By Henry Grabar | Slate
A whole lot of nothing.
Here are some things you should know about the smart city Bill Gates is building in Phoenix. It’s not a city, nor is it “smart,” nor does the Microsoft founder appear to be involved in any meaningful way. And when outlets like CNBC say it’s in Phoenix, well … the plot of land in question is some 40 miles west of Phoenix, on the western edge of the metropolis’s westernmost suburb. Still, it appears to be true that Cascade Investment LLC, the firm that manages an uncertain number of billions of Gates’ money, used a subsidiary LLC called Mt. Lemmon Holdings to invest $80 million in a greenfield development project here—if the term can be applied to the very-not-green Arizona desert.
