Title is borrowed from the SF Standard article that reported this. I've been keeping my ears open and a finger on the pulse around here. Interestingly, I hear a lot of criticism from both the left...
I've been keeping my ears open and a finger on the pulse around here. Interestingly, I hear a lot of criticism from both the left and the right. Folks on the left hate that it's spearheaded and being master-planned by billionaires and their architects. Folks on the right hate that its urban model is so European, with a focus on dense mixed-use zones, walkability + bikability, and public green spaces over private yards.
Personally, I'm quite in favor in this project. California is very automobile-centric, and while San Francisco is reputedly the most bike and pedestrian-friendly city in the state (and perhaps in the country), I find that it's mediocre when compared to likes of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Tokyo. I think that this development would be an easily accessible demonstration model to Californians: people who can't go to Europe can finally visit and experience an Amsterdam or Copenhagen-tier urban model here. And perhaps that would stir the hearts and minds of Californians to demand a European way of life.
For people who criticize the fact that it's billionaire-led: well, for basically all of urban history, audacious urban innovation has been spearheaded by the wealthy and powerful, because they have the resources and political power to organize such endeavors with coherent vision. From Foster City here in the Bay Area to Daniel Burnham and the World's Columbian Exposition that radically reconfigured Chicago to Haussman's renovation of Paris (with a mandate from Napoleon III).
It's time for someone or some group to break the Bay Area's housing status quo and try something new. Conservative-lite folks in the South Bay are trying to protect their low-density, suburban way of life. In the city, the NIMBY coalition—activists and homeowners—has blocked the city from evolving. Amsterdam is a medieval city, yet even it feels far more modern than many swaths of SF that feel stuck in before-Y2K! In 2023, SF is full of old, decaying housing that is both scarce and expensive, with pockets of affordable but scarce housing available by lottery and pockets of uber-expensive luxury housing built by developers who can survive the long, arduous, expensive permitting process.
edited to include a link to nimby.report of self-described democratic socialist supervisor Dean Preston who, as a champion of the working person, is personally responsible for having deprived at least 8,500 people/households of homes.
Personally, as someone who's lived in a variety of settings ranging from semi-rural Appalachia to the middle of Tokyo and is currently living in a suburb, I'm in total support of denser...
Personally, as someone who's lived in a variety of settings ranging from semi-rural Appalachia to the middle of Tokyo and is currently living in a suburb, I'm in total support of denser people-centric cities modeled after cities in Europe and East Asia so long as the cost to live in them is reasonable. I might even sell my house to live in such a place.
Cars bring almost as many downsides as they do upsides and I don't really want to keep one around unless I absolutely have to… it's so much nicer for the majority of daily needs to be within walking distance with the rest being a relatively short train ride away.
Cars can be great, sure. But it depends on where you are and who you are. In cities, they are not great. Cars use an enormous amount of space: roads, parking and the vehicles themselves. Plus they...
Cars bring almost as many downsides as they do upsides
Cars can be great, sure. But it depends on where you are and who you are.
In cities, they are not great. Cars use an enormous amount of space: roads, parking and the vehicles themselves. Plus they are noisy, dangerous and they pollute. All this is even the case in cities like Amsterdam!
In rural areas this is very different, mainly because there is so much space (both to travel and for having space for your car).
Finally, cars are great for car users/owners, but they are annoying for everyone else because of the reasons listed above.
Partly this is a consequence of American rural areas having sort of an individualist "homesteader" layout where everyone has a big lot of land and plonks their house in the middle of it to guard...
In rural areas this is very different, mainly because there is so much space (both to travel and for having space for your car).
Partly this is a consequence of American rural areas having sort of an individualist "homesteader" layout where everyone has a big lot of land and plonks their house in the middle of it to guard it all.
In older societies rural areas tended to have most people living in villages in fairly clustered settlements and then they commuted out to their fields to work. Protecting the fields was a communal activity as different people in the village would have title to random plots of land adjoining each other. And even as they transitioned into modern forms of property management and ownership, this built pattern still sometimes persists where you'll see a village center where most of the people live and then farmhouses for the handful of families that own sprawling plots of land. But there isn't this idea that one needs a car to be a functioning member of society there.
IMO, such villages tend to be more picturesque as well in a Ghibli sort of way.
It’s interesting how permeating the origin story of America has been to our culture. Religious extremists pushed out of Europe found spots far away from everyone else. They enjoyed their distance...
It’s interesting how permeating the origin story of America has been to our culture. Religious extremists pushed out of Europe found spots far away from everyone else. They enjoyed their distance because it let them do whatever they wanted. This is how many rural Americans live and think today. They hate how urbanite politicians can legislate their behavior - they live out there specifically to avoid certain rules.
The Puritans were just one of the settler groups. The Jamestown settlers were mercenary fortune seekers, the Georgians were debt convicts. Appalachia was settled by Scotch-Irish indentured...
The Puritans were just one of the settler groups. The Jamestown settlers were mercenary fortune seekers, the Georgians were debt convicts. Appalachia was settled by Scotch-Irish indentured servants and people shanghaied into working in coal mines. The “rugged individualism” narrative was as much nation building mythmaking during the era as westward expansion as anything else.
I think it’s more complicated than I made it seem and I appreciate you adding depth. But the attitude I described is very common in rural America. I’ve been watching Peter Santenello’s YouTube...
I think it’s more complicated than I made it seem and I appreciate you adding depth. But the attitude I described is very common in rural America.
Appalachia was settled by Scotch-Irish indentured servants
I’ve been watching Peter Santenello’s YouTube series on Appalachia. He did a live stream this morning and mentioned the Scottish heritage. He also mentioned that many of the people in Appalachia are there specifically to get away from the law and that they hold the attitude of “leave me be”.
I kind of like it, to be honest. The thing about high density neighborhoods is that because the buildings are expensive they are already owned by very rich people, so I'm not terribly upset about...
