Silicon Valley elites revealed as buyers of $800m of land to build utopian city
theguardian.com
After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy.
They could just pay their fucking taxes so we can have trains
But think of all the jobs they'll "create"!
(/s so hard)
That's not even limited by taxes, it's limited by 4 fucking companies owning most of the tracks, and them being given free reign to run freight as shittily as possible, not maintain the tracks unless actively forced to, and giving precisely 0 fucks about passenger service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBI3lPt3o4
The US likely cannot fix its rail issue without nationalizing the rail system. As a country, it has yet to admit that there are
somemany problems capitalism a) does not fix and b) actively makes worse.Ugh, there's that doom ulcer again
Lol again with this? Wealthy fucks have been trying this since the 1700s. It never works.
CA is already only for wealthy people.
Lemmy users: We need more housing, walkable cities, public transport, and renewable energy
Developer: Plans to build more housing in a new walkable city with public transport powered by renewable energy
Lemmy users: Not like that!
Correct, most people don't approve of the oligarchy building another haven for the ultra-rich on farmland.
Where do you get the impression this is built "for the ultra-rich"? Why would they be taking public transport over their personal jets and private cars? Why would they live in an urban area with tens of thousands of other residents instead of their personal mansions on acreage? This is definitely an investment for upper-middle to upper class residents.
As for farmland, article itself says "bad soil that only contributes 5% of the county’s agricultural production". When you need housing, housing needs to go somewhere.
Your government isn't going to build the cities the climate needs, if tech investors want to with their own cash I say go for it.
While I don't fully disagree with you, these towns being funded by the ultra-rich, usually by people who already have shady business practices, are looking awfully like company towns. Amazon's already trying to build company-provided housing near a lot of their hubs, which is bad in that now your healthcare AND your shelter are directly tied to your employment. Imagine if they get their way with building a whole micro-city that runs on that idea - where every last bit of wealth an employee might spend goes STRAIGHT back to your company. Their utilities get dealt with by Amazon-built power and water plants. Their food is provided by Amazon grocery stores or deliveries. Your healthcare is provided by Amazon, and your housing is at the whim of your employer. All of this is provided at jacked-up prices, of course, so you're effectively just a debt slave until you die or the company decides to kick you to the curb.
It's being built by an investment firm though, doesn't look to be company housing, just looks like an investment to me.
I get that impression from this little thing called the title of the post
Didn't make it past the title huh
History.
Right, why think critically and make an intelligent argument when you can just hand-wave "history" lol
Said the guy who hears "wealthy consortium of capitalists" and thinks "wow save me daddies," lul.
Whatever you say strawman, keep up with your scorched earth policy of gatekeeping who's allowed to fight climate change.
I fucking hate that they used the term "empty" land. The poll question posed to residents asked them if they would be more in favor if they knew it was "bad soil" that only contributed to 5% of CA agriculture, as though making money is all that land is good for.
Yes, Fairfield, CA is kind of a shit hole. But NorCal open land is absolutely beautiful, like all of California. Every single fucking time I go there, which is pretty frequently, there are new mcmansion housing developments and business parks and data centers that are starting to be built or have just finished. There are protected wetlands between Sacramento and the east bay (far east) where migratory birds come back every year. Just because they don't build on the fucking wetlands doesn't mean this constant building isn't going to affect what little nature is left. I'm so fucking sick of seeing my home paved over for profit and I feel so powerless to do anything. Because I am powerless.
As if that weren't enough, we all know this is going to be some walled-off rich-people city where they can escape from us proles, right? Sick shit.
They're building more data centres and California has a water shortage?
California ended it's water shortage in 2022
Ah thanks, I missed that fact.
Now how long will it take the ecology to recover from the extended drought? Hydrologic recovery is only the first step.
5% of California's agriculture isn't "bad soil."
The American Dream was get married and have a job, buy a house, have a family, and retire.
Now it is to be so rich and wealthy that you don't have to care about anyone else.
And if you aren’t getting rich, just don’t care about anyone else. You’re half way there. /s
Told you it's rich doom preppers who will build a literal walled garden.
Yep, it's a return to feudalism and vassalage. A fortress for themselves and their servants (billionaires don't do their own cooking and cleaning, they are important people afterall).
They know they need reasons for people to pledge fealty and they think public transport, apartments and clean energy is enough of a drawcard for their workers. The sad part is that they have eroded workers rights so far that they may well be right. Many other places in the world, these perks are much more normal.
