According to Forbes, Bill Gates is worth nearly $90 billion. What does one do when one can basically purchase anything that is for sale? Buy land to build a city, of course. It was recently announced that the cofounder of the Microsoft Corporation has bought upwards of 25,000 acres of land in Arizona to create a planned community. The plot of land, which was technically purchased through Belmont Partners—an investment firm run by Gates—is located 45 minutes west of downtown Phoenix.
Belmont (as the town will be called) will feature 80,000 residential units, public schools, and commercial buildings. Everything in the 25,000-acre property will be built around a flexible infrastructure model, which is why many are calling the proposed town a smart city. In many ways, Belmont will be a location where the latest technologies and innovative designs can be tested on a actual community, creating a real-life blueprint for how cities of the future could be run. "Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous logistics hubs," Belmont Partners said in a statement.
While it has not been announced when construction will begin, or what the total cost will amount to, there is real excitement over the prospect of chiseling a new city of the future out of a remote plot of land. "Comparable in square miles and projected population to Tempe, Arizona, Belmont will transform a raw, blank slate into a purpose-built edge city built around a flexible infrastructure model," Belmont Partners said.
For Gates—a man who, along with his wife Melinda Gates, has dedicated his life to improving the quality of life for people around the world through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—Belmont is yet another instance in which the Microsoft founder has seen an opportunity for advancing innovation in our world, and invested in it.
