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The Silicon Valley elite who want to build a city from scratch
- msie 3y agoMy crazy/naive idea is to build stable countries in South America and Africa to attract migrants and asylum seekers. It would be more economic and palatable than tackling regime change/culture change in troubled countries (mexico, el salvador, iran, afghanistan) where these migrants came from and lessen the need to beef up local infrastructure. Isn't this how cities emerged in the past?
- jacknobody 3y agoThe country you seek is called Heaven. I don't blame you for recognising the need - I'm the same. Sadly many of our companions would rather see themselves in charge, just to make sure everyone is treated justly of course, but that always causes Hell for somebody.
- azmodeus 3y agoBuilding heaven on earth is a good aspirational political goal.
- jacknobody 3y agoYes!!
- nicup12345689 3y agoImmanentize the Eschaton am I rite? Just like the Gnostics, Marxists, communists, Obama, Trump ...
- weregiraffe 3y ago>Immanentize the Eschaton What else can you do with the Eschaton?
- jacknobody 3y agoBuild Heaven in your own heart - you won't be sorry :)
- imbnwa 3y agoOuter Heaven?
- MrMan 3y agoWe need immigrants in North America, why send them somewhere else
- cellis 3y agoYou can't build stable countries in those places as long as narcotraffickers and commodity smugglers exist, and they will exist as long as we have repressive laws on drug use (in the United States and other Rich Nations) and sanctions on commodities from the same. The problem is these combined policies incentivize defacto states that aren't democratic and will extort or thwart any well meaning developers. In countries without a strong rule of law you won't get far (absent finding a way to monopolize force yourself).
- toss1 3y ago>> (absent finding a way to monopolize force yourself) Exactly this. Any person who wants to live a self-determined life, and have a self-determined govt must be (individually or collectively) better armed and better prepared than everyone form the wannabe local lunch bully, regional warlord, or national authoritarian. IF not, they will take your lunch and your government every time. The GP's plan is great, but (s)he will need to start with a significant well-managed armed force. Otherwise, the local drug lord, warlord, mafia don, or authoritarian will ignore you until you create value, then decide they want it for themselves. If you cannot defend it, it will be theirs until they destroy it.
- philwelch 3y agoYou’re putting the cart before the horse here. If there isn’t a strong rule of law, any economic activity is going to come under the control of protection rackets and other armed factions. That’s completely independent of any drug prohibitions or commodity sanctions. When it comes to commodity sanctions you’re even reversing cause and effect; the sanctions are usually imposed as a half measure against whatever armed faction ends up controlling commodity extraction in a particular failed state.
- cellis 3y ago>>> If there isn’t a strong rule of law, any economic activity is going to come under the control of protection rackets and other armed factions. I think you're restating what I said. Narco traffickers are able to subvert the rule of law via corruption. Their ability to perform corruption is a function of their profitability, which in turn is a function of the demand (and their ability to supply it), in rich countries. The demand is unmet domestically because of our prohibitions and draconian federal enforcement. So the rule of law breaks down there due to strong rule of law here. We are essentially exporting the market making there, and that sort of market making, while risky, is profitable in the extreme. As for the commodity sanctions while most maybe are well intentioned, they only serve to again allow those willing to take the risk of market making to rack up obscene profits. This is regardless of what circumstances lead to them, they empower actors who aren't particularly altruistic and certainly aren't democratic, to subvert the rule of law.
- hgsgm 3y agoUK has an agreement with Rwanda to send refugees to Rwanda. But the UK High Court nixed it, because Rwanda is "not a safe country". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_asylum_plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_asylum_plan
- gizajob 3y agoThere's a big difference between needing asylum and needing asylum in a stable country with universal healthcare and a benefits system.
- soligern 3y agoRefugees are trying to flee to a developed country with healthcare, jobs and safety. Why would you want to go to Rwanda? I realize it has improved by leaps and bounds but very few people are going to want to emigrate to an African country.
- nicup12345689 3y agoYou think it has not been tried by the people in those countries?
- RGamma 3y agoGet your AI army ready to enforce law, I guess.
- kwere 3y agosuch places would be flooded by desperate people in millions, creating slum town around it, a good breeding ground for crime. South Africa, once a functioning country got "invaded" by Zimbabweans escaping their hellhole, distorting the labour market and creating tension/crime. Too many people, unless you create hundreds of such experiments around the world.
- wolverine876 3y ago> South Africa, once a functioning country A functioning country for a few white people; hell for everyone else.
