The concept of building new cities dates back to ancient times, as seen in the pages of Genesis. The first urbanists expressed their desire to construct a towering city in the heavens to establish their own identity and avoid being scattered across the earth. However, God intervened and thwarted their plans, condemning them to rely on Google Translate indefinitely.
Nevertheless, the aspiration to create new cities persists in today’s world, even within developed nations like the United States, which already boasts numerous cities. We constantly establish new companies, schools, and neighborhoods, so why not create a new San Francisco, Boston, or Miami? This yearning for a fresh start transcends ideological boundaries, captivating socialists, antidevelopment activists, inquisitive policymakers, and now even Silicon Valley investors who aim to build a city from scratch. High-profile names include Marc Andreessen, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Moritz, Nat Friedman, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of Emerson Collective and majority owner of The Atlantic.
These investors are not just daydreaming or tweeting about their ambitions. As reported by The New York Times in August, they have thrown their support behind California Forever, the parent company of Flannery Associates. The company has acquired around 60,000 acres of land in Solano County, California, situated between San Francisco and Sacramento. This substantial land parcel is roughly twice the size of cities like San Francisco or Boston, and slightly larger than Seattle. While housing developments and suburbs are nothing new, California Forever envisions something different: a vertically-integrated community that provides new infrastructure and serves as a place where tens of thousands of people can live, work, and play. This is not your typical suburban development.
Jan Sramek, the founder and CEO of California Forever, remarked, “We’ve reached a point where discussing the invention of general artificial intelligence is completely acceptable and regarded as something that will inevitably happen, but building a new town where people can buy homes is seemingly impossible.” (It’s worth noting that this comparison reflects Sramek’s social milieu rather than a widely held belief that AGI is an ultimate certainty.)
Building a new city is undeniably challenging, and unlike recent advances in AI, this endeavor does not represent a groundbreaking achievement in American technology, politics, or financial capabilities. Instead, it stems from a deep frustration with the painfully slow process of constructing housing in highly productive American cities and suburbs. The notion of a new San Francisco arises from the fear that the old one may be beyond salvation.
Details about the proposed city in Solano County are scarce, but the sketches on California Forever’s website depict an idyllic town surrounded by open spaces and densely built with various housing types. Windmills dot the background. The website emphasizes the vision of walkable neighborhoods, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, good jobs, and a healthy environment, harkening back to the basics that were once the norm across America.
California Forever’s project has substantial advantages. The absence of existing urban or suburban development in the region means that traditional groups opposing neighborhood changes are not present. Since California Forever has acquired significant acreage, local officials have a strong motivation to collaborate with Sramek to prevent land values from plummeting in the event of project failure. Moreover, Sramek is considering ways to incentivize existing residents, such as establishing a fund for down-payment assistance exclusively available to current Solano County residents.
However, financing urban infrastructure comes with exorbitant costs. Organic cities, in which firms and workers naturally cluster and eventually demand government-funded infrastructure, benefit from an established tax base. When attempting to build infrastructure first, payment becomes a challenging hurdle.
Alain Bertaud, an expert on urban development and former principal urban planner at the World Bank, explains, “A new city, especially a large one, faces a cash flow problem.” A city cannot raise taxes to build schools and employ teachers without first having residents willing to move in and be taxed. Bertaud cites examples like Brasilia, Chandigarh, and Canberra, all of which are new capitals that did not struggle with cash flow because they relied on taxpayers from the entire nation.
It is a categorical mistake to view cities merely as infrastructure. New York City is not defined by the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge, London is not synonymous with the tube, and Levittown, New York, America’s iconic first suburb, is not solely characterized by its single-family homes. Infrastructure follows people, not the other way around. As Bertaud explains, “You don’t move to a new city because the sewer system is incredibly efficient.”
Today’s superstar cities were not predetermined from above; they were chosen by millions of workers seeking economic opportunities. Factors like oil (Los Angeles), gold (San Francisco), ports and academia (Boston), lumber, aircraft, and tech (Seattle), and finance (New York City) attracted workers and led to the development of these cities. While workers tend to follow firms that leverage transportation networks, at the core, cities are shaped by people.
When individuals contemplate where to reside, job availability overwhelmingly dominates their decision-making. People draw other people. It becomes a virtuous cycle, as individuals who relocate start families and generate demand for services like education, healthcare, transportation, and various industries. Quality of life does come into play when choosing between job markets, but job availability remains the primary factor.
However, what if Sramek and his supporters are not truly building a new city but instead creating a commuter suburb located far from the urban core? That’s the suspicion of Jordan Grimes, a pro-housing activist, who referred to the project as “sprawl with a prettier face and prettier name.” Solano County already has a considerable population of commuters. Census data from 2016 to 2020 revealed that over 40 percent of the approximately 207,000 workers living in Solano commuted to other counties. In contrast, in San Francisco, slightly over 20 percent of its almost 510,000 workers commuted elsewhere.
I posed the question to Sramek: Is he genuinely seeking to establish a city with its own job market, where residents have responsibilities in terms of governance, public safety, parks and recreation, wastewater management, and libraries? Or is his intention to develop housing with some commercial space for retail, restaurants, and cultural amenities? Sramek replied, “This is an issue that is very much open to community input. We believe that eventually, it would evolve into an incorporated city that provides those services.”
Sramek is not a developer, and his investors do not expect their millions to be invested in constructing a few thousand single-family homes. According to a source close to the project who spoke on condition of anonymity, their aspiration is to showcase what can be achieved in America: constructing an attractive, dense, climate-friendly metropolis in a rapid timeframe. The source even hinted that a major player from Silicon Valley might relocate its offices to the area in the future. I reached out to Andreessen, Patrick Collison, Friedman, and Powell Jobs for comment, but they declined to provide statements.
Regardless of whether this project ultimately results in a new city or mere sprawl, it is bound to encounter challenges related to the politics of development. Currently, the land is primarily zoned for agricultural use. The county asserts that changing the zoning to accommodate high-density urban infrastructure requires a ballot measure. Sramek mentioned the possibility of putting the question to voters as early as November 2024, but success is far from guaranteed.
According to some local officials, Flannery Associates exacerbated tensions within the community by acquiring land without initially announcing its intentions. (Sramek argues that making their plans public would have caused land values to skyrocket.)
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