Can't find much info on this other than that several billionaires are planning to build their vision of utopia. Sounds like something out of dystopic science fiction. Perhaps one day it will be surrounded with laser fences and guarded by robots.
Given what's written on the site, perhaps you could at least let the democratic process go a few steps down the road before assuming that what your Huffington Post betters told you to believe is actually true?
I know nothing of them but a quick perusal of their website makes them look like not much more than a fancy real estate developer.
In fact the imagery on the website furthers my point. Looks like modern apartment buildings and malls, very similar in feel to those in Demolition Man.
They are one of the pioneers of 'master planned' communities, in that they owned almost all of the land that became the city Irvine. They carefully selected various lots for types of homes, which areas would be luxury homes, which would be industrial, which areas would be 'cheaper' homes and the like.
It is a fancy real estate development company, but they're really building cities and reshaping them in a holistic way.
Don't forget the intermediate step: startup employees rent housing in SF, rental income goes to local landlords who bought their property after working for VC backed startups in a previous generation
I don't think you understand what a NIMBY is. They're fine with housing developments, halfway houses, public works projects, etc as long as they are "not in their backyard". Everything you're saying is 100% compatible with them, and in fact you're describing the exact hypocrisy for which they are labeled "NIMBY". Many are liberals who avowedly support statewide legislation for these things and then make the actual implementation of them impossible by constantly putting up legal red tape around their "backyards".
So, to reiterate, you're literally just describing a NIMBY.
This is a common misconception. Corporate directors do not have any legal requirement to maximize profits. Directors' fiduciary duty is not only to shareholders but to the corporate entity itself. They are required to act in the best interest of the company, and companies can have many goals other than shareholder profit. Of course money is the lifeblood for any corporation, and a powerful incentive for decision making, but there's nothing legal that forces a company to squeeze profits at the cost of all else.
There are a lot of place just like this that already exist in the US. Travel to the Midwest you will find towns and cities with this vision already in place.
Believe or not, but the majority of companies in the US respect the place they operate despite what you might think.
A book I recommend is the Geography of Nowhere. This book addresses the question, what makes an ideal community? Are they legal to build? and why is America so boxy? It also talks about planned communities, and some cities in America that work, like Savannah, and Portland.
tldr. we were great at planning cities up until the 20's then the depression happened, then WW2 happened. These two events killed off anyone in America who could build a city, the car was invented, and then horrible urban sprawl happened.
I keep thinking that as people lose faith in regular cities they are going to want to live in a Disneyland. Reminds me of Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Traveling into the general city outside the gates was a big deal.
What this "California Forever" proposal most reminds me of though is "Golden Oaks", which is Disney's latest attempt, less like a city, more like a large-scale retirement community.
Having visited Celebration, Florida, it actually looks pretty nice. However, I seem to recall reading that people ended up doing a lot of driving to big box stores to buy things at a reasonable price.
I don’t see a problem with it. Cities are machines that need an overarching plan to be optimized. They don’t just happen. Expecting them to just happen is how you get a disaster like LA.
The same crops can be grown cheaply elsewhere. Artificially subsidizing California agriculture with unsustainably cheap water undercuts growers in other markets.
Stop giving insanely cheap water to large growers with inefficient water usage practices, and the market will quickly right itself and move production elsewhere. At a more sustainable price, with less ecological imbalance.
For some reason, the same utilities in California sell the same water for agricultural use for 1/20 - 1/10 the price as they sell it to residential or commercial users. To me, this screams inefficiency.
I suspect that agricultural users are being charged too little, and so they have too little incentive to be efficient. (Or they are pumping groundwater and paying nothing.) And residential users are being charged more than the service really ought to cost.
The only semi-legitimate justification I can come up with is that there are fixed costs associated with water users, and each residential user uses much less water than an agricultural user. But there are better ways to handle this.
What's the water level like coming down the rivers there? I'm not from the area, but looking on satellite views, there are what look like wetlands nearby, a shipping channel going past. No reservoirs in the immediate area.
I quickly googled and it suggests Sacramento pulls from the rivers and underground, SF gets its supply from Hetch Hetchy.
This area has an abundance of water. An over abundance of water. In fact any rational analysis would conclude that water is the main natural hazard of this area.
I understand why it is so, but it’s weird that this is framed as a way to help Solano county residents with their immediate term problems when it’s pretty blatantly intended to be a new technology hub. It mentions jobs but you know… not what kind of jobs, or how Solano county residents will fill them.
