Move over Roswell. New Mexico is getting a new ghost town.
Private international technology-development firm Pegasus Global Holdings is developing a new city in the state, which will be known as CITE—or the Centre for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation. But no one will live there. Tim Moore, for DesignBuild Source, describes the purpose behind the new city:
The centre, the size of a mid-sized US city at 20 square miles, will function as a developmental testing ground, where the technology firm will be able to implement, test and run new green innovation in the safe and controlled confines of the city site.
Sustainability and green-building technologies will play a huge role in CITE. Generally an on-going practice, green building will now get its own stage. Smart-energy grid technologies, self-operating vehicles, and more-efficient appliances are a few of the other ideas that Pegasus will test within the confines of CITE.
While shutting down a whole city’s power grid to test a new idea isn’t feasible in an inhabited metropolis, it is in this $1 billion testing city. “The point of the town is to enable researchers to test new technologies on existing infrastructure without interfering in everyday life,” the Associated Press reports.
CITE will be developed in Lea County in the northeastern corner of the state near the city of Hobbs—not too far from Roswell, which come 2014, may have some competition for the title of eeriest city.