- nradov 3y agoSouth Africa was still functional after the end of apartheid. It really only became a failed state during the Zuma administration. Despite the history of institutionalized racism the country had enormous potential, but sadly a few corrupt politicians sacrificed the future of the country for their own benefit.
- wolverine876 3y ago> South Africa was still functional after the end of apartheid. It wasn't functional before the end of apartheid. 'Functional for a small minority' != 'functional country'.
- weard_beard 3y agoSo... America from 1850 to 1920. If you can anticipate and scale up industrial production to meet the wave of immigration and not just pen them up in refugee camps you have yourself another BRICS nation.
- monomers 3y ago> mexico, el salvador, iran, afghanistan None of those are in South America or Africa. Maybe it would be good to first understand the problem, including the geography, before proposing ideas.
- philwelch 3y agoI’m not sure I understand your idea; the only way to build a stable country in these regions would be to regime change a less stable country, or perhaps carve out some territory from the existing countries. At any rate, many of the countries on both of those continents were founded as attempts to build stable countries. On a happier note, El Salvador seems to have sorted itself out in recent years.
- soligern 3y agoIf the settlement is doing better than the actual country it is in, it is going to be overrun with locals. The only way to do that would be to fence out the locals and no country is going to agree to that.
- wolverine876 3y agoThe magic handwavy part is the first step: > build stable countries If you know how to do that, please tell the world. Stable countries need a half-century or more to create, and that's with existing institutions and culture, and still the outcome is very uncertain.
- jeffrallen 3y agoOh, they are down to a half century now? Switzerland took 700 years to make. Progress!
- wolverine876 3y agoI was thinking of South Korea, but they are extraordinary.
- jelliclesfarm 3y agoSingapore achieved this as a city-state.
- wolverine876 3y agoIn how long? Don't forget the building of the institutions that predated Yew.
- jelliclesfarm 3y ago1959 was when Yew became Sg's first PM. in his famous televised speech, yew announced the separation from malayasian federation in 1965. dont forget that singapore was under colonial rule before that. noone can deny the success of singapore, the city state with all the regional challenges. it took them about two decades. i would give 5-10 years for our nation states to become functionally successful if they split and became city states. its time for a change.
- htlion 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jmopp 3y agoThis is one of my long-term goals with my home country, South Africa. We've got the legal starting point with a progressive constitution and a reasonably independent judiciary/media. The economy could be doing better, though, and we'd need to bring equal opportunity to all. And there's a lot more in the future that could hamstring this idea. But I do believe that it's possible in my lifetime.
- slim 3y agobuild stable countries you can't do that remotely. and people who build this will develop a strong sense of identity and won't accept migrants in their community
- jeffbee 3y ago"Tens of thousands of homes" on 55,000 acres doesn't sound like a city, it sounds like more climate-torching bullshit. The Flannery parcels are nowhere near any kind of transportation facility, so unless they are planning a maglev to Sacramento, and unless the project is in fact 54,900 acres of open space and 100 acres of urbanism, than I remain highly skeptical.
- pulisse 3y agoI'd really like to know whether they considered wildfire risk when they hatched this plan back in ~2017.
- hodgesrm 3y agoThere's not much to burn. It's basically flatlands with grasses.
- smugma 3y agoAntioch BART is just a few miles away. Of course, there’s a river in the way so that would be a 30 min drive unless they extended the line (would take 20-40 years?)
- jeffbee 3y agoMy friend, have you ever ridden from Antioch BART?
- smugma 3y ago“[Investors] include Mr. Moritz; Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, venture capitalist and Democratic donor; Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, investors at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payments company Stripe; Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs turned investors. Andreessen Horowitz is also a backer”
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- tspike 3y agohttps://archive.is/1cYIj https://archive.is/1cYIj
- kazen44 3y agooh look... some other "tech elite" of his time actually already did this[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia
- melenaboija 3y agoInteresting (and with some paranoia) discussion about this topic one month ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816387
- somethoughts 3y agoI think what makes the most sense is to build in plans for future high density from the get go when the zoning is being first written. So the residential zoning starts out as 8000 square foot lots but each lot is enabled in the future for high density 3 story residential in 30 years. Commercial zoning is enabled for high density residential towers in 30 years as well. Additionally, while it's still farmland, demarcate the right of way for future train lines, bike paths mass transit and freeways/underpasses. I think what chafes NIMBY home owners is that the developers are able to change the residential single family zoning to high density residential post facto - and pocket the spoils. Basically changing the rules of the game via lobbying city council members. Meanwhile the rule following NIMBY home owner's zoning remains unchanged and they just have to deal with more traffic and less sunlight. And then make all home/property buyers sign documents attesting that this is the city charter and cannot be changed.