I guess they had to scramble to hire some PR firm to spin their plans to Solano County residents and had to come up with something. But completely glossing over what they actually intend to do - attract techies and technology jobs - seems kind of like an insult to the intelligence of the people this is addressed to.
1) there are technology workers in solano county that commute to walnut creek or SF. 2) technology workers spend money at local restaurants. Workers in solano county that work in service industry jobs with 60 minute commutes to napa, walnut creek, or SF for high wages instead have well paying job opportunities within a 20 minute commute.
Everything a rural county can produce is a necessary input for a city. There will be some new jobs, cities have all kinds of jobs that a rural area doesn't need. And there will be some increased need for the existing jobs.
I kind of tend to agree with your skepticism / consternation broadly, but it does give _some_ indication as towards the types of jobs:
> This project can bring new employers to Solano, and independently create thousands of permanent, good-paying local jobs in construction, energy, services, and other industries. We are also interested in building trade schools and other educational paths that help Solano residents learn the skills they need to get those new jobs and build long-lasting careers
Quote from the website: "Our goal is to build homes of different sizes and price points integrated in the same walkable neighborhoods, with homes, shopping, dining, and schools all within walking distance. We are also interested in exploring new paths to homeownership for Solano residents through down-payment assistance programs and other solutions"
This sounds a lot like a community development project. This sounds very similar to other community development projects like Levittown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
I don't think the investors in this project are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts even though the brochure website seems to imply that. If I am not mistaken this is a money making venture. They will provide value however by investing and building up Solano.
Redlining is awful, but it's sad that is really the only topic of discussion in that article. I'd like to know more about how they turned out, how they were received at the time, etc.
The wikipedia link above (that I assume you are talking about) says in part:
Built after World War II for returning white veterans and their new families, the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments.
This is not accurate. World War II was the de facto end of The Great Depression and to their shock they were able to produce "more guns and more butter" because unemployment rates had been as high as 30 percent in the previous decade.
There was a tremendous need for housing. During the Great Depression, some people lived in the basement of their house and rented out the house to try to not lose the house. Others moved every thirteen months because if you could pay your rent on time and in full for twelve months in a row, you could get the thirteenth months free.
Levittown was the birth of the modern suburb and it helped resolve a massive need for new housing. It was so successful, we are still haunted by this ghost of Christmas past.
The entire country turned its collective will away from the newly finished war and towards building new housing. They created new policies and financing mechanisms and to this day it is challenging to build anything in the US other than suburban-style single family detached homes because our entire financing and policy infrastructure and collective subconscious supports the idea that a home in the 'burbs is the ideal home.
So we have grown 1950s-style suburban homes to be ugly homes on steroids, a la McMansions, and can't manage to build much else and then we wonder why there are so many homeless.
We are victims of the overwhelming success of Levittown.
I'm aware that racism tended to exclude people of color. I don't think this had much to do with it being the suburbs. If we had built towers of apartments in downtowns, I imagine redlining would have still kept out people of color.
Racism is not why they were suburbs. Them being suburbs is not primarily why people of color were excluded. Racism is people being shitty and they were going to be shitty in this particular way in that particular era regardless of the style of home which helped fill the overwhelming need this country had for additional housing and it finally had the means to build some of that for at least some people.
That's an...interesting take on redlining that avoids the shitty parts of the aforementioned "shittiness". The issue isn't simply that the shittiness exists, but how it's lead to current economic outcomes.
No, it doesn't. It just says that hating on suburbs because they are associated with racism doesn't fix it, so please don't get all up in my business about how much you associate suburbs with white supremacist shittiness.
That shittiness would have been associated with any housing type they built at that time to solve the housing issue. Sorry for the negative association and I wish we would find a path forward on more diversity in housing options, more walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, more genuinely affordable small spaces, more homes where you can easily live without a car, etc. instead of remaining mired in this same argument about who to blame and who to hate on.
Hating on me doesn't get more housing built. Full stop.
So please kindly find something else to say about my comment. Because this take is not productive.
Moral grandstanding on behalf of historically questionable narratives doesn’t get more housing built either, no matter how much righteous indignation is feigned.
There’s one weird trick to avoiding unsheltered folks in your area: build shelters (or ideally, affordable housing). Major metro areas in California hate it!
There's an even weirder trick: If you don't want homeless people everywhere, build enough housing of the right type where more people can afford housing instead of being expected to stay in the shelter system.
Strangely, the major issue homeless people all have in common is not drugs or mental health issues. It's -- drum roll please -- a lack of housing.
