As much as the future is being pushed on us, with all of its boxy and unimaginative architecture and all of its screens and black buttons, I’m here to tell you Charleston, South Carolina has never been more popular. People are flocking there in droves to stroll by architecture that is among the best-preserved in America. Walking through the historic district feels like drifting back 300 years into the past.

And it’s not just Charleston. How about Cape Cod, Williamsburg, Nantucket, and Newport? If its old, people will go there, walk the sidewalks, eat in quaint cafes, photograph stately doors that lead to stately wooden houses and then shop for blueberry pancake mix, southern roasted nuts, and scones.

And they’re not just visiting, they’re packing up and moving to these towns. I was just in Beaufort, South Carolina last weekend–a place I’ve always loved because it hadn’t been discovered yet. It was the home of author Pat Conroy, who wrote about its marshes and tides like they were living things — breathing, whispering, and holding southern secrets older than the town itself. But now even Beaufort is changing. The secret’s out.

People aren’t just reading about these places anymore; they’re searching for a way back into them — into that rhythm of life where beauty isn’t curated, it’s part of life. They want the morning light slanting across a front porch, the church bell at noon, the creak of a screen door, the sound of cicadas under moss-draped oaks.

It feels like rebellion to me. When people scroll through photos of cobblestone streets or plan trips to towns “where time forgot,” they’re saying, “I remember what life felt like before we surrendered it.” Because deep down, everyone’s realizing the same thing: we don’t need newer — we need truer. We crave wood grain, porch swings, candlelight, handmade bread, and conversation that isn’t mediated by a screen. It’s why Charleston and places like it feel like portals to the past, not destinations — because they reconnect us to our own humanness.

The problem is, a town like Beaufort gets discovered, and the people who move there want conveniences and so the corporations swiftly move in and completely transform the place with fast food and big box stores and suddenly the whispering tides and the salt marshes are obstructed by the view of modernity. And then Beaufort isn’t Beaufort anymore.

I’ll tell you, if I never see a corporate store again, I’d be thrilled. On our way south last week, I quickly tired of the boxy, cement hotels, the same restaurants serving horrible food at every exit, and the crush of materialism.

Also last week, I stumbled upon a brand new capital city on the Internet that no one has ever heard of. I literally sat there in shock looking at pictures of this place. After you’re done reading this column, look this city up on the internet. And lest you believe it isn’t real, go to YouTube and watch videos of people from America visiting there.

Astana is the name of the city and it’s the capital of Kazakhstan—a new gleaming, highly symbolic city built in a remote part of the country. Most of us know very little about Kazakhstan in the first place, so where did this futuristic city come from and why have we never heard of it?

Astana is an impressive city, but it’s not just another pretty face. Take some time to really look at pictures. The architects used symbolism through geometry to lay it out–much like how Washington D.C. or Paris were laid out. It feels like a “city built for a myth” rather than for daily life. It looks like it was built by the set designers from Star Trek.

Nothing surrounds Astana except for hundreds of miles of barren grassland. You fly for an hour over a flat dry emptiness and then, suddenly, without any hint of outlying farms or suburbs, there it is. The effect is sometimes cinematic: wide boulevards, enormous plazas, and glass-and-metal spires reaching for the sky.

Astana is more than architecture; it’s a statement — a deliberate redefinition of our identity as human beings.

And once you’re done looking at pictures of the place, you might just want to pack a bag and head to Charleston so you can remember who you are and where you came from.

The people designing our future are going to have to count on the people of the future to inhabit these new capitals they’re building, like in Brazil and Myanmar. Because for now, people like me will be sitting in Charleston or Savannah on a white porch with our fans and sipping our sweet tea.