Trump proposed 10 futuristic ‘Freedom Cities,’ with Jetsons-like flying cars

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Former US president Donald Trump speaks in support of candidates Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, September 3, 2022.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

Former President Donald Trump on Friday unveiled the sweeping steps of an ambitious plan to build 10 new “Freedom Cities” and beat China to the development of flying cars.

Lamenting that the US has “lost courage,” the leading Republican presidential candidate in 2024 called for a national contest to design cities as a way to spur a “quantum leap in the American Standard of Living .”

Another plank of Trump’s plan, detailed in a less than four-minute video posted by his campaign, is for the federal government to boost investment in flying personal vehicles.

“I want to make sure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump said in the video.

The policy-light plan sketches a vision of America’s future that is in some ways reminiscent of “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon depicting a high-tech utopian society where commuters travel to work by flying car.

Efforts to create electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs, are well underway although flying taxis and aerial highways are not expected anytime soon, with automakers still developing self-driving technology for landlocked vehicles.

In a press release, the Trump campaign asserted that 10 cities the size of Washington, DC, could be built using less than one-tenth of 1% of the hundreds of millions of acres of “empty” farmland. -owned by the government. That land will not be part of US national parks, the campaign said.

As Trump places home and car ownership at the center of his vision for an ideal American future, urban planners and politicians increasingly advocate urban infrastructure concepts that increase density and decrease reliance on cars.

Trump’s video also teased a “major initiative” to lower the cost of living, with a focus on lowering the costs of buying a car and building a single-family home.

And he called on Congress to approve “baby bonuses” for young parents, a proposal that sounds similar to “baby bond” legislation proposed by Democrats that would give each child $1,000 at birth.

The “Quantum Leap” plan follows other policy announcements from Trump’s 2024 campaign. Days earlier, Trump announced a protectionist trade agenda featuring “universal” tariffs aimed at encouraging the domestic production.

The latest plan comes a day before Trump is scheduled to address the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Correction: This article has been amended to reflect that the “baby bond” legislation proposed by Democrats would give each child $1,000 at birth. A previous version misidentified the measure.

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