Silicon Valley Billionaires Scrap Plan for Utopia City Ballot Initiative after Damning Report
It turns out that Utopia is expensive.
There definitely seems to be a sea-change in the air, related to the direction of this country . . . including California.
Take, for instance, California Forever, the Silicon Valley tech billionaire-backed plan to build a new city outside San Francisco. It went so far as to become a ballot initiative.
The plan is supported by Bay Area tech investors and venture capitalists, including the co-founders of LinkedIn and Netscape, seeking to transform the wheat fields 50 miles north of San Francisco into a futuristic city.
Organizers hoped to use the ballot measure process to win approval in Solano County more quickly, bypassing much of the red tape and planning requirements typically involved in such projects.
The dream is part of a globalist ideal that appears to be packaged along the lines of a “15-Minute City” and promises to be convenient, environmentally friendly, and an ideal community focused on social cohesion.
However, residents and regional leaders have concerns about he potential loss of agricultural land and nature areas, questions about water supply, and worries over changes to the region’s rural character. The ballot measure has now been pulled after the release of damning report on the realities of this utopia.
The [Solano County] report, issued July 18, said infrastructure such as roads for the project and public facilities like schools and parks, plus related expenses, would cost an estimated $6.4 billion for the first phase of development and nearly $50 billion to complete the new city.
The report said costs to the county and the local fire-protection district would outstrip revenues, leading to millions of dollars in deficits every year. The now-withdrawn California initiative gave no clear indication of where the money would come from.
Construction, according to the report, would lead to years of “lower traveling speeds, decreased roadway safety, and increased incidence of significant injury and fatal accidents.” Loss of farmland would cut agricultural production by an estimated $6.7 million annually, the report said. It is unclear where California Forever would get needed surface water for the new city, the report said.
Who knew California politicians could be fiscally responsible! This is a stunning development.
However, the project has not been entirely scrapped. The “California Forever” team are targeting 2026 to offer a new ballot measure, after the environmental impact has been assessed.
The delay announced on Monday was part of a joint agreement between California Forever and Mitch Mashburn, a member of the Solano County board of Supervisors. In a statement, Mr. Mashburn said that “while the need for more affordable housing and good-paying jobs has merit, the timing has been unrealistic.”
The agreement means that a ballot initiative, which the company had hoped to put before Solano County voters this year, will not appear on the November ballot as planned. California Forever said it would instead spend the rest of this year and next preparing an environmental impact report and trying to craft a development agreement with the county.
The project would still have to go before voters to win final approval.
The county will also expect “California Forever” to jump through a few reality-based hoops.
Mashburn said California Forever must confirm to county officials how it would provide water and solve transportation challenges.
“And show us the financial engineering that makes it possible to pay for billions of dollars of infrastructure,” Mashburn said, “without increasing our taxes and while delivering a net tax surplus to our county.”
It turns out that Utopia is expensive.
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Comments
Bad news for the 15-Minute Cities advocates: people live where they do for reasons you’re unwilling to listen to or understand.
Your utopia won’t materialize without a huge citywide HOA that will make Karen Hitler’s HOA look like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
And they ignored the reasons people are leaving cities. literal shit holes, crime, overrun by barely human trash.
Suisun is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Suisun marshes interspersed with hayfields, a few suburban tracts, delta meanderings and I-80 slicing the northern bit. It only feels “rural” to high rise urban district dwellers.
It’s not really known as a wheat growing region. That’s a bit of a stretch. A friend belonged to a gun club there – just a euphemism for a place to shoot farm raised pheasant in a “rural” setting.
Pretty much sited on the fringe of the Bay Area and Sacramento proper. Windy as heck. Miserably windy. Per utopia; kids flying a kite there would be like trying to land a Blue Marlin on kite string.
Someone out there should start a ballot initiative stating that the backers of the cali initiative are solely responsible for all costs of said utopia without any access to taxpayer dollars.
Then they should also start another initiative that any building projects cannot bypass state, local and federal planning requirements.
Sounds like it would turn out to be a modern day Stepford.
Not sure why this news was framed as a hit piece. Location is halfway between SF and Sac. Miles of wide open space out there, and region is in housing crisis with shortage of housing. If they can’t build homes there, they can’t build anywhere. There are some people who would still prefer to own their own homes, and not be stacked and packed in dense apartments.
“There are some people who would still prefer to own their own homes, and not be stacked and packed in dense apartments.”
“15-minute city” means exactly that, dense apartments. People who own their own single-family homes on a plot of land start voting Republican and we just can’t have that.
“It turns out that Utopia is expensive.”
They were planning to use the brazillions of dollars left over from NOT paying the blacks the reparations the state “owed them.”
Pave Paradise, baby!
This sort of thing has been tried before. It never works. See: Arcosanti, EPCOT, others.
but it will be different this time … watch and see …. we care more deeply
Imagine: They currently live in or around San Fransisco CA—one the most desirable, most beautiful, cities in history. A “world class” city for over a hundred years.
Architecture
Scenery
Schools
Roads
Theatre
Restaurants
Employment
Diverse economy
Access to the world
Some of The Best And Brightest minds
Infrastructure
Mass transportation
And now, in just a few years, look what they’ve done to it.
And instead of just fixing it, the MegaWealthy are trying to spend yuge amounts in order to, essentially, barricade themselves away from it all.
It’s almost unbelievable.
“Remarkable stuff” – Chris Plante
Is it just coincidental that Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris presided over much of this almost-unprecedented calamity?
that has so adversely affected so many millions of Americans?
And now, today, who is lecturing us how to run our affairs? Nancy Pelosi. And Kamala Harris. Imagine the stones that that takes.!
And then to lecture other countries — eg Israel — how it ought to run its affairs?!?
“15-minute cities” are actually a really nice idea. It’s the idea of living in a small village, upscaled. Walk to the grocery store and the bank, take the bus to the other side of town to pick up the birthday cake. It’s Mayberry or Mayfield* or Anytown USA.
But, sometimes upscaling doesn’t work. And it won’t work making a NYC-sized Mayberry. It’s like the idea of a giant space paramecium – things just don’t work that way. They’d be better off creating lots of small communities that were interconnected (at some distance) – but that wouldn’t satisfy the need to control all those people. If they were too dispersed they might decide to do something … untoward.
(* Mayfield is Beaver Cleaver’s town.)
What does social cohesion mean? Groupthink? Personally. I would like to live in Candyland and whatever required candy lifestyle type thinking would be okay with me, but this whole tech utopia sounds blech and forced.
What does social cohesion mean? Groupthink? Personally. I would like to live in Candyland and whatever required candy lifestyle type thinking would be okay with me, but this whole tech utopia sounds blech and forced.
I’m not opposed to them making their own little high density utopia, but I wonder why they need open farmland to make it happen? I’ve got friends in Cali that tell me the old manufacturing and warehousing districts are turning into ghost towns. Why not re-invent or gentrify rundown and abandoned areas instead?
(Yes, I do know the answer, but no one ever seems to challenge developers to refurbish old property because paving over farmland is cheaper.)
People don’t understand cities.
Cities are not planned, they grow.
They grow as needed and die when they are not needed anymore and new cities replace them.
Their lifespan is dependent on the reason people settled there in the first place.
Port cities last as long as the port is needed and functional.
Crossroads cities exist as long as people still need a stopping place at that point
Resource cities exist as long as the resource holds out
Waystation cities survive when people want to go ‘beyond’ –because each was once a ‘furthest’ city.
You can’t just build a city. Ask China.