I kind of like it, to be honest. The thing about high density neighborhoods is that because the buildings are expensive they are already owned by very rich people, so I'm not terribly upset about who's funding this. Of all the things billionaires could be investing in, this is one of the better ones since it's also an investment in people.
I'm still a bit skeptical about how well it will turn out, and that concept art is honestly a bit of a turn-off. That kind of design for the buildings are so common and boring and blegh to me, and I really want to see much more dense construction than those pictures imply. And then I saw that Solano county makes up Vallejo to near Sacramento, so I'm wondering how much of it will be actually affordable by regular folks.
I like the idea of the city, but my personal cynicism stems from a general distrust of most capitalist-led ventures. I'm suspect that this will be a 'by billionaires, for billionaires' kind of...
I like the idea of the city, but my personal cynicism stems from a general distrust of most capitalist-led ventures. I'm suspect that this will be a 'by billionaires, for billionaires' kind of project. The fact that urban projects have been spearheaded in the past doesn't fill me with hope, because i feel like the entire zeitgeist is different in this area and this time. I would love to be wrong, though.
Realistically this will be 'by billionaires, for single-digit millionaires'. Its geographic location—far from the interesting cultural life of San Francisco—makes it unappealing to young...
Realistically this will be 'by billionaires, for single-digit millionaires'. Its geographic location—far from the interesting cultural life of San Francisco—makes it unappealing to young 20-somethings who don't have money anyway.
Instead, this will draw upper-middle class families who are the sort to settle down in Walnut Creek, Berkeley-Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont-Montclair, Mill Valley, Pleasanton, Hillsborough, Foster City, etc. and work and commute within the upper Bay Area. By drawing affluent families out there, housing pressure can be relieved on these other areas.
They have a name for this phenomenon. It's called "White Flight" It doesn't fix the problem. It removes the wealth from the area, causing ripples of collapsing government budgets and deteriorating...
They have a name for this phenomenon. It's called "White Flight"
It doesn't fix the problem. It removes the wealth from the area, causing ripples of collapsing government budgets and deteriorating neighnorhoods as a result.
Can’t win for trying. If you settle down outside the city you’re committing white flight and depriving the city of your property taxes. If you settle down in the city you’re a gentrifier driving...
Can’t win for trying. If you settle down outside the city you’re committing white flight and depriving the city of your property taxes. If you settle down in the city you’re a gentrifier driving up real estate and pricing out the locals.
Does this relieve housing pressure? People tend to want to get all their value back for the houses they're leaving. So they're going to either sell the houses to people of similar socioeconomic...
Does this relieve housing pressure? People tend to want to get all their value back for the houses they're leaving. So they're going to either sell the houses to people of similar socioeconomic standing, rent the houses out, or sit on the property. If the house is sold to someone of similar socioeconomic standing, then nothing has effectively changed except the person who moved gets to live in a nice new place - good for them, but still totally out of reach for most people. If the house is rented out, then we have people in poorer circumstances funneling money to an already extremely advantaged city. If the owners sit on the property then they essentially kill parts of the towns they leave.
I know this is all super negative, and I don't like to be like this - but I'm not really going to be excited about a bunch of billionaire's pet project when it feels like it's going to turn into a Utopia for only the Elite.
It's true that people aim to profit from their home sale. But the market ultimately determines whether or not they do and how much. When there is enough supply (and/or not enough demand), prices...
It's true that people aim to profit from their home sale. But the market ultimately determines whether or not they do and how much. When there is enough supply (and/or not enough demand), prices drop, and some people are willing to lose a little money. San Francisco's market has cooled slightly with WFH and recent tech layoffs, but it's still out of reach for middle and working class folks with a median house price of around, if I recall properly, $1.4 million now. So in these conditions, $8–10m millionaires sell to $6–8m millionaires, $6-8m millionaires will sell to $4–6m millionaires, and so on — instead of the other way around.
But San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley have already become and still are places of the elite and of the very poor. Every other person I meet or come across is an alumnus of an Ivy League or Tier 1 school and working at Google/Meta/Salesforce/Genentech/Airbnb/Apple/Uber/some-other-YC-backed-or-originated-company, and then every other person I meet between them is either commuting from very far away or poor enough to be in some sort of subsidized housingo. This is largely due to the lack of expansion of housing supply in the pat few decades, so the middle market got squeezed out by the upper market, leaving the bottom subsidized market and the abyss beneath that (homelessness).
Yesterday I was walking around the Mission and saw—I kid you not— within maybe 20 or 30 seconds three unrelated people wearing Stanford, Cornell, and Berkeley Haas sweaters pass me one by one.
There is an elite, and the elite is going to live somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if they keep their goals or turn it into a company town. Especially when typical urban problems like homelessness, drugs and petty crime arrive
It will be interesting to see if they keep their goals or turn it into a company town. Especially when typical urban problems like homelessness, drugs and petty crime arrive
California Forever is the parent company of the company buying this town. This isn't some nonprofit or NGO. This is private equity building a company town. The intent may be different than others,...
California Forever is the parent company of the company buying this town.
This isn't some nonprofit or NGO. This is private equity building a company town. The intent may be different than others, but it is what it is.
The usual meaning of "company town" is that the company which owns the town also employs its residents and pays them primarily in credits which they can spend on housing and at company-owned...
The usual meaning of "company town" is that the company which owns the town also employs its residents and pays them primarily in credits which they can spend on housing and at company-owned stores in the town. This doesn't really make sense here because the investors want to make money selling/renting property in the town, not by obtaining labor from the residents.
Although maybe plumbers, tradesmen, whatever could be employed by California Forever to maintain properties in the town.
Haha I'm admittedly a little interested in this, but the choice of poorly AI generated art on their landing page doesn't impress. Other users might not mind that this is driven by a handful of...
Haha I'm admittedly a little interested in this, but the choice of poorly AI generated art on their landing page doesn't impress.
Other users might not mind that this is driven by a handful of people, but I'd rather see this from a grassroots movement.
This seems very profit-driven, and not even a little altruistic, else they would not have needed to purchase the land with only a few wealthy investors.
