An empty city is being built in New Mexico to test bleeding-edge tech

New Mexico is already filled with ghost towns, but a group of investors plan to build an empty city that will actually be of use. On a fifteen square mile patch of desert, these investors want to build what is essentially a massive testing ground for some of the most bleeding-edge technology out there, one in which researchers won’t have to worry about the regulatory and safety issues that’re present when testing technology in actual populated cities. 

Have you ever wanted to play SimCity in real life? That’s exactly what a group of investors plans to do in a 15 square mile stretch of desert land in New Mexico starting later this year, Wired reports. In a futuristic world filled with driverless cars, smart electrical grids, delivery drones and other bleeding-edge tech projects, the major hurdle to real-world rollout is almost entirely tied to testing. It’s hard to approve the widespread use of futuristic tech without knowing just how it’d perform in a real world environment and with many of the same obstacles it would face on a day-to-day basis. By building this proving ground, the Center for Innovation Testing and Evaluation (CITE) hopes to provide data that proves the safety of this sort of tech, or at least details a roadmap for improvements still needed before a launch at scale for futuristic tech proponents such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.