After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy.
They could just pay their fucking taxes so we can have trains
But think of all the jobs they’ll “create”!
(/s so hard)
Lol again with this? Wealthy fucks have been trying this since the 1700s. It never works.
Told you it’s rich doom preppers who will build a literal walled garden.
Yep, it’s a return to feudalism and vassalage. A fortress for themselves and their servants (billionaires don’t do their own cooking and cleaning, they are important people afterall).
They know they need reasons for people to pledge fealty and they think public transport, apartments and clean energy is enough of a drawcard for their workers. The sad part is that they have eroded workers rights so far that they may well be right. Many other places in the world, these perks are much more normal.
I don’t think Marc Andreessen or Laurene Powell Jobs are planning on living next to Travis Air Force Base themselves.
There has to be more to this story…
If the distinguishing features are public transportation and clean energy, they’re probably not building it to live in themselves. And while there’s a big demand for more housing in the Bay Area generally, Solono County is a bit of a commute for current workers.
It feels like they’re building this as a company town for some yet-to-be-announced new business project that they want to be isolated from existing urban areas.
(edit) I guess I don’t mean “urban areas” so much as areas where employees would have contact with other Silicon Valley firms and culture.
Agreed, regardless of what this is there’s a 100% chance that it’s a profit scheme and has nothing to do with building anything practical for anyone
Solano isn’t any further than any other place in the bay. Generally speaking. I work in SF and live in Vallejo. Almost all of my coworkers commute just as far.
That’s really not a decent excuse for making a 2+ hour commute. The insanity of the number of people living in places like Vallejo just to commute to San Francisco is staggering to me. Remote work for anyone that can do it should be the norm. The traffic in the Bay Area is back to being just downright awful. When most people were staying home it was actually nice to drive around to different places.
US cities could be easily compressed to be third their size with people having access to green areas, walkable neighborhoods and basic convenience by the door but having 5 square meters of grass in front of their porch and F-350 parked outside is just too important for them.
They misspelt distopian.
Why improve current cities where people want to live when you can build the cyberpunk future distopian citry right here in your desert backyard.
Encircles an air force base. Why would anyone want to live encircling an air force base?
I bet they’ll act like people who move next to a farm and complain about the smell.
“Hiiii, we’re your neighbors down the road. Do you think you could not fly your little airplanes around? They’re awfully loud. Thanks bunches!”
Night city didn’t work out so great in Cyberpunk 2077
Just a bunch of rich fucks trying to con other rich fucks and hope to leave whoever is holding their junk bonds in the lurch.
Might as well call it Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.
Utopian city for themselves and the select few
Why do I have the feeling this is going to turn into some sort of cyberpunk distopia quickly?
Night City here we come, choom!
It’s already in california.
I’m getting real California City vibes.
So working public transportation = utopia ?
How can one country be so disconnected from reality?Propaganda
Maybe it’s a utopia that also has clean energy and public transportation.
Either way, I don’t trust the agenda. If they’re legitimately trying to help, something good might come of it, but it won’t be a utopia as humans will human.
Hopefully some valuable lessons will be learned without too much suffering.
It’s like advertising running water. Utopias are supposed to be IDEAL cities. We’re talking no hunger, no disease, etc. Not just a few bus stations, something present in any major city.
Not enough bus stations in every city. I’m like 5 miles in Florida heat away from the nearest bus station. I am only 2 miles from the nearest grocery store, so I’m not exactly rural. Public transit here is a joke.
Florida is one of those places hostile to anything that helps citizens using tax money.
After all, that’s socialism, which is evil. /s
It also has one of the most regressive tax systems in the country.
Philadelphia has an okay transit system, though it is neglected, as does NYC.
That was the gist yes, only americans think this is an acceptable situation.
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What a waste of good farmland! I can’t believe that people do not value the thing that actually sustains us.
Genius. This area is a barren shit hole and a lot of it will be under water within 10 years.