Edit: although the little windmill at the bottom is a nice touch.
Haha wow I didn't even notice on my first read. When you zoom into the photos, little details are all messed up. For example, the solar panels have irregular lines going everywhere.
Haha wow I didn't even notice on my first read. When you zoom into the photos, little details are all messed up. For example, the solar panels have irregular lines going everywhere.
In the previous post on this topic, I raised the question of water. Here is what their website says about it:
In the previous post on this topic, I raised the question of water. Here is what their website says about it:
What about water?
There is no path to building a new town without securing adequate water supplies. We anticipate that water for an approved project would consist of multiple sources that we have obtained or that will be more fully developed.
We hope to contribute towards water supply and quality enhancements that benefit the entire county, including necessary upgrades to water supplies drawn from the North Bay Aqueduct just north of the project area. The aqueduct currently supplies drinking water for over 500,000 people in Solano and Napa counties but has recently been identified as having “the poorest drinking water quality in the State Water Project” (source). Plans have long been proposed to upgrade the aqueduct and deliver cleaner and more reliable water, but major im provements have not yet been made. We cannot, of course, solve a multi-county drinking water supply problem on our own, but we want to be part of a larger solution to bring clean and reliable water to existing cities as well as our project.
AKA: "We still haven't resolved it, there's not enough water for the people that we hope will live here, it currently sucks, and nothing concrete to fix it has been started."
AKA: "We still haven't resolved it, there's not enough water for the people that we hope will live here, it currently sucks, and nothing concrete to fix it has been started."
Just one example: See how the shadows on this image are very long? Now see how the trees in the middle suddenly don't throw a shadow on the street at all? No human artist would make that choice.
Just one example:
See how the shadows on this image are very long? Now see how the trees in the middle suddenly don't throw a shadow on the street at all?
If I'm not mistaken, this is the previous discussion https://tildes.net/~finance/19rg/the_silicon_valley_elite_who_want_to_build_a_city_from_scratch#comments Very different tone from this...
Yeah. This is a sort of follow up post. I wanted to set a new tone that's less cynical and more optimistic. I feel that around in SF, there can be a lot of thinking that something has to be...
Yeah. This is a sort of follow up post. I wanted to set a new tone that's less cynical and more optimistic. I feel that around in SF, there can be a lot of thinking that something has to be perfect or opposed.
I was at a hackerspace a few days ago and people were talking about coning the driverless cars. I was in some silent minority thinking, c'mon, can't we drop the 'everything sucks, nothing is good enough' attitude and just be happy that we have this new technology?
The cynicism is well earned. I used to be very optimistic about new technology and new ideas. I was a techno-idealist through and through when I was younger, I thought the proliferation of the...
The cynicism is well earned. I used to be very optimistic about new technology and new ideas. I was a techno-idealist through and through when I was younger, I thought the proliferation of the internet and with it, open, interoperable protocols would free humanity and the access to information at an unprecedented level would bring a new golden age. I then watched as every single new technology was systematically acquired and explored by powerful interests in the name of extracting every iota of profit from them without any consideration of safety, user experience, or the broader impact on society.
I saw it with streaming video, 3d graphics, games, VR, artificial intelligence, social media, smart phones, display technologies, computer networking, and every other single thing I’ve ever looked forward to.
It’s really hard to get excited about new technologies anymore when I know for a fact that they’ll just be exploited and ruined by huge companies to extract as much possible wealth from as many people as possible and will ultimately just serve to make everyone’s life worse in ways we haven’t even conceived of yet.
I fully expect this new town will be a pinnacle of luxury for its inhabitants. And a living hell for all the workers that have to commute in because they can't afford the rent because of what...
I fully expect this new town will be a pinnacle of luxury for its inhabitants.
And a living hell for all the workers that have to commute in because they can't afford the rent because of what they're paid by the billionaires who built the place.
It's not gonna be a new utopia, its the same 'luxury villiage propped up with workers from the slums.'
Bingo! The bad artwork itself is a sign of their little "utopia", scanning each image pretty closely and there are exactly two actually identifiable as a person of color in their photos. Just...
Bingo!
The bad artwork itself is a sign of their little "utopia", scanning each image pretty closely and there are exactly two actually identifiable as a person of color in their photos. Just another white luxury town where your skin color decides what time after sundown they expect you to leave.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen and you can believe what you like, but this seems like generic pessimism that doesn’t have much to do with real estate. This isn’t a tech company, so the...
Nobody knows what’s going to happen and you can believe what you like, but this seems like generic pessimism that doesn’t have much to do with real estate. This isn’t a tech company, so the problems are mostly different.
I can think of a whole different set of reasons why the odds are against this project, and they have to do with California politics. It’s hard to build anything. I will be somewhat surprised if they get permission to build and it actually opens.
Call me crazy, but tech billionaires building a top-down tech-centric sounds like a tech company to me. Just not one of the existing ones. I think most of the pessimism boils down to the real...
Call me crazy, but tech billionaires building a top-down tech-centric sounds like a tech company to me. Just not one of the existing ones.
I think most of the pessimism boils down to the real estate problems. Namely the ones that already exist. I'm doubtful even a tiny fraction of this new housing will be deemed 'affordable', which is code for 'where the laborers live.'
Okay, I think you’re crazy :) And you’re in good company. Maybe we’re all a little crazy? Very little has been revealed about this project and the mystery has caused imaginations to run wild. For...
Exemplary
Okay, I think you’re crazy :) And you’re in good company. Maybe we’re all a little crazy?
Very little has been revealed about this project and the mystery has caused imaginations to run wild. For example, before the backers were revealed, there was a lot of speculation that it was the Chinese, and the proximity to Travis Air Force Base was thought to be a national security issue. That’s just where some people’s imaginations go these days. It never made any sense; Chinese spies don’t need to buy huge amounts of real estate to spy.
Now that some of the investors have been revealed, imaginations are running wild again. People think there will be something strange about this project, even if they don’t know what it is. Instead of comparing it to other real estate projects, sometimes we compare it to science fiction scenarios or history that’s long gone.