I don’t think Marc Andreessen or Laurene Powell Jobs are planning on living next to Travis Air Force Base themselves.
There has to be more to this story...
If the distinguishing features are public transportation and clean energy, they’re probably not building it to live in themselves. And while there’s a big demand for more housing in the Bay Area generally, Solono County is a bit of a commute for current workers.
It feels like they’re building this as a company town for some yet-to-be-announced new business project that they want to be isolated from existing urban areas.
(edit) I guess I don’t mean "urban areas" so much as areas where employees would have contact with other Silicon Valley firms and culture.
Agreed, regardless of what this is there's a 100% chance that it's a profit scheme and has nothing to do with building anything practical for anyone
Solano isn't any further than any other place in the bay. Generally speaking. I work in SF and live in Vallejo. Almost all of my coworkers commute just as far.
That's really not a decent excuse for making a 2+ hour commute. The insanity of the number of people living in places like Vallejo just to commute to San Francisco is staggering to me. Remote work for anyone that can do it should be the norm. The traffic in the Bay Area is back to being just downright awful. When most people were staying home it was actually nice to drive around to different places.
US cities could be easily compressed to be third their size with people having access to green areas, walkable neighborhoods and basic convenience by the door but having 5 square meters of grass in front of their porch and F-350 parked outside is just too important for them.
In my day they were called New Towns.
They're all shit holes now.
as Adam Something on YouTube puts it, ultra rich people + construction equals dumb shit.
Encircles an air force base. Why would anyone want to live encircling an air force base?
I bet they'll act like people who move next to a farm and complain about the smell.
"Hiiii, we're your neighbors down the road. Do you think you could not fly your little airplanes around? They're awfully loud. Thanks bunches!"
You joke, but the towns of Portola Valley and Woodside (south of SF) are so wealthy and powerful they literally rerouted some plane routes by pulling strings of the FAA because they didn’t like the noise.
They will all serve and work for the military.
Military based economy.
More pro-war people, proxy wars for everyone.
it's going to end up soulless and miserable, no doubt
just a series of mansions connected by roads, completely forgetting any sort of amenities or ability to produce things locally, because rich people think "mom and pop store" is when get your parents to bring things along on their private jet.
Pick one.
They misspelt distopian.
You also misspelt dystopian.
Oh god... Its an epidemic!!!
Both are correct, because there is no universal spelling standard in English.
Even if there was, it would be run by nerds and you can beat them up.
In seriousness, both are correct, but dys is more correct. Dis is the Latin prefix, dys the Greek (from the Latin, language is fun), but utopia is Greek as well.
Dis was nonetheless a common enough spelling before dys became the generally preferred.
I’ve never seen “dis” used, and even if we were using Latin prefixes wouldn’t that mean “benetopia” would be as correct as “eutopia”? It’s pretty clear that OP spelled it wrong which was very funny in context.
Funny you bring that up, because "cacotopia/kakotopia" (re: spelling is largely aesthetics) was actually the first iteration of the idea.
I see no problems with anyone wanting to be fancy and dropping a "Benetopia" in any future manifestos.
In spanish we use "dis"
Do you have a source? I looked it up just in case it was a regional or outdated spelling, but all I could find was "Dustopia", the original spelling of "dystopia", first appeared in Lewis Henry Younge's Utopia: or Apollo's Golden Days in 1747.
My source is the personal experience of having to listen to linguists too much, and having read enough English works and journals prior to the popularization of standardized spellings under the likes of Webster.
They just did whatever they fucking wanted, sometimes, it's actually the worst.
Why improve current cities where people want to live when you can build the cyberpunk future distopian citry right here in your desert backyard.
Just a bunch of rich fucks trying to con other rich fucks and hope to leave whoever is holding their junk bonds in the lurch.
Every generation gets the Galt’s Gulch it deserves
I'm just disappointed they aren't building it underwater.
Night city didn't work out so great in Cyberpunk 2077
This is also giving me BioShok vibes.
This is end game capitalism. They have their own cities with their own laws. You are essentially forced to live and work at the same place and buy your groceries and other essentials from your employees. You’re basically an indentured servant at that moment.
Actually, this is early stage capitalism. Company towns were a thing in the late 19th and early 20th century. Government eventually stepped in, broke up the trusts and made that kind of thing a relic of a worse time.
