As a native Californian entering my 61st year living here, my experience is completely different. The urban areas here are no worse than those found in other parts of the country and the rest (like the central coast where I live) is far from generally uninhabitable.
Here is my hellscape, BTW:
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The actual requirement (from the web page) is that they need 15k jobs to grow beyond 50k people. The 400k is presumably an upper bound, which shouldn’t really be compared to the 15k lower bound.
It’s obviously not, other than perhaps scale. All the “utopian” shit was pretty clearly propaganda from the opposition. Not exactly a surprise why they were secretive about it. As soon as any project like this becomes known, other forces become aligned against it.
Not that land developers deserve much respect… but I’ll put California farmers ahead of them on my loathe-o-meter.
Agree. Enough rare and highly productive farmland has already been paved over (see Santa Clara Valley - formerly “Valley of the Heart’s Delight”). Let’s see if the billionaire backers of this project take up residence there - they ought to be among the first to plop-down money for housing in this utopia.
I agree the urban areas are no worse than elsewhere. I have a horrible empathy with living things that aren’t human, that is my problem.
As to water and only as to water, I would not be surprised to find the city they build uses less water than the water-subsidized agriculture that’s using that same land right now.
I don’t see why they would. They might say otherwise, but it’s basically a bedroom community for the Bay Area. Which isn’t remotely a bad thing–housing costs are absurd for anyone not making tech dollars (and even people who are). We aren’t getting more housing in the Bay Area itself, both for good and bad reasons, which means pushing out elsewhere (both north and south).
It’s deeply annoying to me that we (as in everyone) can’t weigh the pros and cons of a project without instantly drawing political lines. Oh no, the billionaires! I guess we can’t have decent housing if it has the side effect of enriching one of them.
Yes, it’s also important that the environmental issues are addressed. But it’s possible to do that constructively rather than in a reactionary manner (especially when its cultivated by powerful forces with a different agenda).
Actually, that area is pretty much all non-irrigated grazing land. Which speaks all the more to the question of where they are going to get the water. It ain’t there now.
I’m pretty sure that the Sacramento River at Rio Vista, the closest obvious source, is too brackish. Will be interesting to see what they come up with as a water source.
I wasn’t intending to draw political lines there, but just commenting that those cheering for and supporting this project should show their commitment to it’s vision by taking up residence there. I don’t mind people making a profit off such development - that’s to be expected. Speaking of which, what is the upside for the people financing the project? Has anyone followed the money?
They have this whole Delta Conveyance (AKA “Delta Tunnel”) project going that will suck Sacramento River water from just upriver of Rio Vista, across the delta, to pour into the California Aqueduct. But yeah, they gotta sort the water question out.
That doesn’t seem like too much of a mystery. They spent $800M on 50,000 acres. That’s $16k an acre that they can build cheap houses on and sell for a few million an acre. They need to spend money on a few other things also, but a lot of that (running sewers, internet, etc.) are a lot cheaper when you’re starting from scratch.
It’s touted to be a profitable development. What more “upside” does any commercial bank or financier need?
I think the only thing “utopian” about this whole plan is that they intend it to have no old ratty buildings and no poor people in it. Which sort of utopia is very appealing to lots of other people.
As always the problem with an instant artificial community is that since it as all nice and shiny new at once, it all also gets old at once. And therefore requires a giant lump-sum capital infusion at that time to recover it. Which infusion often isn’t available, leading to a freefall into a failed community. Whereas a natural grown community of varying ages of buildings and infrastructure can be slowly renewed piecemeal throughout its life on more of a drip feed of developer dollars and developer profits.
There’s no big dark evil plot here. Some developer dudes are building some houses. Whoop-de-doo.
Yes, they’re aiming to do a larger than typical development on what’s now a larger than typical parcel of raw land. But it’s nothing terribly different or exciting beyond simple size. Which can also be done in lots of small phases.
On the other hand, I’ve multiple times seen neighbors furious about a project specifically because they hadn’t been informed about it as soon as they thought they should have been. We (town planning board, we hear special use permits) advise people to talk to the neighbors before they hear about it otherwise; this can often defuse opposition. – not always, of course, depending on possible other reasons for the opposition; but being upfront about it removes one such reason.
This kinda sorta sounds like some version of Dubai 2.0. Let’s come back in 10 years and see what’s happened.
True, but mostly they were secretive in the land-buying stage, before anything concrete could or would have happened. And for that, it makes sense to stay quiet. After that point, it certainly makes sense to go public. Too many moving parts to stay in stealth mode once you start getting permits, etc.
It’s certainly in the interest of the mega-developer to be able to buy up all the separate parcels secretly.
That’s also exactly why many (most?) landowners think secret buy-ups to assemble mega-parcels ought to be illegal. If everyone knew all the facts, nobody could be all-but swindled out of valuable land for next to nothing.
I can see both sides of the argument. But for anyone to assert there is no argument is blind or disingenuous.
Funnily enough, Flannery (the developers here) sued the extant landowners for colluding to drive up prices:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/california-landowners-are-sued-510-million-over-inflated-real-estate-prices-2023-05-19/
I don’t have a drop of sympathy for either side in this particular case. Obviously, Flannery kept things secret to keep prices lower than they’d be if everyone was onto the plan. I don’t really care who wins here, but it will be interesting to see if the lawsuit has any legs.
Another article here, including a proposed layout, but not including any explanation of where the water’s going to come from:
They held a press conference to announce this – and refused to let the public in, when the public is already ticked off about previous secrecy. I think they’re doing really badly at Listening To Your Neighbors.
Talking about your land sale to others is not colluding IMO. If they broke a non-disclosure agreement about the sale, that would be another thing. But just chatting to others about selling their land? Sorry, but that’s not collusion.
Speaking as a native of that metroblob, I agree. On the upside, having an Amazon distribution center the next town over means I can order stuff over breakfast and it will be on my porch when I get home from work. Very convenient.
Exactly. The land will be far more valuable when it’s in the middle of a developed city than when it’s in the middle of a bunch of grazing land.
I agree that it sounds pretty wacky, but it doesn’t seem like the suit was thrown out immediately. If a bunch of individual homeowners had a community meeting where they agreed to hold out for a higher price, I can’t see how that would be remotely collusion… but maybe the rules are different for corporate landowners?