I keep thinking that something is missing in the national discussion about the wall.

If I were a big real estate developer, one with an imagination, I would not be wanting to build a freaking wall. It’s too simple, too unimaginative, and far too expensive for something that does not work and is too easily defeated by a ladder or tunnel.

Let’s think big.

Really big.

A two thousand mile long wall does little but impede wildlife and take land from its owner.s It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t generate income. So let’s build condos.

Better yet, let’s build a giant city, or a new state, two thousand miles long and a mile wide, with 25 levels of homes, businesses, and factories. Not only would this make the border safe from scary people with ladders, it would require much deeper and longer tunnels, making tunnels more impractical and rarer.

We could build this self-contained city to maximize space usage, minimize the need for personal transportation, using well-established principles for urban design. Using a population density range of 4,600 people per square mile (New York City) to 9,800 (Paris), this city could support nine to twenty million people.

The roof of the city could support high-speed monorails and solar panels, with an occasional heliport, for transportation. Perhaps even rooftop farms. Data infrastructure would be built in from the beginning ensuring broadband access for all. Water and waste infrastructure would be more easily managed – no digging.

By populating this “wall” with residents, we won’t need border guards. We turn it over to the tech bros who are all-in on mass surveillance systems and make surveillance a condition of residence. Chips, ID cards, tracking systems at every door. Further, dispense with cash, make all transactions electronic. Basically, we create a social structure with no room to hide. Privacy would exist only in your own cubic footage of space.

We could build this glorious, technological city, fill it full of people (who, quite naturally, will break all the rules designed into the system and remake the intended social structure into something else entirely) and then turn around and build another one, only three thousand miles long, up on the northern border.

And wouldn’t this be much more fun and useful than a wall? Promise affordable housing, equal opportunity, new jobs, and easy access to healthcare, schools, and shopping without needing a car, and millions of people would give you the support you need. Think of the jobs that will be created just to build the thing. It’s huge. Huge!

And it will keep the masses busy and distracted for years.