California Forever, which bought 60,000 acres, has received fierce opposition from local officials and environmental groups
The controversial plan backed by Silicon Valley billionaires to build a new city in northern California farmland could come before voters later this year.
California Forever, the company that quietly acquired 60,000 acres of land in Solano county and recently revealed it planned to build a city there, announced on Wednesday it would submit a ballot initiative asking voters to clear the way for the project.
Along with the announcement of the ballot initiative, the company shed further light on its plans. It is proposing to create a new walkable and sustainable community with a variety of housing options, including apartments and row houses, on 18,600 acres in east Solano county, about 60 miles from San Francisco. Their plan also includes a pledge to create as many as 15,000 jobs, a $400m fund for down payment assistance as well as a requirement that at least 4,000 acres be used for parks, trails and other green spaces.
I hate that I’m living through the dystopian guided age 2.0 I remember reading the history books and thinking how absurd it was all these tycoons could become insanely rich and exploit workers and use their riches to shape politics. Well I’ve learnt a lot these last 10 years, which is, it doesn’t matter how much progress we’ve made technologically or socially, or how safe we feel, we can always slide back. Even to Nazi Germany.
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This why billionaires accumulating wealth is a problem. Their power will exceed that of democracy someday.
They can purchase their own military in the end, and even enslave people in the literal sense.
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With the exception of the issue over water usage, I’m not sure I understand the resistance to this. Yes, I do see that it could result in a problem where they engage in rent seeking behavior; but, it’s also a plan to build out a bunch of housing and the infrastructure to support it, in an area which needs more housing. And, of all the places in the US, California is the one state where I would expect to see the political will to regulate if these wealthy assholes try to turn this into a Company Town situation. More housing is not going to build itself. And this seems like one way to get some of that done. Is it perfect? Far from it, but it seems like this could also be a lot better than the nothing which is currently being done.
I think the main distrust is in private interests being in the lead. I think it’s pretty fair to not trust a solution from a bunch of billionaires, which also conveniently puts them in a position of monopolistic power.
Is it really all that different from the millions of housing tracts we have dotting the US landscape? Or the apartment blocks dotting cities? Private entities have been developing housing for decades. And while we can certainly go on about the evils of HOAs, it’s not exactly the dystopian nightmare scenario which this particular development is being made out as. I’m just not seeing the big deal in this.
This seems more involved than just a neighborhood or development project since it’s an entire city. But I’m pretty sure this kind of thing has been done a ton, they just don’t do it so loudly.
I tend to agree with this take.
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The 3rd largest city in California is California City. You’ve never heard of it because it was the same plan.
Largest by area I assume you mean
Yes but all the streets are laid out. Check it out on google maps.
Fascinating rabbithole! Thanks
Arasaka finally completing plans for Night City?
how bout ya fix the mess ya made on the coast first?
walks up to the counter So I’d like the Fyre Festival but super-size it into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
All these billionaires have a hard on for space, let’s crowd fund a trip to Mars. We’ll eventually…maybe…not really send a rocket to pick them up.
If this is supposed to be some sort of vote dilution thing I feel like you’d have more productive outcomes building a city around the Idaho/Montana/Wyoming borders using the geothermal power of the Yellowstone plume to support the city’s power demands.
Or you could be even more productive vs cost of investment and relocate the offices of major federal departments and agencies to inject a bunch of educated professionals into all those rural states that’ll become the kernels around which new urbanized and educated voting blocs will form.
The main thing will be offering benefits attractive enough that those federal employees will actually bite for it to work.
It seems more like a way to maintain their company presence in Silicon Valley while slowly transitioning everything to this new city, not too far away, and try to make it the new Silicon Valley but actually better planned for long term, high population density. As an added bonus, they get to control the local government to crack down on crime and homelessness. And they’ll also get to collect rent from their employees. It’s too expensive to buy all the current real estate in SF so they can build their own 60 miles away and get everyone to relocate there and slowly raise the prices and make a shit ton of money.
I hate that this sounds so appealing to me
I assume that the town motto will be “No Poor People Allowed”
Atlas Shrugged?
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