- jeffbee 3y agoI don't know if we are still talking about California, but if we are, note that there is not an analog of the federal system within the state. Cities are not independent and do not have powers and cannot abrogate the state's powers with what amounts to an HOA. Cities in California are political subdivisions of the state and they exist to further and promote the policies of the state.
- somethoughts 3y agoThe general idea would fit in with the overarching California initiatives - particularly the California’s Density Bonus Law/Builder's Remedy that recently has been in the news. The general idea is instead of assuming this new city will always be a sleepy suburban residential until eternity - assume from the get go that it will have the same "where are we going to stick all the 5 story towers" hot potato problem that San Jose/Santa Clara are having right now. By laying out the future high density area zones on a 30 year zoning map, buyers can know a priori that if they buy the single family house on this street, their grandkids can potentially either expect to stubbornly live there in the shadows of a 5 story condo complex with low income components or cash out for tens of millions to a RE developer. I think why this hasn't happened before is because it always seems silly when you just look at 500 acres of farmland to throw down BART access right of ways. But in reality given California's historical growth patterns, its probably realistic if looking at a 25-50 year time horizons.
- ilaksh 3y agoI have been fascinated with the idea of new types of cities for many years. One of my main ideas is to construct buildings as public or semi-public facilities. Another idea is to have multiple levels of infrastructure such as roadways. I imagine something like a series of egg-shaped buildings connected by multiple levels of roads for autonomous (mostly single passenger) cars. Inside are several floors of large platforms with modular buildings stacked on them. The superstructure would not need to always provide a perfect climate inside but would aim for making things more tolerable and giving the heating or cooling of the interior modules a headstart. The buildings could have lush internal landscaping or even some type of agriculture.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- neontomo 3y agoI'm getting Bioshock new-city vibes, and also this beauty by ProZD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN9DW4rrEjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN9DW4rrEjY
- ooterness 3y ago"This world is imperfect. If only I could wipe away the impurities, and make it as beautiful as me..." Yes, that's the vibe I'm getting too.
- wolverine876 3y agoOur great tech innovators are now buying real estate, the most regressive, old, non-tech investment. (It's not the first time either.) SV is thoroughly corrupted and needs disruption by some new innovators who actually have some value and ideas.
- rhelz 3y agoAt this point, even starting a new hi-tech company of any size in the Bay Area immediately runs into the problem of housing. You wanna hire 20,000 workers? Where will they live? Buying 50,000 acres of land and covering it with manhattan-style skyscrapers full of condos and apartments solves that problem quite nicely. Its even self-funding, because no matter how high a salary you pay them, they'll pay over half of it back to you. While you are making a huge profit from the sale. Its a brilliant plan, even for high-tech investors.
- wolverine876 3y agoHousing in the Bay Area has been a problem for decades, and the tech industry did well.
- dntrkv 3y agoHas there ever been a successful city built from scratch? I feel like organic growth is the only way, unless you can force people to move there. This example always jumps to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tjmc 3y agoAustralia’s capital city Canberra was planned and built roughly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne. Turned out ok
- defrost 3y agoOk, if you really like circles, kangaroos, bush fires, public servants, politicians, and occassional access to ski fields. But yeah, it's a decent example of a planned city.
- shawndrost 3y agoDid you know Irvine, CA (now 300k people) was a planned community? It postdates UC Irvine and was incorporated in 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agohttps://www.irvinestandard.com/2022/americas-safest-city-for-17th-straight-year/ https://www.irvinestandard.com/2022/americas-safest-city-for... - allegedly the safest city of its size in the US
- jelliclesfarm 3y agoMilton Keynes, UK https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes
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- gardenfelder 3y agoGroup Flannery Associates, backed by prominent investors, quietly buy 55,000 acres of farmland in northern California
- bell-cot 3y ago> ...from farmers for several times more than the market value [emphasis mine] and become the biggest landowners in Solano county, an area 60 miles north-west of San Francisco. The land bought by the firm encircles Travis air force base in Fairfield, a city of about 120,000 residents and home to the Anheuser-Busch Co brewery and the Jelly Belly jelly bean factory. Wikipedia notes: "Travis Air Force Base handles more cargo and passenger traffic through its airport than any other military air terminal in the United States." So don't expect any "quiet / remote / idyllic" vibes. And a couple quick searches reveal some major soil & groundwater contamination issues at the AFB. Well...it'll likely be interesting. The article says ~zilch about the ideals of the "SV elites" involved. And notes that they'll probably face a very long, tough slog - through skeptical locals, NIMBYs, regulations, and red tape - before they can actually build much anything.
