Describe your vision of the future. $250 The Editors’ Choice Visionary Award.
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Let’s start in the center of my city of the future. In the middle is a park with the widest diversity of plant life for the city’s climate. You can only walk in the middle of the city. But then as you go outward, there are bike paths that encircle the walking paths and radiate out. All streets are designed to encourage walking and biking. Public transportation is the next priority. Cars stay on the periphery. Inside the city is green.
The buildings, too, are green. Lots of vertical farms gardens throughout the city so that less food is shipped in. Green, solar energy everywhere.
But this city is also a hub for technology innovation. Coffeeshops don’t just have WiFi—they teach you how to code. Businesses get tax credits for offering programs with part time work + training. The schools systems encourage learning different marketable skills at different times. Learning + tangible skills are offered everywhere you go.
This city is devoted to solving the problem of homelessness that so many cities face in equally innovated ways. Many homeless people simply had a series of bad breaks and got left behind. How can we prevent that “left behind” from happening? By continuing to offer people chances to bounce back from setbacks. Build that into the cities of the future.
This city will help to re-imagining our economy. It will mandate living wages, set a standard for minimum wages, and be a leader in fighting for free health care for all its residents. There will be incentives for corporations to actually create jobs. The only way they can get tax breaks is through job creation. A new form of insurance is made available to residents of this city—crisis insurance. It helps get people through bad breaks. Whether it’s a flood or accident or a shooting or a job loss. Crisis insurance can help. Just think about how if you ever got your car totaled or a house fire or a major medical problem. It would have been a crisis were it not for insurance. So lets “unbucket” insurance and realize everyone goes through a crisis at some point. This city will help people plan for it.
In this city, there will also be a focus on teaching emotional intelligence, relationship building, social problem solving and empathy. It will be built right into the businesses, the arts, and the education programs.
The city will be as beautiful and as diverse as the people who live in it.
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This is a sample post from our Editors’ Choice Visionary Award!
Want to submit an entry? Enter here! Top post gets $250.
Deadline May 31, 2018
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