Nothing “tech-centric” has been revealed about this project. We don’t know that it’s a smart city initiative of any kind. We have no particular reason to believe that it will be a “company town.” It could be totally boring, an ordinary real estate development with nothing strange about it at all. It looks pretty big, sure, but so was Foster City.
We also don’t actually know how big it will be. Maybe the “city” part is just exaggeration? It wouldn’t be the first time a small village is called a city, or bigger plans got scaled back. Maybe calling it a city is just an opening move in a negotiation when they’d be okay building something smaller?
People are talking about it the way they do because that’s where their imaginations go when they try to imagine future scenarios. We imagine stuff and then debate what we imagine as if it were real.
Imagining things is unavoidable because it’s how we think about the future, but maybe if we were more skeptical about our imagined scenarios then conversations would go better? We can entertain different, conflicting scenarios at the same time because they’re not real. Bringing up one imagined scenario doesn’t refute another one. It shows that there are multiple ways things could go, so maybe don’t get too attached to any particular story.
Regarding affordable housing, I don’t know what the outcome will be or what the local government will ask for, but it’s something California communities require of real estate developers all the time. They’d have to be crazy dreamers not to expect a rigorous negotiation that includes asking for things like that.
From the website, my guess is that they’re not crazy dreamers. They expect to negotiate. They didn’t put much effort into the drawings because it’s not an architectural rendering, it’s just an opening move. The real planning work will come after they have a better idea what they will be allowed to do.
The secrecy seems counterproductive because letting people imagine wild things is working against them, though?
No one wants to be the guinea pig, but the idea of driverless cabs is incredibly appealing! I appreciate the dreamers actually trying to make sci-fi tech a reality. Of course the public has a...
No one wants to be the guinea pig, but the idea of driverless cabs is incredibly appealing! I appreciate the dreamers actually trying to make sci-fi tech a reality. Of course the public has a right to know how safe the vehicle are, and the best way to learn about their safety is real-world experience.
Personally I am cautiously hopeful about this proposed development. Private equity has a bad record investing in corporations and extracting destructive levels of funds, but a real estate...
Personally I am cautiously hopeful about this proposed development. Private equity has a bad record investing in corporations and extracting destructive levels of funds, but a real estate investment can be very straightforward and provide win win outcomes.
Private equity getting deeply involved in real estate is one of the big reasons why housing has become so unaffordable, particularly for apartment renters. They also help drive up home prices and...
Private equity getting deeply involved in real estate is one of the big reasons why housing has become so unaffordable, particularly for apartment renters. They also help drive up home prices and force potential owners to become renters, though there are deeper issues with the housing market that contribute as well (restrictive zoning, a large number of potential buyers, a lack of supply, etc.) My guess is the only people this venture will be a "win win" for are the billionaires funding and profiting off it, and anyone fortunate enough to be able to afford to live in their "utopia".
Let me clarify what I meant. Private equity investments almost always have social costs that I oppose. Buying up rental properties is one of those investments that harms people.. One the face of...
Let me clarify what I meant. Private equity investments almost always have social costs that I oppose. Buying up rental properties is one of those investments that harms people..
One the face of it, knowing what we know now, it looks like this proposed city is going to sell homes to buyers on the open market. In my view, that would be fine, even beneficial. If on the other hand the investors retain ownership in the city, that will not be a good thing at all.
In addition to real estate investments, private equity has been buying up medical practices
Not OP, but sometimes the cynicism doesn’t end up being a discussion, just a serious of vaguely-related, low-quality, short-form comments. I can see that being very frustrating when you want to...
Not OP, but sometimes the cynicism doesn’t end up being a discussion, just a serious of vaguely-related, low-quality, short-form comments. I can see that being very frustrating when you want to have an honest conversation about something.
I guess I'm a little less cynical about this project than most folks. On the one hand, I think a healthy amount of cynicism is absolutely warranted -- I don't trust a bunch of billionaire tech...
I guess I'm a little less cynical about this project than most folks.
On the one hand, I think a healthy amount of cynicism is absolutely warranted -- I don't trust a bunch of billionaire tech bros to have a good pulse on the problems facing the common man. But on the other hand, the billionaires and early-adapters appear to be assuming most of the risk. If you aren't sure whether the development will pan-out, just wait a dozen or so years and see. I mean, the absolute worse case scenario would be that they create a cyberpunk-esque hellcity and inspire other billionaires to do the same, but probably the more realistic worse case scenario would be that the project fails and the starry-eyed non-billionaire residents are left with substantially value-deprecated properties.
But it's also possible that the project succeeds! Imagine a city designed with people instead of cars in mind. Isn't that what we all want: a walkable city in America? In the absolute best case scenario, you could have something like Academy City (why is this the reference that springs to my mind), where tech companies have a playground to test their products first. I think this would actually be appealing to some folk. Obviously others wouldn't appreciate playing guinea pig, but then I would advise you not to move there.
At any rate, the city planners's worse impulses will tempered by the fact that they're building in California, which is among the most liberal states in the country.
Risk? Please. If there is one thing that's a 0-risk investment its large swaths of arable land. By people whom could afford to lose every penny on it and still have billions. They could literally...
Risk? Please. If there is one thing that's a 0-risk investment its large swaths of arable land. By people whom could afford to lose every penny on it and still have billions. They could literally give away every bit of the completed city and go on with their lives with 0 impact to their living conditions.
Risk is if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you quit your job to start a food truck. Or put a second mortgage on your only home to fund a startup. Risk is not "I could go from a 5 billionaire to a 1 billionaire."
Scope matters. Billionaires are virtually incapable of taking genuine risks.
After I wrote my comment, I thought that I should have added this parenthetical (emphasis added to hypothetical parenthetical) but I decided it wasn't necessary because I had also written...
