Local communities not on board with tech billionaires' planned utopia

[jlw]

Originally published at: Local communities not on board with tech billionaires' planned utopia

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[Otherbrother]

@jlw

There is no power, water, or waste infrastructure. No public transit. No schools. No fire or police. This is a major undertaking to build a new city where there are plenty of existing ones.

Imagine how much good those billions of dollars could do if they chose to spend the money on improvements for an existing, down-on-its-luck community of 50,000 people or so. No shortage of those out there.

[MagicFox]

The bears are going to love it!

[Malarkey]

I lived in El Cerrito and worked in San Francisco while going to grad school in Berkeley. What is not walkable about these places?

[RickMycroft]

Foreshadowing…

[Fefelo]

No matter how “walkable” this place may be, it’s going to generate traffic, which is usually the #1 sore point. The bridges from the north bay to everything to the south are already congested. Not sure what is their goal with this. These kind of planned utopian community things usually are not successful projects.

[fuzzyfungus]

This should be the best thing since Delta City.

[gracchus]

There is no power, water, or waste infrastructure. No public transit. No schools. No fire or police.

All of that would imply the existence of society, and their idol Margaret Thatcher assured them there’s no such thing.

[sqlrob]

I think this flag belongs more to the state they want.

[Otherbrother]

@fuzzyfungus

This should be the best thing since Delta City.

Are you talking about the Delta City from Robocop (which at least had good access to water) or the Delta City in Utah that had the Topaz Relocation Center where thousands of Japanese-Americans from the San Francisco Bay area were imprisoned during WWII? Each dystopian in its own way.

Anyway I was thinking California City, because it was planned to be a big utopian city but was doomed from the start, in part due to lack of water.

25 Chilling Photos Of California City, The Ghost Town In The Mojave Desert...

[jlw]

I think CalCity has long just been a scam.

California City

[Mindysan33]

[gatto]

@Fefelo

Not sure what is their goal with this.

i’d guess: selling the land to developers after the usage and zoning rights have been changed, and walk away with a hefty profit

they have no contractual obligation to do anything like what they’re saying: so, it’s just marketing. and things “walkability” are probably targeted at lawmakers and other officials rather than the affected locals

[Mister44]

I say: go full Cerberus on that flag.

[Fefelo]

@gatto

i’d guess: selling the land to developers after the usage and zoning rights have been changed, and walk away with a hefty profit

Yeah this is an age-old business model. If land can be re-zoned from agricultural to residential or whatever, its value goes up tremendously with the stroke of a pen. Fortunately a lot of Bay Area communities are pretty organized about this.

[Ceran_Swicegood]

They have imagined it, and after they stopped laughing, they went ahead and planned this anyway. I mean, they’re not in the business of making nice things for those people.

[Peter_Willard1]

I bet they are trying to create Tabula Ra$a

[Aloisius]

@jlw

I would not want to move to a community where the developers forgot to secure water rights before buying the land, that kind of attention to detail signals disasters to come.

Buying land is how you get water rights, which they acquired:

Records indicate that they hold water rights for 5,330 acre feet of water per year, which could potentially support roughly 60,000 residents.

[Otherbrother]

@Aloisius

Buying land is how you get water rights, which they acquired:

Records indicate that they hold water rights for 5,330 acre feet of water per year, which could potentially support roughly 60,000 residents.

I think you left out some important context. Here’s the full paragraph from the article you linked to:

Flannery Associates claims that they have sufficient water rights without joining the North Bay Aqueduct expansion and would be looking to buy additional rights, but their proposed alternatives also present challenges. Records indicate that they hold water rights for 5,330 acre feet of water per year, which could potentially support roughly 60,000 residents. But first, Flannery would have to petition the water board for a change of use from irrigation to urban uses.

[Aloisius]

I really didn’t. You can’t petition to convert to urban use before you own the rights to the water which required buying the land.

Moreover, the conversion isn’t normally difficult. Municipalities sometimes acquire water rights from farms allowing them to draw more from a river in exchange for the farm consuming less water - essentially converting water for irrigation to urban use with a simple permit.