Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled
www.theguardian.com
Flannery Associates, the California group behind the $800m effort, launched a website showcasing renderings

Sure, why attempt to improve the climate resilience or affordable housing in the cities where millions of people already live, when you can just buy land upstate and get a whole new toy to play with? And why tell local, state or national government anything - they’ll only be supplying the land, water, sewerage, utilities & transport links. You pay your taxes, you deserve to get something back.

This is going to be one hell of a planning application. What’s the land use code for “feudal stronghold”?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    23·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The Silicon Valley elites who have been quietly buying up northern California farmland for several years have gone public with their vision for the utopian city they hope to build from scratch on 55,000 acres in Solano county.

    This week the group behind the effort, Flannery Associates, launched a website for the initiative and released a series of sunny renderings showing Mediterranean-style homes and walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

    Last week, the New York Times revealed that Flannery Associates was backed by a group of prominent Silicon Valley investors and aimed to build a new city, operated using clean energy, that would create thousands of jobs while offering residents reliable public transportation and urban living.

    The group of backers includes Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder; venture capitalist Michael Moritz; Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the philanthropic group Emerson Collective and wife of the late Steve Jobs; Marc Andreessen, the investor and software developer; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payment processor Stripe; and the entrepreneurs Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, the Times reported.

    “People in my district are understandably alarmed at a shadowy investment group buying up large tracts of farmland, purportedly to build a new city,” Bill Dodd, a state senator, said in a statement.

    “We are grateful to our elected officials for allowing us the chance to discuss our vision to deliver good-paying jobs, affordable housing, walkable communities, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space, and a healthy environment,” said Brian Brokaw on behalf of California Forever.

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