Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities

What separates an intentionally-founded city of industry and associated government, from a historical population center which has roots that go back many lifetimes before modern versions of these efforts arose anywhere?

If you were a city before there actually was any major industry or good government, these things would have surely developed (as good as they could) over the generations but still not actually formed the root of the reason for being there.

OTOH in a greenfield where the intention is explicitly to build better-than-average industry and leadership from the ground up, it's really a whole different reason to be there or go there to begin with. If that can be the main thing to take root it doesn't have to be very much like most places.

>grim human rights records of most of those successes.

I'm not so sure the Ship Channel would be what it is today if it weren't started out with unpaid labor. But even then labor has always been very expensive even when wages are not being paid, and forever loomed large on the balance sheets of the plantations and their backers who were often from Wall Street.

It still took a while but eventually through the magic of capitalism some very strong financial empires were built which finally could dwarf that nagging labor cost which just wouldn't go away no matter how much work you got out of slave labor or how much you cut back on other labor-related expenses.

I would say that's something that made it feasible for somebody to jump at the opportunity to start a new industrial/entrepreneurial community with bigger dreams than most, by having more wherewithal to get a good portion of the way there if an actual opportunity could be found.

Now it's taken a while but there are so many billionaires at such a high level that they can (finally?) dwarf even well-paid engineers and stuff by an even better multiple than 19th century stock tycoons had over agricultural labor costs, whether wages were paid or not.

Financially they could found a city like they did with Houston and not actually rely on unpaid labor whatsoever this time, and make even more of a killing.

The right opportunity came up with a major change in territorial administration after Texas won independence from Mexico, but it took a lot of foresight and sheer force of will to actually be the ones to pick out a nice spot of vacant land and say "this is where I'm going to build a city like no other".