{"id":35896,"date":"2017-04-05T07:22:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T14:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/inside-the-plan-to-replace-trumps-border-wall-with-a-high-tech-ecotopia"},"modified":"2017-06-04T07:06:13","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T14:06:13","slug":"inside-the-plan-to-replace-trumps-border-wall-with-a-high-tech-ecotopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/inside-the-plan-to-replace-trumps-border-wall-with-a-high-tech-ecotopia","title":{"rendered":"Inside the plan to replace Trump\u2019s border wall with a high-tech ecotopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The year is 2030. Former president Donald Trump\u2019s border wall, once considered a political inevitability, was never built. Instead, its billions of dollars of funding were poured into something the world had never seen: a strip of shared territory spanning the border between the United States and Mexico. Otra Nation, as the state is called, is a high-tech ecotopia, powered by vast solar farms and connected with a hyperloop transportation system. Biometric checks identify citizens and visitors, and relaxed trade rules have turned Otra Nation into a booming economic hub. Environmental conservation policies have maximized potable water and ameliorated a new Dust Bowl<\/a> to the north. This is the future<\/a> envisioned by the Made Collective, a group of architects, urban planners, and others who are proposing what they call a \u201cshared co-nation\u201d as a new kind of state.<\/p>\n

Many people have imagined their own alternatives to Trump\u2019s planned border wall, from the plausible \u2014 like a bi-national irrigation initiative<\/a> \u2014 to the absurd \u2014 like an \u201cinflatoborder\u201d<\/a> made of plastic bubbles. Made\u2019s members insist that they\u2019re serious about Otra Nation, though, and that they\u2019ve got the skills to make it work. That\u2019s almost certainly not true \u2014 but it\u2019s also beside the point. At a time when policy proposals should be taken \u201cseriously but not literally<\/a>,\u201d and facts are up for grabs, Otra Nation turns the slippery Trump playbook around to offer a counter-fantasy. In the words of collective member Marina Mu\u00f1oz, \u201cWe can really make the complete American continent great again.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year is 2030. Former president Donald Trump\u2019s border wall, once considered a political inevitability, was never built. Instead, its billions of dollars of funding were poured into something the world had never seen: a strip of shared territory spanning the border between the United States and Mexico. Otra Nation, as the state is called, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,31,1412,1633,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-policy","category-privacy","category-solar-power","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58174,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35896\/revisions\/58174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}