After I wrote my comment, I thought that I should have added this parenthetical (emphasis added to hypothetical parenthetical)
But on the other hand, the billionaires and early-adapters appear to be assuming most of the risk (well, at least insofar that billionaires can assume risk).
but I decided it wasn't necessary because I had also written (emphasis added)
the more realistic worse case scenario would be that the project fails and the starry-eyed non-billionaire residents are left with substantially value-deprecated properties.
So sure, I agree with you. If the project fails, the billionaires won't be the victims.
An AP article instead of the marketing website main link and the fluff piece by SF Standard: Billionaires want to build a new city in rural California. They must convince voters first
An AP article instead of the marketing website main link and the fluff piece by SF Standard:
I'll admit my knee jerk reaction to this project has been less than positive. At this point I just assume people are going to ignore well tested solutions and find some over hyped tech solution...
I'll admit my knee jerk reaction to this project has been less than positive. At this point I just assume people are going to ignore well tested solutions and find some over hyped tech solution that'll evaporate (hyperloop in a nutshell).
While this certainly does just read like low effort marketing, the few details/overviews it does provide are at least grounded so far. If this could be the "look at what we could be doing" project for the state/country it might finally kick off the massive infrastructure upgrades this place so desperately needs. I still feel that in many cases the large urban centers are going to be lost causes, but if we can at least make new hubs better going forward it'd be a large step in the right direction.
I don’t know if it’s just human instinct or some sort of side effect of social media and clickbait headlines, but it seems utterly impossible to drum up support for good, well tested ideas that...
I don’t know if it’s just human instinct or some sort of side effect of social media and clickbait headlines, but it seems utterly impossible to drum up support for good, well tested ideas that have been around for a while.
Mixed use, high density neighborhoods with trams or busses for short distance local public transit and metros/subways for medium distance local public transit just aren’t sexy for most people, despite hundreds of examples proving that they’re the absolute best way to deliver a high standard of living to the most people possible.
There has to be a hyperloop or self driving cars or have some weird strange inefficient layout or some idiotic energy storage system for people to have any interest in it.
Maybe it’s a symptom of an economy where large projects require a ton of private investment, thus, the promise of large returns, thus, massive viral publicity or something. Maybe it’s a symptom of tech companies that produce stupid phone apps being some of the most profitable companies in the world, but it’s ultimately very harmful.
Infrastructure isn’t sexy. It shouldn’t be sexy. It should be well tested, data driven, and boring. I’m tired of the latest dumb Elon musk idea being given serious consideration over things we’ve implemented for 200 years and know work very well. Not everything has to be, or should be run like the latest stupid app startup. It’s one of the worst models for how to run almost any kind of project.
So 52,000 acres. A bit more than half the size of Delaware County, PA. How many homes do they intend to build? They'd have to do about 250k to approach the level of walkability that the denser...
So 52,000 acres. A bit more than half the size of Delaware County, PA. How many homes do they intend to build?
They'd have to do about 250k to approach the level of walkability that the denser parts of Delco have.
Interestingly enough, there is historical precedent for settlement by private industry. I’m sure there would be more examples, but the Adelaide colony in SA was designed and settled by the South...
Interestingly enough, there is historical precedent for settlement by private industry. I’m sure there would be more examples, but the Adelaide colony in SA was designed and settled by the South Australia Company, as a financial endeavour.
Title is borrowed from the SF Standard article that reported this.
I've been keeping my ears open and a finger on the pulse around here. Interestingly, I hear a lot of criticism from both the left and the right. Folks on the left hate that it's spearheaded and being master-planned by billionaires and their architects. Folks on the right hate that its urban model is so European, with a focus on dense mixed-use zones, walkability + bikability, and public green spaces over private yards.
Personally, I'm quite in favor in this project. California is very automobile-centric, and while San Francisco is reputedly the most bike and pedestrian-friendly city in the state (and perhaps in the country), I find that it's mediocre when compared to likes of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Tokyo. I think that this development would be an easily accessible demonstration model to Californians: people who can't go to Europe can finally visit and experience an Amsterdam or Copenhagen-tier urban model here. And perhaps that would stir the hearts and minds of Californians to demand a European way of life.
For people who criticize the fact that it's billionaire-led: well, for basically all of urban history, audacious urban innovation has been spearheaded by the wealthy and powerful, because they have the resources and political power to organize such endeavors with coherent vision. From Foster City here in the Bay Area to Daniel Burnham and the World's Columbian Exposition that radically reconfigured Chicago to Haussman's renovation of Paris (with a mandate from Napoleon III).
It's time for someone or some group to break the Bay Area's housing status quo and try something new. Conservative-lite folks in the South Bay are trying to protect their low-density, suburban way of life. In the city, the NIMBY coalition—activists and homeowners—has blocked the city from evolving. Amsterdam is a medieval city, yet even it feels far more modern than many swaths of SF that feel stuck in before-Y2K! In 2023, SF is full of old, decaying housing that is both scarce and expensive, with pockets of affordable but scarce housing available by lottery and pockets of uber-expensive luxury housing built by developers who can survive the long, arduous, expensive permitting process.
edited to include a link to nimby.report of self-described democratic socialist supervisor Dean Preston who, as a champion of the working person, is personally responsible for having deprived at least 8,500 people/households of homes.
Personally, as someone who's lived in a variety of settings ranging from semi-rural Appalachia to the middle of Tokyo and is currently living in a suburb, I'm in total support of denser people-centric cities modeled after cities in Europe and East Asia so long as the cost to live in them is reasonable. I might even sell my house to live in such a place.
Cars bring almost as many downsides as they do upsides and I don't really want to keep one around unless I absolutely have to… it's so much nicer for the majority of daily needs to be within walking distance with the rest being a relatively short train ride away.
Cars can be great, sure. But it depends on where you are and who you are.
In cities, they are not great. Cars use an enormous amount of space: roads, parking and the vehicles themselves. Plus they are noisy, dangerous and they pollute. All this is even the case in cities like Amsterdam!
In rural areas this is very different, mainly because there is so much space (both to travel and for having space for your car).
