譯／莊蕙嘉
For all the optimism, innovation and wealth that are produced here, the Bay Area can also feel like a place that doesn’t work quite right.
The cost of housing has priced out teachers and line cooks. Income inequality is among the widest in the nation. The homeless crisis never seems to ebb. Traffic is a mess. On bad days, transit is, too. And local governments are locked in conflict.
灣區誠然創造了傲人的樂觀、創新及財富，卻也同時讓人覺得是個運作不夠理想的地方。
房價高到讓教師和西餐非主廚負擔不起，收入不平等是全國差距最大的地區之一。遊民危機未曾稍減，路上車子塞爆；運氣不好時，大眾運輸也是一團糟。各地方政府衝突對立。
Clearly, the region has not been optimized.
“It could be so much better,” said Ben Huh, who moved to San Francisco in 2016 after running the Cheezburger blog empire in Seattle. “There’s so much wealth. There’s so much opportunity.”
顯然的，這個地區沒有優化。
曾在西雅圖經營「起士漢堡」部落格帝國，2016年搬到舊金山的何賓（音譯）說：「這個地區可以大加改善，有這麼多財富，這麼多機會。」
In the maddening gap between how this place functions and how inventors and engineers here think it should, many have become enamored with the same idea: What if the people who build circuits and social networks could build cities, too? Wholly new places, designed from scratch and freed from broken policies.
Huh leads a project begun by the startup accelerator Y Combinator to explore the creation of new cities. Hundreds applied to work on what looked like “the ultimate full-stack startup.” Last October, Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company, announced it would team up with a government agency in Toronto to redevelop a stretch of the city “from the internet up.”
這個地區運作的實際狀況與投資者和工程師心目中的理想之間，鴻溝大到令人難以忍受，以致許多人都愛上了同一個想法：如果打造線路和社群網站的人也能打造城市，該有多好？全新的地方，從頭設計，而且不受殘缺的政策限制。
何賓領導由新創加速器Y Combinator開始的一項專案，研究如何創造新城市，數百人應徵想加入這個像是建立「終極全端開發新創公司」的工作。去年10月，字母公司旗下的「人行道實驗室」宣布，將和多倫多的政府機構合作，「從網路開始」再開發這座城市的一個區塊。
For others in tech — intrigued by word of a proposed smart city in Arizona, a big Bitcoin land grab in Nevada, a special economic zone in Honduras — fantasizing about newly built cities has become a side gig. They dream of utopias with driverless cars, radical property-ownership models, 3-D-printed houses and skyscrapers assembled in days.
While some urban planners roll their eyes, it is true that America’s cities have always been built on someone’s hubris, whether the characters who plotted New York’s street grid or those who imagined the Golden Gate Bridge.
科技界另有些人士，深受被提議的亞利桑納州智慧城市、內華達州比特幣大農場、宏都拉斯特別經濟區等字眼所吸引，想像新造城市已經成為他們的副業。他們夢想著烏托邦，充滿無人車、根本財產所有權模式、3D列印房屋和幾天內就能組合好的摩天大樓。
儘管一些都市計畫家對此事大翻白眼，美國的城市一向是靠著某些人的狂傲不羈而建造的卻也是事實，紐約格子狀街道的規畫，（舊金山）金門大橋的發想，都是如此。
“Who were these guys who were thinking so big? Then the question is, where are those people now?” said Paul Romer, the former chief economist at the World Bank, whose ideas (and TED talks) on new “charter cities” have influenced some in tech. “Tech types — as much as people might talk about the parochial way they’re approaching it — deserve credit for thinking bigger than anybody in government right now.”
Their interest has an internal logic to it. The tech industry tries to produce better versions of familiar things — cheaper phones, smaller computers, faster chips. But cities like San Francisco don’t seem to be evolving into more efficient versions of themselves.
世界銀行前首席經濟學家保羅．羅默對於新的「特設城市」的想法和在TED發表的演講，影響部分科技界人士。他說：「這些目光遠大的人是何方神聖？接下來的問題是，這樣的人現在何處？」「科技界人士，儘管外界認為他們追求目標的方式太放不開，卻依然應予肯定，因為他們的目光比現今政府中任何人都要遠大。」
他們的興趣自有其內部邏輯。科技業致力為熟悉的事物製造更好的版本，像是更便宜的手機、更小的電腦，或是更快的晶片。但諸如舊金山這樣的城市卻似乎並未發展為更有效率的樣態。
※說文解字看新聞
本文主題在報導新創公司在都市計畫方面的施展，startup的字面意思是「開始工作或事業」，衍生為名詞「新創公司」，指的是新近成立（通常不超過三年）、透過商業模式整合資源，以獲利和成長為目標並創造價值的公司。
新創公司成立後，通常需要「創業加速器」（accelerator) 的幫助，新創企業加速器是媒合新創公司與投資方的機構，讓新創公司獲得資金。此外還有startup incubator，為「創業孵化器」，為普遍小規模的新創公司提供創業、法律、財務或管理等諮詢服務，協助其公司組織發展健全的機構。
full-stack常見於「full-stack developer」一詞，意為「全端開發者」，指的是同時具有前端程式設計能力和後端伺服器及資料庫存取能力，有開發一個應用程式能力的工程師。
side gig意同sideline，為「副業」之意，前者為口語用法。對於在主業之餘經營副業，同時具有多重身分的年輕人，最近的流行說法是「斜槓（slash）青年」，例如「工程師／吉他手／插畫家」。
charter有「特許」之意，charter cities是經濟學家保羅．羅默所提出的新概念，他以香港為例，開發中國家可透過特許方式，畫定特別區域，施行實驗性政策並觀察其效果，有利於國家整體發展。
