Pegasus Holdings has announced it’s building an insta-ghost town in New Mexico. It will be a mid-size American city that could house 35,000, but no one will live there. The fully functioning soundstage city will be used to experiment with smart technologies. From the company’s press release:

“Targeted for completion in 2014, CITE will resemble a mid-sized American city, including urban and suburban neighborhoods, open spaces and highways. It will reflect the current mix of new and aging infrastructure found in most U.S. cities. This will allow innovators, researchers, and potential investors the only environment of its kind to test their technologies in a facility that is not only secure, but also replicates real-world challenges. Unique to CITE, the test infrastructure will be unpopulated, allowing for a true laboratory without the complication and safety issues arising from having residents.

CITE will provide the opportunity for end-to-end testing, evaluation and demonstration of new intelligent and green technologies and innovations emerging from the world’s public laboratories, universities, and the private sector allowing them to better understand the cost and potential limitations of new technologies prior to commercial introduction. CITE will also provide a new testing and evaluation opportunity for those small and medium firms which often find testing prohibitive, cost and otherwise, at existing public and private facilities. Among the countless testing opportunities are integration of renewable energies, intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks, smart grid cyber security and terrorism vulnerability.”