Finally, cars are great for car users/owners, but they are annoying for everyone else because of the reasons listed above.
Partly this is a consequence of American rural areas having sort of an individualist "homesteader" layout where everyone has a big lot of land and plonks their house in the middle of it to guard it all.
In older societies rural areas tended to have most people living in villages in fairly clustered settlements and then they commuted out to their fields to work. Protecting the fields was a communal activity as different people in the village would have title to random plots of land adjoining each other. And even as they transitioned into modern forms of property management and ownership, this built pattern still sometimes persists where you'll see a village center where most of the people live and then farmhouses for the handful of families that own sprawling plots of land. But there isn't this idea that one needs a car to be a functioning member of society there.
IMO, such villages tend to be more picturesque as well in a Ghibli sort of way.
It’s interesting how permeating the origin story of America has been to our culture. Religious extremists pushed out of Europe found spots far away from everyone else. They enjoyed their distance because it let them do whatever they wanted. This is how many rural Americans live and think today. They hate how urbanite politicians can legislate their behavior - they live out there specifically to avoid certain rules.
The Puritans were just one of the settler groups. The Jamestown settlers were mercenary fortune seekers, the Georgians were debt convicts. Appalachia was settled by Scotch-Irish indentured servants and people shanghaied into working in coal mines. The “rugged individualism” narrative was as much nation building mythmaking during the era as westward expansion as anything else.
I think it’s more complicated than I made it seem and I appreciate you adding depth. But the attitude I described is very common in rural America.
I’ve been watching Peter Santenello’s YouTube series on Appalachia. He did a live stream this morning and mentioned the Scottish heritage. He also mentioned that many of the people in Appalachia are there specifically to get away from the law and that they hold the attitude of “leave me be”.
I kind of like it, to be honest. The thing about high density neighborhoods is that because the buildings are expensive they are already owned by very rich people, so I'm not terribly upset about who's funding this. Of all the things billionaires could be investing in, this is one of the better ones since it's also an investment in people.
I'm still a bit skeptical about how well it will turn out, and that concept art is honestly a bit of a turn-off. That kind of design for the buildings are so common and boring and blegh to me, and I really want to see much more dense construction than those pictures imply. And then I saw that Solano county makes up Vallejo to near Sacramento, so I'm wondering how much of it will be actually affordable by regular folks.
I like the idea of the city, but my personal cynicism stems from a general distrust of most capitalist-led ventures. I'm suspect that this will be a 'by billionaires, for billionaires' kind of project. The fact that urban projects have been spearheaded in the past doesn't fill me with hope, because i feel like the entire zeitgeist is different in this area and this time. I would love to be wrong, though.
Realistically this will be 'by billionaires, for single-digit millionaires'. Its geographic location—far from the interesting cultural life of San Francisco—makes it unappealing to young 20-somethings who don't have money anyway.
Instead, this will draw upper-middle class families who are the sort to settle down in Walnut Creek, Berkeley-Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont-Montclair, Mill Valley, Pleasanton, Hillsborough, Foster City, etc. and work and commute within the upper Bay Area. By drawing affluent families out there, housing pressure can be relieved on these other areas.
They have a name for this phenomenon. It's called "White Flight"
It doesn't fix the problem. It removes the wealth from the area, causing ripples of collapsing government budgets and deteriorating neighnorhoods as a result.
Can’t win for trying. If you settle down outside the city you’re committing white flight and depriving the city of your property taxes. If you settle down in the city you’re a gentrifier driving up real estate and pricing out the locals.
Intent matters I suppose.
Does this relieve housing pressure? People tend to want to get all their value back for the houses they're leaving. So they're going to either sell the houses to people of similar socioeconomic standing, rent the houses out, or sit on the property. If the house is sold to someone of similar socioeconomic standing, then nothing has effectively changed except the person who moved gets to live in a nice new place - good for them, but still totally out of reach for most people. If the house is rented out, then we have people in poorer circumstances funneling money to an already extremely advantaged city. If the owners sit on the property then they essentially kill parts of the towns they leave.
I know this is all super negative, and I don't like to be like this - but I'm not really going to be excited about a bunch of billionaire's pet project when it feels like it's going to turn into a Utopia for only the Elite.
It's true that people aim to profit from their home sale. But the market ultimately determines whether or not they do and how much. When there is enough supply (and/or not enough demand), prices drop, and some people are willing to lose a little money. San Francisco's market has cooled slightly with WFH and recent tech layoffs, but it's still out of reach for middle and working class folks with a median house price of around, if I recall properly, $1.4 million now. So in these conditions, $8–10m millionaires sell to $6–8m millionaires, $6-8m millionaires will sell to $4–6m millionaires, and so on — instead of the other way around.
But San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley have already become and still are places of the elite and of the very poor. Every other person I meet or come across is an alumnus of an Ivy League or Tier 1 school and working at Google/Meta/Salesforce/Genentech/Airbnb/Apple/Uber/some-other-YC-backed-or-originated-company, and then every other person I meet between them is either commuting from very far away or poor enough to be in some sort of subsidized housingo. This is largely due to the lack of expansion of housing supply in the pat few decades, so the middle market got squeezed out by the upper market, leaving the bottom subsidized market and the abyss beneath that (homelessness).
Yesterday I was walking around the Mission and saw—I kid you not— within maybe 20 or 30 seconds three unrelated people wearing Stanford, Cornell, and Berkeley Haas sweaters pass me one by one.
There is an elite, and the elite is going to live somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if they keep their goals or turn it into a company town. Especially when typical urban problems like homelessness, drugs and petty crime arrive
California Forever is the parent company of the company buying this town.
This isn't some nonprofit or NGO. This is private equity building a company town. The intent may be different than others, but it is what it is.
The usual meaning of "company town" is that the company which owns the town also employs its residents and pays them primarily in credits which they can spend on housing and at company-owned stores in the town. This doesn't really make sense here because the investors want to make money selling/renting property in the town, not by obtaining labor from the residents.
Although maybe plumbers, tradesmen, whatever could be employed by California Forever to maintain properties in the town.