And studies show this strongly correlates to a lack of housing stock and a lack of affordable housing. (Tip: Simply building more housing of pretty much any kind helps bring rents down. Something having to do with market forces. Supply and demand. Yadda.)
I find it a bit of a weird comment. As my city (outside the US) releases land bordering the outskirts of the suburbs for housing development, no one says "What's their plan for unsheltered folks?"
They're releasing land for developers to increase housing stock and hopefully improve housing affordability. Creating shelters. That's reasonable and realistic behaviour. They mention potential schemes for residents becoming home owners (rent to own, something like NRAS in Australia, etc).
Maybe there's an opportunity for charities or government entities to speak with them about a mix of affordable stock, but usually that's done as a trade off for concessions. And not going to appear in the first brochureware site.
Unsheltered is more accurate. For many people “home” has a connotation which is broader than shelter. It might be the place where you feel welcomed or comfortable.
I'd say their plan is to build a lot of houses of varying sizes and styles. Most of the other methods you'd typically use to address homelessness (safety nets, mental health funding, drugs legalisation/treatment and the like) are broader issues.
I understand the skepticism and all, but I’ve seen something similar-ish work in South Lake Union in Seattle.
It was a wasted neighborhood, with parking lots, old motels, fast food, and a Hooters.
Two billionaires that I’m not super fond of, Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos, put a bunch of money on the line to make a pretty nice, walkable area, with restaurants and parks and whatnot. I’m glad they did.
Who knows if these people can pull this off - it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t - but I wish them the best.
California, legendary NIMBYs included, built the most prosperous and popular state in the nation, with its largest and fastest growing companies, with more innovation and scientific discovery than any other part of the country, with by far the best public university system in the country, and with maximal tolerance for immigrants and people with uncommon religious beliefs, sexual and gender inclinations, and approaches to work and life generally.
It was historically flexible enough about development to accommodate more people than any other state. I wouldn’t be so cynical as to think that greenfield development in a place where basically no one is now will not win over a substantial part of the population (even if some of the supporters would oppose the project if it was in their own metaphorical backyard).
As an ex Californian I know as well as anyone how easy it can be to take the state’s many unique strengths for granted when you live there. But believe me, you miss a lot of it when you leave, and you also realize most other states face similar problems, or will, including with nimbyism, homelessness, addiction, you name it.
California is great and retains the capacity to surprise. And I think one of the strongest pieces of evidence for that is even the critics building this development away from everyone else in the state still called it California Forever.
the californians who made california are mostly dead now, have you been paying attention? prop 13, no housing ever, all transit projects + HSR ruined by local politics and deep suited corruption etc etc. california is circling the drain.
think how great california could have been if it hadn't stopped growing and the immense economic output had been harnessed over the past decades. SF would be amongst the largest cities in the world.
That sounds like a worse alternate history, there's no way SF could retain what made it unique if it became 'amongst the largest cities in the world'.
For example, even if only 10% of new residents insisted on driving a car no matter what for daily transportation, due to whatever personal reasons, then that would still be enough to put the city in permanent gridlock all day.
In case anyone is curious, private automobile use went up by 13% from 2019 to 2021 (and by even more since 2017). Driving alone is the most popular form of travel, followed by Uber/Lyft.
Plenty of room. Panhandle upper deck, pave Dolores and GG parks. Bulldoze The Mission and Hayes like the Fillmore was... Plenty of room for flying car landing pads and Manhattanization. Utopia denied.
Residents don't "insist on driving" in a vacuum. You build the city you want and people move into it. If you don't build car habitats, you won't get cars.
Anyway, SF has desicively destroyed whatever formerly made it unique. The arts community has been extirpated by the housing cost crisis. Even the gay rights activists don't live there any more. The whole city has been hollowed out by Boomers like Cleve Jones who live elsewhere and maintain their vacant pieds-à-terre in prime SF neighborhoods.
The problem will not be so severe if the problem was not both ways, nimbys and developers.
I remember Sunnyvale downtown projects were abandoned you can explain it but the reality is they (developers and city) did not meet their commitments and it leaves a bad taste. I saw aggressive campaigning myself in front of Cupertino library which was in line with reports of aggression and manhandling that the opposition to Valco talked about. And I supported the NIMBYs even though I was a renter because the opposition was just so ham handed.
So when citizens feel overpowered, in mega cities they don't have much choice but in mini cities they can have a say, and they do revolt and get called nimbys. If we had double the nimbys maybe the construction corporates will try a better faith negotiation with them. No?
It was a wasted neighborhood because Vulcan bought it all up and then sat on it for years while the land appreciated.