People have forgotten their past and they're now repeating it. We've been in the second Gilded age for what - 30 years now?
Child labor was just legalized in Kansas I think and it looks like some other Republican states are trying to do the same.
This is what happens when you let the foxes run the hen house.
That was end stage capitalism.
Unions mostly defeated it after that, but then everyone forgot how bad it was and elected Thatcher and Reagan
Well, was it really unions or the bloodshed of the two world wars and fear of the world revolution?
That was when and how the forgetting started.
Exactly why Amazon been taking about building such towns for its workers. I swear if the conservatives get their way and the way things are going I see them trying to find a way legalize slavery again.
Student loans, impossible mortgages, impossible rent, healthcare tied to jobs.... I get that it's not "slavery" but still... It's a little bit slavery.
The first 4 States to ban slavery did so in 2022
Well yes but you're an indentured servant in a utopia.
Pass me the Soma. I'm already a servant. I'll take the orgies and indefinite lifespan too thanks.
Can't wait to owe my soul to the company store
Might as well call it Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.
Why do I have the feeling this is going to turn into some sort of cyberpunk distopia quickly?
because this kind of plan went wrong multiple times before
Night City here we come, choom!
This is literally how Night City was founded in Cyberpunk lore.
Good idea, but it'll fail way before it gets that far
It's already in california.
Utopian city for themselves and the select few
Probably more like a company town type of deal. Musk is building something similar in Texas. The capitalists want to bring the 19th century back.
Can't wait to rent a studio apartment in Bezosville, I hear if you save up your Bezos Bucks you can afford an Amazon Chocolate Snack once a month
Oof I didn't know about this having happened before. I was just looking at Disney building housing and I was a little annoyed they couldn't just pay their associates enough to live on, rather than this method. I hadn't considered how bad this could get.
Even if these companies don't make their own cities and impose stupid regulations against competition within their fake city, I'm really not looking forward to relying on my job for both healthcare AND housing.
Just learned about faculty housing going in at one of the CSU campuses. Of course the marketing has all been positive because housing is such a commodity near universities, and because colleges often pay their teachers shit, even with unions and decent benefits.
This is the benefit of an uneducated population. So that we all forget what things looked like before the labor organizing of the early 20th century.
So working public transportation = utopia ?
How can one country be so disconnected from reality?
Maybe it's a utopia that also has clean energy and public transportation.
Either way, I don't trust the agenda. If they're legitimately trying to help, something good might come of it, but it won't be a utopia as humans will human.
Hopefully some valuable lessons will be learned without too much suffering.
It’s like advertising running water. Utopias are supposed to be IDEAL cities. We’re talking no hunger, no disease, etc. Not just a few bus stations, something present in any major city.
Not enough bus stations in every city. I'm like 5 miles in Florida heat away from the nearest bus station. I am only 2 miles from the nearest grocery store, so I'm not exactly rural. Public transit here is a joke.
Florida is one of those places hostile to anything that helps citizens using tax money.
After all, that's socialism, which is evil. /s
It also has one of the most regressive tax systems in the country.
Philadelphia has an okay transit system, though it is neglected, as does NYC.
That was the gist yes, only americans think this is an acceptable situation.
Propaganda
I'm getting real California City vibes.
how about we build a guillotine on the land instead
Genius. This area is a barren shit hole and a lot of it will be under water within 10 years.
Yeah I really don't understand the location. Anywhere in California is a dumb idea. They will still have to deal with wildfires, drought, earthquakes, high tax rates. Why not Idaho? It's probably even cheaper.
I agree. I live in California. Over the last five years, 70% of my county has been overrun by wildfires.
There's a lot of natural beauty here. But if there's a God, God hates this place.
Idaho seems like a more logical choice.
Plus I've worked at TFB. The vibe I got is that folks there don't have a lot of respect for people who don't have real jobs.
What a waste of good farmland! I can't believe that people do not value the thing that actually sustains us.
Are we talking San Francisco northern California?
Or actual northern California? (above Sacramento)
East of SF like 1 to 1.5 hours depending on traffic.
Okay good... Rich people keep moving to my area where most people aren't as well off.
They keep coming into our small towns and open up little Vinyard places. It's like that episode with SodoSopa, but in real life.
It's cool to see, but it makes the cost of living impossible!
They are John Galt
It's a hideous area. And much of it will likely be underwater in ten years -- just about when they get the final approvals.