How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities

I’m not saying America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes in which corporations operate every essential service and pull every civic string.

But let’s take a tour of recent news from the metropolises.

■ In Seattle, the City Council decided last week to undo its plan to impose a $275-per-employee tax on local businesses, a measure it had approved unanimously last month as a way to address the city’s homelessness and housing-affordability crisis. Why the retreat? Many of the city’s businesses balked at the tax, including Amazon — and no one needed to remind Seattleites that Amazon is very publicly looking for a second city to plant its glass balls. So, the Council caved.

■ The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, announced that he had tapped the Boring Company, Elon Musk’s second side-hustle, to build a high-speed transportation tunnel from O’Hare International Airport to the city center. Boring said it would fully pay for the tunnel, using no public funds, but it is also very likely to hold a long-term lease to the project, capturing all revenue from the private system.

■ You’ve heard of the app-powered electric scooters that descended like locusts on some American cities last spring. The start-ups that run them made a bold bet: Deploy now; worry about legal niceties later. The bet is paying off. Officials in San Francisco, Austin, Tex., and Santa Monica, Calif., have rushed plans for legalization. Bird, the most ambitious of the scooter start-ups, is now raising money at a $2 billion valuation, just weeks after raising money at a $1 billion valuation.

■ Finally, Domino’s Pizza announced a plan to pave America’s potholes. I wish I were kidding. As part of the program, Domino’s — which has been fashioning itself as a tech company now that it’s battling food-delivery start-ups for mind share — will imprint its logo into the roadway, because apparently Domino’s is the government now, and he who pays the paver gets to choose the toppings. (A Domino’s spokeswoman told that me cities could forgo the logo.)

O.K., so maybe I am saying that America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes.