People of different fields came together for the same dream of building a smart city.

The prospect of a gleaming, green, high-tech experimental city was personally motivating to participants from diverse industry backgrounds, ranging from software to real estate development to city government. Their enthusiasm for the project’s unique combination of technical innovation and bold demonstration of new possibilities brought people together and gave them, for all their differences, a shared identity.

In January 2004 President George W. Bush announced his own Vision for Space Exploration, in which the U. S. would lead the world back to the moon. Once we had gone there, and humans had learned to live and work successfully on another world, we would head on to Mars as the ultimate destination.