This aside, it might be useful to have the opposite as well (or instead).

Ie: Some portion of some city designated friendly and relatively unregulated for the testing of new technologies in public spaces... Like the Chinese special economic zones, but smaller scale.

Instead of arguing about what approach is unequivocally better, we can just have some of both. This isn't like housing where market fungibility makes it impossible (unadvisable) to have uncoordinated policies, There will still be people living there who don't like it, but you have that regardless. There will also be an element of choice, to the extent that people can/will move.