Haha I'm admittedly a little interested in this, but the choice of poorly AI generated art on their landing page doesn't impress.
Other users might not mind that this is driven by a handful of people, but I'd rather see this from a grassroots movement.
This seems very profit-driven, and not even a little altruistic, else they would not have needed to purchase the land with only a few wealthy investors.
Edit: although the little windmill at the bottom is a nice touch.
The sun setting into the water while contorted solar panel construction workers look on, must have been quite the prompt.
Art deco John Steinbeck cover art with solar panel installation technicians.
Haha wow I didn't even notice on my first read. When you zoom into the photos, little details are all messed up. For example, the solar panels have irregular lines going everywhere.
In the previous post on this topic, I raised the question of water. Here is what their website says about it:
AKA: "We still haven't resolved it, there's not enough water for the people that we hope will live here, it currently sucks, and nothing concrete to fix it has been started."
Just one example:
See how the shadows on this image are very long? Now see how the trees in the middle suddenly don't throw a shadow on the street at all?
No human artist would make that choice.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the previous discussion https://tildes.net/~finance/19rg/the_silicon_valley_elite_who_want_to_build_a_city_from_scratch#comments
Very different tone from this conversation.
Yeah. This is a sort of follow up post. I wanted to set a new tone that's less cynical and more optimistic. I feel that around in SF, there can be a lot of thinking that something has to be perfect or opposed.
I was at a hackerspace a few days ago and people were talking about coning the driverless cars. I was in some silent minority thinking, c'mon, can't we drop the 'everything sucks, nothing is good enough' attitude and just be happy that we have this new technology?
The cynicism is well earned. I used to be very optimistic about new technology and new ideas. I was a techno-idealist through and through when I was younger, I thought the proliferation of the internet and with it, open, interoperable protocols would free humanity and the access to information at an unprecedented level would bring a new golden age. I then watched as every single new technology was systematically acquired and explored by powerful interests in the name of extracting every iota of profit from them without any consideration of safety, user experience, or the broader impact on society.
I saw it with streaming video, 3d graphics, games, VR, artificial intelligence, social media, smart phones, display technologies, computer networking, and every other single thing I’ve ever looked forward to.
It’s really hard to get excited about new technologies anymore when I know for a fact that they’ll just be exploited and ruined by huge companies to extract as much possible wealth from as many people as possible and will ultimately just serve to make everyone’s life worse in ways we haven’t even conceived of yet.
I fully expect this new town will be a pinnacle of luxury for its inhabitants.
And a living hell for all the workers that have to commute in because they can't afford the rent because of what they're paid by the billionaires who built the place.
It's not gonna be a new utopia, its the same 'luxury villiage propped up with workers from the slums.'
Bingo!
The bad artwork itself is a sign of their little "utopia", scanning each image pretty closely and there are exactly two actually identifiable as a person of color in their photos. Just another white luxury town where your skin color decides what time after sundown they expect you to leave.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen and you can believe what you like, but this seems like generic pessimism that doesn’t have much to do with real estate. This isn’t a tech company, so the problems are mostly different.
I can think of a whole different set of reasons why the odds are against this project, and they have to do with California politics. It’s hard to build anything. I will be somewhat surprised if they get permission to build and it actually opens.
Call me crazy, but tech billionaires building a top-down tech-centric sounds like a tech company to me. Just not one of the existing ones.
I think most of the pessimism boils down to the real estate problems. Namely the ones that already exist. I'm doubtful even a tiny fraction of this new housing will be deemed 'affordable', which is code for 'where the laborers live.'
Okay, I think you’re crazy :) And you’re in good company. Maybe we’re all a little crazy?
Very little has been revealed about this project and the mystery has caused imaginations to run wild. For example, before the backers were revealed, there was a lot of speculation that it was the Chinese, and the proximity to Travis Air Force Base was thought to be a national security issue. That’s just where some people’s imaginations go these days. It never made any sense; Chinese spies don’t need to buy huge amounts of real estate to spy.
Now that some of the investors have been revealed, imaginations are running wild again. People think there will be something strange about this project, even if they don’t know what it is. Instead of comparing it to other real estate projects, sometimes we compare it to science fiction scenarios or history that’s long gone.
Nothing “tech-centric” has been revealed about this project. We don’t know that it’s a smart city initiative of any kind. We have no particular reason to believe that it will be a “company town.” It could be totally boring, an ordinary real estate development with nothing strange about it at all. It looks pretty big, sure, but so was Foster City.
We also don’t actually know how big it will be. Maybe the “city” part is just exaggeration? It wouldn’t be the first time a small village is called a city, or bigger plans got scaled back. Maybe calling it a city is just an opening move in a negotiation when they’d be okay building something smaller?
People are talking about it the way they do because that’s where their imaginations go when they try to imagine future scenarios. We imagine stuff and then debate what we imagine as if it were real.
Imagining things is unavoidable because it’s how we think about the future, but maybe if we were more skeptical about our imagined scenarios then conversations would go better? We can entertain different, conflicting scenarios at the same time because they’re not real. Bringing up one imagined scenario doesn’t refute another one. It shows that there are multiple ways things could go, so maybe don’t get too attached to any particular story.
Regarding affordable housing, I don’t know what the outcome will be or what the local government will ask for, but it’s something California communities require of real estate developers all the time. They’d have to be crazy dreamers not to expect a rigorous negotiation that includes asking for things like that.
From the website, my guess is that they’re not crazy dreamers. They expect to negotiate. They didn’t put much effort into the drawings because it’s not an architectural rendering, it’s just an opening move. The real planning work will come after they have a better idea what they will be allowed to do.
The secrecy seems counterproductive because letting people imagine wild things is working against them, though?
I don't live there, but I could imagine I would be upset if giant tech companies kept using my neighborhood as a testing ground.
No one wants to be the guinea pig, but the idea of driverless cabs is incredibly appealing! I appreciate the dreamers actually trying to make sci-fi tech a reality. Of course the public has a right to know how safe the vehicle are, and the best way to learn about their safety is real-world experience.