- samwillis 3y agoPrevious discussion when the owners were anonymous: "'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns" - 114 points - 35 days ago - 170 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816387 There were all sorts of rumours, and concerns due its proximity to an important military base. I can't imagine the government and military not knowing that this prominent group were behind it.
- warkanlock 3y agoIt's fascinating, yet hardly surprising; we're moving toward a future where some corporations will seek to establish their own realms of autonomy
- pdntspa 3y agoEvery day the world gets a little more cyberpunk
- nonethewiser 3y agoMaybe local governments should clean up their cities then. Id rather live somewhere clean and safe.
- dragonwriter 3y agoCorporations have done that since the dawn of the corporate form.
- tmnvix 3y ago> we're moving toward a future or back to the past... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I15_KUsOzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I15_KUsOzs (Merle Travis - Sixteen Tons (original version) from 1947)
- abeppu 3y agoThere's an interesting discrepancy between two parts of this: > Flannery has purchased land from farmers for several times more than the market value and become the biggest landowners in Solano county. > The firm has been sued by farmers who sold their land to the group over what the land owners describe as an “illegal price-fixing conspiracy”. If a group is buying land at multiples of the market value, you'd think the "price-fixing conspiracy" narrative would come from would-be buyers who were priced out, not from sellers.
- bell-cot 3y agoTheory (IANAL) - the conspiracy was the secrecy. If the final (say) 20% of the farmers had known, they would have been able to hold out for 10X their lands' previous market value. Or more.
- starkparker 3y agoThat phrasing is wrong in the article. The firm is suing the farmers, as you intuited. https://www.agdaily.com/news/mysterious-company-sues-farmers-over-land-purchase-deal/ https://www.agdaily.com/news/mysterious-company-sues-farmers... > A mystery company that has been buying up farmland around Travis Air Force Base in California in recent years is now suing the farmers it bought the land from, accusing them of conspiring to inflate the value of their properties. > Lots of questions and speculation are floating around about the buyer, Flannery Associates, which has invested close to $1 billion to buy more than 50,000 acres farmland in the Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills area of Solano County. According to numerous reports, the company is filing suit for at least $510 million against the farmers. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/some-california-landowners-fight-while-other-settle-510-mln-antitrust-lawsuit-2023-08-07/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/some-california-lan... > A lawsuit accusing a group of California landowners of conspiring to inflate the price of their land by hundreds of millions of dollars will "drastically expand" the reach of federal antitrust law if it is not dismissed, attorneys for the property holders told a U.S. judge. > In a filing in Sacramento federal court, lawyers for the landowners in northern California on Friday urged U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley to reject "speculative" and "vague" allegations from agricultural land buyer Flannery Associates. > Flannery, seeking more than $510 million in damages for alleged price-fixing, in May sued various family land trusts and estates over the sale of properties in the Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills area of Solano County between San Francisco and Sacramento.
- rayiner 3y ago[flagged]
- AlbertCory 3y agoAt least it doesn't say "Bay Area land" anymore. Solano County is way the f&ck out. And land comes with carrying costs, i.e. property taxes. No one who wants a big, quick return on investment (looking at you, VC's) is going to buy it.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoIt is Bay Area. Solano County is one of the 9 "Bay Area" counties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
- jayd16 3y agoKind of interesting that at that location it'll get fed from UC Davis grads more than UC Berkeley.
- alephnerd 3y ago
- houseatrielah 3y agoI suspect it will be 100% private, including the streets, etc, like a mall. So they can kick people out for homelessness, trespassing and such. DW did an interesting doc on gated communities -- huge amount of Marseille is gated off. URL w/ timestamp: https://youtu.be/0KMlDzaths8?t=1759 https://youtu.be/0KMlDzaths8?t=1759
- aapl88889 3y agoIt will be like Santana Row in San Jose, a walkable area without any homeless.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- benatkin 3y agoA walkable outdoor mall right across a busy street from an indoor mall. It's kind of big for a mall but only by a little bit. I find large closed communities much more worrying.
- toyg 3y agoFor a European, Santana Row is depressing. It's utterly soulless and fake. Just build an actual town, FFS.
