5 ms·
When was the last time we built a new city?
- pkage 2y ago> And then imagine that you can buy — hopefully you can buy — an apartment in the $400,000 range, or a nice house for $600,000. Those figures are a little bit up in the air, but it will definitely be more affordable. These... are still relatively unaffordable housing prices.
- flawsofar 2y agoI live in one of the best cities in the US. Like it's definitely a City with a capital C, dig? $600k gets you something great. Is there a hidden assumption of having 8 kids here, lol?
- voisin 2y agoWhere?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- infecto 2y agoI am not so sure it is considering these are new builds. I see 800sqft old homes being sold in Fairview for $500k.
- bagels 2y agoI don't see any houses for sale near that price in Fairview on Redfin.
- infecto 2y agohttps://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1412-Adams-St-Fairfield-CA-94533/15643575_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1412-Adams-St-Fairfield-C... Not sure why the position is so contentious. My only point is that the pricing for the new planned homes in this development seem to be pretty good pricing compared to the rest of the area. I don't know on a per sqft basis but looks like old turds like this house are selling for 4-500k and newer larger lots are in the million dollar range. A well planned community home for $600k sounds pretty nice.
- bagels 2y agoThere are only a couple transactions this year for that kind of price. None of them have interior photos, I'd assume run down. But yeah, it's a lot cheaper than I expected given that houses on the peninsula are 3-4x this price.
- infecto 2y agoTotally agree, I suspect I got the downvotes because my poorly explained post appears that I am going the opposite direction. Most of the homes in the area are million dollar homes. If these new builds are $600k starting, that sounds like a really good deal for someone.
- more_corn 2y agoRelative to the Bay Area rose prices are downright cheap.
- davidw 2y agoWho is downvoting this? It's factual. Look up housing prices in places in San Francisco or SV. Tear downs sell for more!
- supportengineer 2y agoI would love a $2.5 million discount on a house.
- rco8786 2y ago> relatively I'm not sure that means what you think it means. Relative to the cost of housing in every nearby city, that's very affordable.
- dog_boxer72 2y agoUSA should continue its manifest destiny, build a new artificial island off the coast of California or in the Gulf of Mexico, found an entire new state with a city designed for the modern era for the ground up.
- klyrs 2y agohttps://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/overdue-the-future-of-large-earthquakes-in-california-12667/ https://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/overdue-the-future-o... Show me on the map where you want to put your island...
- duxup 2y agoIsland complications aside, I feel like this would just be a "learn about why things are the way they are" speed-run.
- madeofpalk 2y agoTo be fair, a lot of things are the way they are not for any great reason, but because of historical baggage. Things are the way they are because that's how they were before.
- duxup 2y agoTrue for some things but it's all a system and you find out that other things depend on the old baggage rule to be true and so on.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwup238 2y agoWe could just invade Canada - I think it’s been long enough that we should give it another shot. Without the British they don’t stand a chance this time around and we've got the fracking technology to exploit the land. We can probably send the first Marine regiment over as undercover immigrants escaping the possibility of a second Trump regime and gain control of their weaponized maple syrup reserves before they even know what’s happening.
- vintagedave 2y agoMany things backed by Silicon Valley cofounders seem to be fairly neoliberal (not a criticism, an observation.) But a new city built on the concepts of Barcelona-style streets, neighbourhoods, etc and providing affordable housing seems very public-interest. I love it.
- more_corn 2y agoThe locals hate it
- infecto 2y agoI got the impression that the locals who hate it are the ones who sold land and then realized maybe they could have held out longer for a higher price.
- tinkertrain 2y agoNo we don't
- dogline 2y agoThe town of Paradise, CA is being rebuilt, after 90% of buildings were destroyed in the fire. There is infrastructure (roads, power, water), but all residential, commerical, and things like doctors are all being recreated and reassessed. It's interesting seeing how things shape up, but it's still a chicken-and-egg problem. A couple new grocery stores are going in, some other services.
- ljlolel 2y agothe problem with new cities is that it's nearly impossible to build new airports anymore
- Phurist 2y agoWhy?
- gambiting 2y agoI'd assume because there's nowhere with the amount of space required for one, not to mention the complaints you'd have to fight through from every single property nearby that doesn't want to live next to airport. As a good example - Poland is currently building a new airport literally called "central national airport" with the ambition of it becoming one of the largest European hubs for travel like Frankfurt or Amsterdam, and.... it's being built in the middle of absolute nowhere. People complain about it saying who needs an airport that's not near anything interesting, but at the same time either ignore or don't realize that you couldn't possibly build an airport of that scale if it wasn't in the middle of nowhere.
- pc86 2y agoMy response to your first point was going to be "that's why you have to build the airport first" which is exactly why your second point is what it is. It's probably not fair to let a city build up then plop an airport right next to a bunch of houses, marginally increasing their value to a vanishingly small minority of people for whom living near an airport is a plus and cutting it in half for most other people. But this is why eminent domain is also a thing - sometimes you just have to do it. The problem with airports specifically is that you'll get people from miles away who realistically will feel no ill effects complaining about it as well.
- ceejayoz 2y agoFor anyone curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Communication_Port https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Communication_Port I'm not sure I'd consider 15 minutes train to central Warsaw "in the middle of absolute nowhere".
- renewiltord 2y agoThis is really big thinking. Good for them. I'm excited to see them make it happen!
- more_corn 2y agoThey made the mistake of alienating the local landowners. They’ll be blocked with legal challenges for the next two decades.
- renewiltord 2y agoThere was no way to do it without doing that because the local landowners considered themselves alienated when these guys didn't tell them why they bought the land. Considering that low threshold for alienation, they went the whole way. In for a penny, in for a pound.