Personally I am cautiously hopeful about this proposed development. Private equity has a bad record investing in corporations and extracting destructive levels of funds, but a real estate investment can be very straightforward and provide win win outcomes.
Thanks for trying.
Private equity getting deeply involved in real estate is one of the big reasons why housing has become so unaffordable, particularly for apartment renters. They also help drive up home prices and force potential owners to become renters, though there are deeper issues with the housing market that contribute as well (restrictive zoning, a large number of potential buyers, a lack of supply, etc.) My guess is the only people this venture will be a "win win" for are the billionaires funding and profiting off it, and anyone fortunate enough to be able to afford to live in their "utopia".
Let me clarify what I meant. Private equity investments almost always have social costs that I oppose. Buying up rental properties is one of those investments that harms people..
One the face of it, knowing what we know now, it looks like this proposed city is going to sell homes to buyers on the open market. In my view, that would be fine, even beneficial. If on the other hand the investors retain ownership in the city, that will not be a good thing at all.
In addition to real estate investments, private equity has been buying up medical practices
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/er-doctor-private-equity-in-medicine-is-dangerous-to-patients
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/more-orthopedic-physicians-sell-out-to-private-equity-firms-raising-alarms-about-costs-and-quality/
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/funeral-homes-private-equity-death-care/
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/private-equity-ophthalmology-eye-care-high-profit-procedures/
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/noble-health-private-equity-rural-hospitals-missouri-employees-medical-bills/
Not OP, but sometimes the cynicism doesn’t end up being a discussion, just a serious of vaguely-related, low-quality, short-form comments. I can see that being very frustrating when you want to have an honest conversation about something.
I guess I'm a little less cynical about this project than most folks.
On the one hand, I think a healthy amount of cynicism is absolutely warranted -- I don't trust a bunch of billionaire tech bros to have a good pulse on the problems facing the common man. But on the other hand, the billionaires and early-adapters appear to be assuming most of the risk. If you aren't sure whether the development will pan-out, just wait a dozen or so years and see. I mean, the absolute worse case scenario would be that they create a cyberpunk-esque hellcity and inspire other billionaires to do the same, but probably the more realistic worse case scenario would be that the project fails and the starry-eyed non-billionaire residents are left with substantially value-deprecated properties.
But it's also possible that the project succeeds! Imagine a city designed with people instead of cars in mind. Isn't that what we all want: a walkable city in America? In the absolute best case scenario, you could have something like Academy City (why is this the reference that springs to my mind), where tech companies have a playground to test their products first. I think this would actually be appealing to some folk. Obviously others wouldn't appreciate playing guinea pig, but then I would advise you not to move there.
At any rate, the city planners's worse impulses will tempered by the fact that they're building in California, which is among the most liberal states in the country.
Risk? Please. If there is one thing that's a 0-risk investment its large swaths of arable land. By people whom could afford to lose every penny on it and still have billions. They could literally give away every bit of the completed city and go on with their lives with 0 impact to their living conditions.
Risk is if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you quit your job to start a food truck. Or put a second mortgage on your only home to fund a startup. Risk is not "I could go from a 5 billionaire to a 1 billionaire."
Scope matters. Billionaires are virtually incapable of taking genuine risks.
After I wrote my comment, I thought that I should have added this parenthetical (emphasis added to hypothetical parenthetical)
but I decided it wasn't necessary because I had also written (emphasis added)
So sure, I agree with you. If the project fails, the billionaires won't be the victims.
An AP article instead of the marketing website main link and the fluff piece by SF Standard:
Billionaires want to build a new city in rural California. They must convince voters first
I'll admit my knee jerk reaction to this project has been less than positive. At this point I just assume people are going to ignore well tested solutions and find some over hyped tech solution that'll evaporate (hyperloop in a nutshell).
While this certainly does just read like low effort marketing, the few details/overviews it does provide are at least grounded so far. If this could be the "look at what we could be doing" project for the state/country it might finally kick off the massive infrastructure upgrades this place so desperately needs. I still feel that in many cases the large urban centers are going to be lost causes, but if we can at least make new hubs better going forward it'd be a large step in the right direction.
I don’t know if it’s just human instinct or some sort of side effect of social media and clickbait headlines, but it seems utterly impossible to drum up support for good, well tested ideas that have been around for a while.
Mixed use, high density neighborhoods with trams or busses for short distance local public transit and metros/subways for medium distance local public transit just aren’t sexy for most people, despite hundreds of examples proving that they’re the absolute best way to deliver a high standard of living to the most people possible.
There has to be a hyperloop or self driving cars or have some weird strange inefficient layout or some idiotic energy storage system for people to have any interest in it.
Maybe it’s a symptom of an economy where large projects require a ton of private investment, thus, the promise of large returns, thus, massive viral publicity or something. Maybe it’s a symptom of tech companies that produce stupid phone apps being some of the most profitable companies in the world, but it’s ultimately very harmful.
Infrastructure isn’t sexy. It shouldn’t be sexy. It should be well tested, data driven, and boring. I’m tired of the latest dumb Elon musk idea being given serious consideration over things we’ve implemented for 200 years and know work very well. Not everything has to be, or should be run like the latest stupid app startup. It’s one of the worst models for how to run almost any kind of project.
An SFGate article, focused on the secrecy
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/solano-land-buyer-defends-secrecy-18343179.php
So 52,000 acres. A bit more than half the size of Delaware County, PA. How many homes do they intend to build?
They'd have to do about 250k to approach the level of walkability that the denser parts of Delco have.
Practically, while that would put a bit of a dent in California's housing crisis, 250k homes is less than 10% of what the state needs.
Interestingly enough, there is historical precedent for settlement by private industry. I’m sure there would be more examples, but the Adelaide colony in SA was designed and settled by the South Australia Company, as a financial endeavour.
As a life-long Californian, I really wish they would do this literally anywhere else. Please I hope they go away.