- vernon99 3y agoYes please! From your comment (maybe not intentionally?) this sounds like a bad thing. But for inhabitants being able to have stricter rules is a blessing. Ideally that would work like with the countries: different cities have dramatically different sets of rules and compete for citizens. Private ownership allows for much more flexibility here.
- consp 3y agoAnd you also don't pay into the general issues in the country which are shoved off to the less fortunate home owners.
- feedsmgmt 3y agoThey should name it EPCOT or Fordlandia.
- bloopernova 3y agoThis has shades of RoboCop, 1 & 2. But it will probably end up being far more like the city in Demolition Man. Bland, no surprises, no swearing, etc.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> 55,000 acres of farmland in northern California Sounds like it’s already a utopia.
- raverbashing 3y agoCrazy idea, if they actually built multi family homes to tell the NIMBYs to kiss it, this could be extremely profitable. Maybe put space for some offices from the big companies as well
- benatkin 3y agoI thought the term was Smart City. Why can't we stick with terms? Why must people get rid of them at the slightest bad publicity or refuse to use them to say it will be completely different this time? I think this article should explain the project in terms of other Smart City projects.
- aunty_helen 3y ago5G smart city*
- dotnet00 3y ago5G AI-managed Blockchain-driven Web 3.0 Smart City*
- mkl95 3y ago> This project would include a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space There are many similar places in North America and Europe. The main differences are that they don't want to be "cities with thousands of new homes" and they usually are not owned by investors.
- fh973 3y agoI wonder how something like zoning works in this case. How would they be allowed to build anything in farmland? And it they got permission before, of course it raises prices.
- mkl95 3y agoIt sounds similar to those towns built by oil drilling and mining companies back in the day. I wonder how much zoning laws have evolved ever since.
- brap 3y agoI wonder if this is going to be a for-profit, private city. A city-scale hotel, sort of. I feel like this is the model for future cities (which in my opinion, is a great thing — as long as the city pays rent to the state).
- gz5 3y agoTelosa is a similar idea on a larger scale. They are targeting 5M people population by 2050. Original idea was the citizens all have equity in the value of the combined land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa https://cityoftelosa.com/ https://cityoftelosa.com/
- screye 3y ago* Silicon valley elites - let's spend billions in building a transit friendly urbanist utopia. * Also Silicon valley elites - let's try our darndest to ruin the pre-existing transit friendly urbanist utopia by putting the worst politicians in power. * Also Silicon valley elites - How dare you try to build a transit friendly urbanist utopia anywhere near where I live. I'm jaded. Californians have done everything in their power to ruin every genuine attempt at dense-urbanism and transit friendly development. Marc Andreessen (associated [1] with this project) had a great mask off moment [2] last year. > Subject line: IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development! > I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton … Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic. Thanks for supporting dense urbanism 100s of miles away from you Marc. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/land-purchases-solano-county.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/land-purchases-s... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andreessens-opposition-housing-project-nimby/671061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
- rayiner 3y agoWhen was any transit in California ever utopian? There’s an entirely consistent position that holds urbanism to be a good thing, but views California’s government-run systems as incapable of achieving a functioning system.
- screye 3y agoCalifornia had some of the world's best street car networks before they were bulldozed over. [1] [2] SF-proper's public transit & walkability is still utopian (by US standards). If only it wasn't destroyed by the most incompetent politics on crime and drug enforcement in the entire country (and maybe world?). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Electric_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Electric_Railway [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/9b0x1j/i_made_a_map_of_las_streetcar_system_as_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/9b0x1j/i_made_a...
- dave333 3y agoThis is a bit like the way San Jose grew out of fruit orchards driven by tech firms in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Interesting that there is more thought about urban design going in. The land is mostly rolling grassland hills studded with windmills that will stay given that previous landowners will keep earnings from the power generated. There is a 10 mile long waterfront along the Sacramento river from Rio Vista down to the confluence with the San Joaquin river. If developed as a wide boulevard with at least sections of public water access that would form the basis of a city. As for housing there will be scope for various novel approaches like the shared backyards at nearby Village Homes to tiny house enclaves. Given the tech ethos driving this I expect Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language will be the development "bible."
- geraldcombs 3y agoFor those wondering where the property in question is, there's an SF Chronicle article with a map: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/flannery-associates-land-investor-18327848.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/flannery-associa... There's a sizeable overlap with the Montezuma Hills wind farm. It'll be interesting to see how a bunch of pre-existing wind turbines fit into their plans.