- IronWolve 2y agoThink most of the smaller cities in the burbs either get collected into the county with the big cities. So they hardly ever grow into a bigger city. My small town is 1 block, its now 3, and even got a dollar general. TV/Internet and Cell service is provided by 1 tower for everyone. It wont ever be a city. Rural areas have a limited population to grow. I seen a few people on yt buy remote land and try to make a small town, but you need enough people to incorporate and build a town before it could ever be built into a city. Unless some new resource is needed and a town/city pops up for workers.
- ghaff 2y agoI worked in a city that I commuted to. Downtown was actually pretty nice. It was probably also 12 square blocks to be generous with one nice apartment building. It was actually a separate city (old mill town) but probably not what most people wanting to live in a city have in mind.
- self_awareness 2y agoBuilding a city seems very... central planned. Normally these things should grow organically. Unless maybe you're in China or North Korea.
- spywaregorilla 2y agoPower infrastructure, water infrastructure, public services, telecom, road design, etc. are all things that very, very much benefit from central planning. Urban planning is not nearly the same as a centrally planned economy.
- self_awareness 2y agoYes. And also, such cities are so perfectly designed, that they don't even need people living in them.
- spywaregorilla 2y agoThis post seems to lack self awareness imo.
- self_awareness 2y agoAre you calling me an LLM?
- encoderer 2y agoSure, but the part where he said they would have 2 coffee shops — one pretentious and one not — made me puke in my mouth a little bit.
- khuey 2y agoIt's illegal essentially everywhere in the US to organically grow something low-density into a proper city. The only way a new city is getting built at all is to do it that way from the start.
- jlhawn 2y agoAs a self-identified pro-housing (ie, YIMBY) advocate, I am not opposed to the California Forever plan. However, I very much doubt that it will end up being the type of community they are claiming it will be. I expect it will end up being another exurban car-centric community as it's still very far from the major job markets of the core SF Bay Area. Given the location, I expect most potential residents would prefer to live in a community more like Mountain House, CA (with relatively larger private living space with a few schools and a single strip mall shopping center) than to live in a community with homes built like Noe Valley in SF but without all the benefits of urban amenities that come with living in SF because those benefits are endogenous to the urban economics of a place like SF. edit to everyone talking about how the backers have the influence to attract tech jobs to their new city. Great, but even if that's the case ... a community like this can't be maintained by people who work in tech alone. It's going to require service workers who will need to live somewhere and while it's nice that the houses in this new city will cost less ($400k to $600k), the more affordable housing stock for service workers will mostly be found in the nearby (yet still to far for public transit so they will need cars) communities of vallejo, fairfield, antioch, stockton, etc. I have yet to read anything about how they plan to fund any subsidized housing in the community (this article only mentions subsidizing businesses). As a Georgist, I know they _could_ do it by establishing something like a community facilities district with much higher taxes on land, but as this project is fundamentally a speculative land investment for its backers I doubt they'd be interested in that.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoI would think with the wealth and network of the folks sponsoring California Forever, they'd have enough pull to move offices to the community in order to create jobs for folks desiring to live there. That's the problem, right? People need jobs to live where they want to live. Building the housing alone isn't enough, you have to bring the jobs or otherwise make them available (if you're not supporting remote folks who can bring their own job with them to the housing).
- pshc 2y agoIf they actually do build Barcelona-style superblocks full of young families, then tech companies will be chomping at the bit for office space in those same blocks.
- jeffbee 2y agoWorthless softball interview. Some actual questions that people should ask if they can get this organization in the room: why do they keep saying they are building a city for 400k when an outcome equally compatible with their proposed zoning and design rules is 8 miles of strip malls between Rio Vista and Fairfield? There isn't anything in here that even hints at residential capacity of 400k. The zoned density that covers most of the site is 20 dwellings per gross acre, which is basically zero, and their circulation plan envisions some ludicrous stroads as much as 325 feet wide, which are clearly intended to accommodate car-based travel to the large-format retail and distribution centers that are permitted in all of their zones.
- 082349872349872 2y agocf Jane Jacobs on cities. Just like you don't build a company and then look for a product, but instead start with a product and then build a company, she says you start with an economy and then grow a city, not grow a city and then look for an economy. (looks like Solano is in the Bay Area's CSA, but still, after a bad experience I now have a firm rule: never live or work in a city that's younger than you are)
- ricardobeat 2y agoThis is not necessarily true in the age of remote work.
- 082349872349872 2y agoNot necessarily true, yes, but as a remote worker myself since last century, I've still always chosen places that already had something going on, because I appreciate when goods and services come (close) to me.
- thesausageking 2y agoHave they talked about how local laws and elections will work? The backers are putting up a ton of capital and boot strapping it with $1B+ in community benefits and housing subsidies. When it starts being populated, is it going to be run like a company town[0] where they control the stores and restaurants? How much control will they have over local elections? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
- kube-system 2y agoCouldn't they simply incorporate?, in the municipal sense. A quick search indicates this is the process in California: > Today, incorporation means going through a rigorous and complicated process with the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) in the county where the community sits (each census-designated place must be contained within a single county). Before a community can even apply for incorporation, at least 25 percent of registered voters there (a community must have a minimum of 500 registered voters to qualify at all) must sign a petition stating their desire to make their community a city. https://californialocal.com/localnews/statewide/ca/article/show/16942-california-cities-city-lafco-self-goverment/ https://californialocal.com/localnews/statewide/ca/article/s...
- jeffbee 2y agoInitially it will be unincorporated, so it will not be a company town or any kind of town. People will vote in County elections.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- encoderer 2y agoThey talk about building “a new city” like it’s going to be Dubai but really it’s going to be more like Celebration, Florida.