Uh. Late 2030s is 2036-2039.
That’s 13-15 years from now. 6 years wouldn’t even be 2030, let alone late 2030s.
Edit: Never mind. I can’t read. Late 2030 ≠ late 2030s.
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They mean late in the YEAR 2030, not late in that decade. 
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But he didn’t say “late 2030s.” He said “late 2030,” unless he was misquoted in the linked article.
ETA: thanks, @anon61221983 , I didn’t realize it was something needing clarifying, but apparently so.
ETA again: it’s fun that I just re-read Solnit’s “Men Explain Things To Me” today, lol.
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Oh. I am a f’cking idiot. Never mind.
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I could get right behind it if they were trying to build Raccoon City
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as i mentioned above: even if all their stated goals were laudable – absolutely nothing binds them to fulfilling those goals… which means there’s zero chance they will attempt them.
this is all about gaining those rights for resale. it’s not about building a city, or improving people’s lives. it’s about lining their pocketbooks.
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I would also accept Rat Park 
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Perhaps it is too late for a recitation of failed IRL examples (we’re 50+ comments in) but I’d be obliged if @moortaktheundea would comment, especially if he happens to know of any WIley-Coyote® Sooper Genius-tech billionaire masterplanned communities that thrive and do so with the consent of the locals / people already residing in the area when said project got underway.
Planned utopias have known and documented… issues. They are the very opposite of the late great Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language … a book and a way of thinking that gets more relevant and insightful with every passing day. I miss that guy. He tapped into something very human and real. And in many modern cultures, we ache for that thing without even being able to articulate it.
ETA: clarifier
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That’s a totally valid concern.
Their project plan should be explicitly approved by the county planning commission to bind them.
Building housing developments can be extremely profitable though, so I disagree there’s zero chance they’d attempt it.
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Except the expense. In money, in wasted materials like concrete, wood, copper, and steel. Rarer material used in things like solar panels.All that wasted. Concrete production is pretty carbon producing.
Then there is the pollution on site. The random bits of plastic, spilled oils and solvents, contaminates in the soil.
Then the ecological impact on the land they build on, the land around it, and all the roads they will use and ruin. Dead plants, wildlife habitat interrupted, permeable cover changes causing changes to the water flow for miles.
Finally all the water wasted in an area that doesn’t appear to have a lot. Construction swallows water at a huge rate.
The cost isn’t just the money these fools would waste.
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Why would copper be wasted? Or steel? Solar panels? We reuse and recycle those building materials. Even if those things weren’t valuable for resale, it’s mandated by the state.
The rest just sounds less like argument against this specific project and more like reasons to not build anything ever.
There are a handful of thriving planned communities in that size range, but they almost universally thrived because of things lacking in this and similar developments, really close proximity to other major cities, a core industry, or a weird binding ideology that gets you past the early rough parts so that you can last long enough for organic growth to occur. The best case scenario is a Reston, Virginia, which certainly has flaws, but is broadly pretty functional . Nothing in this project looks like it has anything like the planning of that, or even the level of financial commitment. But even the best case scenario is insightful, Simon put up something like 57 million in inflation adjusted funds on just the land purchases for Reston, then dropped something like another 150,000,000 inflation adjusted on construction. The goal was a 75,000 person community. By the first census after Simon was forced out they were almost up to 6,000. The community didn’t see real growth until it developed a meaningful commercial base, built low income housing, and DC grew into it. Simon had near perfect conditions and it was not a successful project during his time of ownership. City building is mindblowingly expensive in the best case scenario. The Solano project would be higher cost with less opportunity for organic growth. The only way it is likely to be financially successful is by flipping the project to someone else and leave them holding the bag.
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Yes, some steel could be extracted from the concrete for additional costs. A lot of the copper could probably also be retrieved. If the fools who owned the place allowed it. Though I suppose the copper at least could be stolen.
But not all of it could be recovered. And that doesn’t account for the concrete, which would have produced a lot of carbon during its production.
I’m not arguing against building in general. I’m arguing against your assertion that the only harm in building this folly would be the billionaires losing money. That won’t be the only harm. They should not be permitted to attempt to build a city when they don’t have the knowledge base, the expertise, the labor, or even water.
I’m arguing against wasting our resources, including our water and environment, on pacifying the egos of a bunch of assholes. They want a walkable city? Fine. Go spend that money improving a city that already exists.
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that doesn’t seem on the table currently. i can only speak to what’s been reported
Building housing developments can be extremely profitable though, so I disagree there’s zero chance they’d attempt
the most reasonable thing is to load up the rights with debt and sell that as securities just like everyone else is doing with property these days.
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That, and their techy desire – their rather odd focus of attention – for a planned utopia – seems to track in a way with that old saying: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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Sounds more like Cryptoland…
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I wrote a thread about this project when it was announced on Mastodon. It sums up my thoughts about it.
The California forever project has been reported about as an utopian project. In one sense it is, but one should be very clear about what kind of utopian project it is and for whom it is utopian. It is utopian in the sense the american suburb was constructed as a utopian project. It is also the same impulse to flee the city and the same discourse about the city as a dangerous, degenerate and ultimately doomed place that drives the project.
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California forever is presented as a sustainable, walkable and pleasant town built according to principles that most planners would agree to be good practice. Still it is as I said, the same impulse and the same motivation that drove the creation of suburbia. A desire for segregation. This time there is not any apparent racial overtones to the project, the renders show people with different skin tones. Something I imagine the project managers have been very careful to include.
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Michael Moritz, one of the capitalists behind the project is very clear what he wants to get away from when he refers to parts of San Fransisco as “zombie zones”. Homeless people and victims of the opioid crisis. The poor and the marginalized basically.
One has to wonder what kind of mechanisms they will use to keep the unwanted and unwashed masses away from their new utopia.
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The rhetoric city as a doomed place of social misery filled with dangerous addicts and criminals has thus returned. That the sci-fi loving silicon valley elite are among the new propagators of this idea is maybe not very surprising. Two of the most classic sci-fi movies from the 80’s are pop culture representations of the fear of the city. Robocop and Escape from NY.
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The Silicon Valley “philantropists” behind this project will probably argue that they already have tried to “fix” San Fransisco. This is of course bullshit. There is a proven way to solve homelessness. Building affordable high quality housing. And taxing the rich so that they pay their fair share.
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You might ask why do I as a Swede care about this? Well. I work with urban planning. I know that sewage run down hill. Stupid ideas dreamed up in Silicon Valley will eventually turn up here as well.
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Constructing new cities, practical utopias is of course necessary to solve the global housing crisis. Construction can be a radical and progressive action. There is no one that has described it more beautifully than civil servant and poet Ragnar Thoursie in his poem Sundbybergsprologen. If you have some time over, learn Swedish and read it. For the rest I will in the next post give a (bad) translation of two of the most beautiful lines.
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(…)
this late hour
when the families in lap upon lap in the buildings
ponder each the great bliss
to have ones own little spot. And so spheric light
is refracted against light trapped in room and kitchen;
and so loneliness is buried in living community
and the law of eternal opposites is repealed.
(…)
A open city,
One not fortified, we build together.
-Its light shines against the loneliness of space.
- Ragnar Thoursie, Sundbybergsprologen, 1951
In Swedish:
https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/2021/11/13
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