- SushiHippie 3y agoThanks! The map didn't load for me (maybe because I'm in the EU?) but they got their date from regrid.com, and I took a screenshot of it. These are the properties (source regrid.com): https://ibb.co/9GvCr3x https://ibb.co/9GvCr3x And this is satellite imagery of roughly the same area (source arcgis.com; esri world imagery): https://ibb.co/0j3Hmth https://ibb.co/0j3Hmth EDIT: looks like a really large portion of their land is exactly where the wind farms are at. Are they going to destroy the wind farm, because how it looks on satellite imagery, there is no real space to build without destroying most of the wind turbines.
- ponderings 3y agomore than twice the size of the line in saudi arabia
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vax425 3y agoSounds like someone's been reading too much Ayn Rand and plans to build a real-life "Galt's Gulch."
- retrocryptid 3y agoThe idea that the tech elite will give up their 6000 square foot mansions and teslas so they can live in a walkable utopia like paris is laughable. But... you do you, tech elite. Enjoy your utopia where gardners, housekeepers, carpenters, electricians, teachers and shopkeepers are exiled outside the city walls.
- reducesuffering 3y agoPlenty of "tech elite" live and walk San Francisco all the time, so...
- infamouscow 3y ago[flagged]
- saltwatercowboy 3y ago“Useless eater” is a term I suppose I’m disappointed, but not surprised by, at this point.
- reducesuffering 3y agohttps://twitter.com/rauchg/media https://twitter.com/rauchg/media > you're a liar and useful idiot / useless eater :) Your wit knows no end
- infamouscow 3y agoCiting a founder that grew up in a crime-riddled country known for it's favelas doesn't exactly bolster your position like you seem to think.
- reducesuffering 3y agoIt at least means you were wrong I wouldn’t be able to name even one. But sure, tell me more about how you like using genocidal Nazi euphemisms. ‘The phrase “useless eaters” was invoked by Nazi propaganda advocating for the murder of disabled people‘
- exabrial 3y agoHow about instead of building some dumb utopian metropolis, we return the land to its natural state?
- jelliclesfarm 3y agoI am not entirely opposed to the idea. The governance of CA is a goat rodeo run from Sacramento. With lame goats. But I don’t necessarily trust the intentions of this group given that they have already sued the ex land owners.
- jelliclesfarm 3y agoI am torn between shaking my fists at the ‘oligarchs’ and going ‘well done, boys!’. I would do the same if I had a billion dollars or two to spare. The future is city states and networked small towns of 10k mixed population ..use the same seed idea as the Dunbar Number. Fwiw, I have already designed such cities for my own amusement with high density housing in 10% of the total land and the remaining as forests and food producing acres..underground tunnels for intra city transport and above ground, self driving cars and efficient public transport(maglev)… it will be a three tiered city with skyscrapers, underground city and ground infrastructure. Etc etc. What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t even build your own city?
- tinco 3y agoI fully agree, although it's a great way to quickly lose your billionaire status. Only the greatest of billionaires could afford to build an underground railway system for a city and still have money left to build some apartment buildings for people to live in them. Only a couple of them on the entire earth could pull it off probably. One of them has already done 3 similarly grandiose things and is now dabbling with social media. One of them is in his party on a yacht fase. One of them is starting to get a bit geriatric but also has always cared more about the people on the planet than the planet itself. And one of them seems to be on an internal journey discovering his masculinity. There's a couple more for sure, but I guess they're not in the media enough for me to know what their excuses are.
- YeBanKo 3y agoYeah, the article reads like a “late stage capitalism” vs nasty nimby localism. On one hand I don’t like the idea that a lot of land end up in hands of a small group of people, but on the other hand the accusation that they are tearing apart the community is a little weird, given than they have not started building anything yet. And most of land around Travis AFB is prairie, so used for grazing. On top of that the lawsuit they filed against farmers is weird. Did they try to intimidate them into selling or got screwed by an alleged price fixing?
- Sawamara 3y ago>>Whats the point of being a billionare if you cant even build your own city? Are you even hearing yourself? Cities existed before billionares did. Society existed before pricks with god complexes started thinking that order and society organized the other way around. Get off from Rand. Learn some actual history.
- BurningFrog 3y agoIf this becomes a functioning dense city with plenty of housing, it would be hugely needed in the region!
- danans 3y agoThey had better build some pretty fantastic water catchment systems
- finickyriver 3y agoChristopher Alexander, wrote a famous essay called "A city is not a tree" which talked about how cities emerge, and are not planned top down http://en.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexander-A-city-is-not-a-tree.pdf http://en.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexan...