomas Frey
For decades, cities have been built like static machines. We zone them, finance them, construct them—and then we wait. We hope businesses show up. We hope talent sticks around. We hope downtown revitalization plans somehow take hold.
Hope is not a strategy.
What cities actually need is a system that doesn’t just exist—but one that continuously creates new economic life from within itself. That’s where the Von Neumann Engine comes in.
Borrowed from the idea of self-replicating systems, the Von Neumann Engine isn’t a piece of hardware. It’s a way of thinking about cities as living systems—systems designed to generate startups, attract talent, and reinvent themselves over and over again.
Continue reading… “The Von Neumann Engine: Rebuilding Cities That Build Themselves”