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Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

theguardian.com

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Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#71

Post by matzowalls »

cjs_ac wrote: post #22
ivarv wrote: post #11

I'm surprised at the investment in an area that's likely to undergo major environmental challenges but it will be fascinating to see how this turns out. Superficially it looks like an American version of Neom. https://www.neom.com/en-us

Having worked on Neom, I can tell you that Neom is fractally insane. The approval process for headline projects at Neom is: have idea; produce cyberpunk-themed renders; show to Crown Prince; receive approval. (MBS loves cyberpunk.) There was one day where the target population for the city just doubled with no real feasibility analysis. California Forever (awful name) seems to just be fairly normal planned city so fa…

[dead]

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#72

Post by snapplebobapple »

chopsuey5540 wrote: post #33
krisoft wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a city makes the land more valuable. If you tell people that you plan to invest a ton of money into the area they will include that information in their calculations when you are trying to buy their land. Some will then only sell their land for skyhigh prices, and some won’t sell at all in the hopes that they can sell it for even more once the city has been built around them. This can strangle the project in…

Yes indeed, they are being deceptive to the local community to try to rip them off.

No, they are being private about their future plans to avoid being ripped off themselves.

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#73

Post by bretpiatt »

ffhhttt wrote: post #47
bretpiatt wrote: post #24

The renderings did not help me visualise the real possibility. For perspective on how big 55,000 acres is, 640 per square mile, is 86 square miles, enough land to hold the city limits of Choose 2 of 3: Paris, Barcelona, and San Francisco. Paris city limits, 2.1 million residents, 41 square miles Barcelona city limits, 1.6 million residents, 39 square miles San Francisco city, 800k residents, 47 square miles

Paris “city” is just the most heavily urbanized central core of a massive metropolitan area. The urban part of which is 1,101.7 sq mi. I’m not sure about Barcelona but San Francisco is pretty much like Paris in that way (just way leas dense). It’s really not a fair comparison.

Paris the city is the city, if you're building a new city you build the city and the unincorporated areas around you grow on their own.

If they're going to just build another The Woodlands (x2, they have twice this much land too) this isn't a very ambitious and transformative project, it's just a big fancy housing development with a Mayor and City Council instead of an HOA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodlands,_Texas

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#74

Post by Anticlockwise »

xg15 wrote: post #67
dimva wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any increase in the number of homes reduces the homeless population. There are so many homeless people in CA mostly because there just aren't enough homes for everyone there. It won't completely solve homelessness - many people living on the streets now need social services and therapeutic help before they can afford any rent again, but there's plenty of homeless people in California with fulltime jobs paying like $3…

That sounds a bit like "the reason for this traffic jam is clearly that there are no enough lanes". Evidently, there are enough buyers/renters around who can afford the higher prices and are able to price out the $30k/year group. So what would prevent rent or prices from rising to the same unaffordable levels in the new development, if there is still demand from this higher-paying group? I feel if the market rate bec…

Well, the Georgists argue that a LVT plus developer friendly laws would prevent prices from rising too high. LVT taxes the value of the land, not the property, so if you have expensive land (somewhere people want to be), you're incentivized to build densely to earn profit from it.

It's not clear to me that's sufficient. You may also need something like a property profit tax to reduce speculation on housing.

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#75

Post by waihtis »

bluescrn wrote: post #44
waihtis wrote: post #8

The real challenge with this is keeping the type of people out who let SF devolve into the feverish nightmare politics it's currently running on. Any progressive quality-focused community will, over time, be infiltrated by people who's only contribution is subvertering and sabotaging what has been built, usually in the name of egalitarianism or some other veil.

A 'gated community' on a much larger scale. Not open to the public. Few entrances/exits. Big walls/fences. Private security force. Residents booted out when they lose their big tech jobs. Suddenly the utopian vision looks pretty bleak.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#76

Post by bluescrn »

waihtis wrote: post #75
bluescrn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 'gated community' on a much larger scale. Not open to the public. Few entrances/exits. Big walls/fences. Private security force. Residents booted out when they lose their big tech jobs. Suddenly the utopian vision looks pretty bleak.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence

Until you're hit by the next wave of mass redundancies through no fault of your own, and are kicked out into the 'real world', to discover how much further it has fallen.

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#77

Post by ffhhttt »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #55
ffhhttt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well supposedly after all the rich people move into this “utopian” willing there will be more housing left for everyone else?

Yeah right we're a free society in the West are we, so you're free to buy my disused Santa Barbara property or the condo with view onto Central Park that I only saw once after buying it, or sleep under a bridge or whatever. Suit yourself this is a free country.

Nah, in theory you’d buy/rent a house somebody sold to move into slightly nicer one [repeat 5 times] somebody who bought the Central Park condo.

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#78

Post by ffhhttt »

bretpiatt wrote: post #73
ffhhttt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paris “city” is just the most heavily urbanized central core of a massive metropolitan area. The urban part of which is 1,101.7 sq mi. I’m not sure about Barcelona but San Francisco is pretty much like Paris in that way (just way leas dense). It’s really not a fair comparison.

Paris the city is the city, if you're building a new city you build the city and the unincorporated areas around you grow on their own. If they're going to just build another The Woodlands (x2, they have twice this much land too) this isn't a very ambitious and transformative project, it's just a big fancy housing development with a Mayor and City Council instead of an HOA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woodlan…

You can’t expect the urban core of an entirely town to be even remotely as dense as that or a 10+ million city.

Re: Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

#79

Post by waihtis »

bluescrn wrote: post #76
waihtis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence

Until you're hit by the next wave of mass redundancies through no fault of your own, and are kicked out into the 'real world', to discover how much further it has fallen.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence
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