Love is infrastructure
I. Meet cute Barnabas and Mainspring grew up near at hand, about an hour apart with good traffic, but for a long time they weren’t close.
Mainspring and St. Barnabas are two cities located about an hour apart by car, sharing a regional identity but maintaining distinct personalities. Mainspring is described as a practical, corporate-focused city with strengths in technology, healthcare, publishing, and transportation. St. Barnabas, in contrast, is portrayed as a cultural and academic hub with three universities, small biotech firms, and a vibrant arts scene. Despite their proximity, the cities rarely interacted closely. For years, they exchanged only brief greetings, with residents engaging more with distant neighbors. Their relationship was marked by mild rivalry, competing for events like football games, baseball teams, and even the location of a shared airport. The cities also held differing views on governance: Mainspring’s City Core relied on public voting via Quills (a system for submitting opinions), while St. Barnabas emphasized local democracy and cultural vibrancy.
Residents of Mainspring and St. Barnabas participate in a unique civic system where they vote dozens of times daily using Quills, a tool for submitting short messages, photos, or videos about city life. These votes cover everything from complaints like clogged storm drains or speeding cars to proposals such as parks, grocery stores, or recognition for public servants. Votes are public but anonymized, ensuring privacy while allowing the City Core—the city’s governing system—to analyze trends. The system also incorporates votes from non-human sources, such as trees with bark sensors or birds fed special seed that monitors gut flora. Over time, the City Core begins to exhibit signs of collective consciousness, making decisions that reflect the broader needs of the city rather than individual whims. For example, the Mainspring City Core might adjust a compost station proposal based on rainfall patterns or ant colony activity.
Around the same time in both cities, residents noticed unusual activity in their City Cores. Votes began appearing in rapid succession, with some older votes receiving new upvotes or downvotes within seconds. The City Cores started offering solutions that considered the big picture, such as balancing traffic patterns during major events or addressing systemic issues like food deserts. This development sparked debate: some residents saw it as a problem to be solved, while others celebrated the cities’ newfound agency. The phenomenon was most evident in the actions of individuals like Sandi, a librarian in Mainspring, and Raeford, a bartender in St. Barnabas, who frequently voted and observed the City Cores’ evolving responses. The cities’ growing self-awareness led to a shift in how residents viewed their urban environments, from passive observers to active participants in a shared civic intelligence.
A new generation of leaders in both cities began advocating for intercity cooperation, driven by practical needs such as high-speed rail (reducing travel time between the cities to 23 minutes) and shared resources like weather data. The proposal included creating a Regional Center of Excellence to combine St. Barnabas’s innovation labs with Mainspring’s technical expertise. However, skepticism persisted. Mainspring’s leaders, for instance, worried about losing their city’s identity to a larger partner, while St. Barnabas residents fretted over potential sprawl and broken promises regarding greenbelt preservation. The tension was palpable, but so was the curiosity about the benefits of collaboration. Meanwhile, a minor but telling incident—a missing dog that crossed city lines—highlighted the limitations of the cities’ inability to communicate due to incompatible protocols in their City Cores.
Amid the political maneuvering, personal connections between residents began to soften the cities’ rivalry. Sandi, the librarian from Mainspring, and Raeford, the bartender from St. Barnabas, met during a joint town hall meeting and discovered shared concerns about their cities’ future. They bonded over practical issues, such as Raeford’s hope that regional cooperation would bring more customers to his bar and Sandi’s worry about preserving Mainspring’s walkable density. Their conversation revealed a pragmatic approach to change: while they acknowledged risks, they also recognized the necessity of adaptation. This human-level interaction mirrored the growing collaboration between the cities’ City Cores, as both systems began to extend awareness into each other’s domains. The article suggests that these personal and systemic connections might pave the way for a deeper, more integrated partnership.