There was a good Joeys, Chandler’s crab house, and more which died during the wait. Now it’s Amazon central with carbon copies of restaurants from other places and ridiculous lines. Not a locals spot. It does look better now, and is walkable during work, but to find many day-to-day basic services requires leaving the neighborhood.
Originally there was a Central Park plan that Vulcan proposed, but when that didn’t pan out they gave up on development for a couple decades.
Denny Park used to be a huge green space for gathering, with outdoor movies and concerts, but those parcels have been bought from the city and sold against the wish of the commons. They’ve also closed the basketball courts (!?).
> The person at most fault for the failure of the Seattle Commons is Paul Allen. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft asked voters to approve $250 million in new taxes to build the park. During the second Commons campaign Allen made $1 billion during a stock rally on a single day.
> the Commons-less SLU is a neighborhood without a center, a heart, or a great park.
> The person at most fault for the failure of the Seattle Commons is Paul Allen. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft asked voters to approve $250 million in new taxes to build the park. During the second Commons campaign Allen made $1 billion during a stock rally on a single day.
This is extremely dishonest reporting. So what that he made a billion in a single day? He probably also lost a billion some other day...
If he didn't make a billion in a day, would he not be at fault for the failure?
Vulcan removed commons areas and built a limited amount of housing that they profit from. In 2013 Amazon had 15,000 employees in Seattle. Now they employ 55,000 at the downtown Seattle campus.
Was there ever a hooters in SLU? I only remember the Red Robin, as a seattlite, I didn’t even see a Hooters until I did an internship in Florida in 1995.
It was on the first floor under (and predated) the Joey’s. That area used to be an awesome spot to watch floatplanes take off and land while having happy hour.
Now the Kraken office took over the Joey restaurant spot. And nothing is in the Hooters or Chandlers locations. Duke’s also moved out of that dock area to a larger location east but the service leaves something to be desired.
That sounds like after my time then. I left the Seattle in 1998 for grad school, and didn’t get to see how SLU evolved in the next 10 years (just moved back in 2017, so knew before and after, but not during).
This holding is 500x larger than SLU and has zero access to any infrastructure. SLU is a kilometer from the center of a top-10 American city. Apples and oranges.
I wouldn't exactly call SLU a "neighborhood." They chased out the poor people who used to live there, built Amazon's headquarters and a bunch of ugly condos and apartments that will probably fall down in a decade.
If SLU is your model for what California Forever could be... uh... I don't think that many people will willingly choose to live there.
My ideal community is a college campus. I know there's a lot not to like, but they've ruined regular cities and towns for me.
Perfectly manicured lawns and open green spaces. Everyone has a purpose. Housing and facilities are planned to meet needs. Walkable environment where cars are often times banned. Wifi everywhere. Health services are provided for all residents. Maker spaces are still a thing on campuses providing access to fabrication equipment, 3d printers, etc. Libraries with access to any book or journal article you could want. There's a strong sense of community and comradery - even strangers feel connected to one another. Even the police are nicer, as they try to build a lot of good will with the community.
It's easy to meet people and engage in activities and hobbies. You can walk to a show put on by the local orchestra or drama group, go to a game played by the local team, eat food prepared by the local culinary students, or visit an art exhibition featuring world-famous or local artists. Or you can get involved in any of these activities by playing music or sports or making art!
And that's not to mention the world-class lectures and research that happen all the time.
When I graduated and went into the "real world" I was isolated and alone. Everything felt so chaotic and unorganized, and a huge step down from the kind of close community I was used to. In the "real world" everything seems centered around commerce and consumerism instead of people. I was unable to find anything like I had experienced in college, so I just went back and never left.
The ideal housing is an overpriced community of highly aspirational young people that effectively violates federal housings laws by pretending elderly people and families with young children don't exist?
I dont see how it scales outside of a college community.
Well I don't know about other places, but for us we have a daycare on campus that's affordable and available for anyone in the community. We have family housing that is multigenerational (many international students bring their parents with them and they live together). We have plenty of older community members of course - many of our teaching faculty are retirees, and emeritus professors are some of the oldest people on the planet!
Scaling is a problem though, that's for sure, although many colleges are in fact towns outright (like Penn State). However, there's a big incentive for colleges to turn into hedge funds/real-estate holding firms which works against the educational mission of universities IMO.
As for overpriced... I mean, you get what you pay for. I don't think it's overpriced because I've tried the alternative, and I've found it lacking. Although I see several avenues to cut costs while keeping service levels.
But if you think college campuses are just for the students, you're missing half the picture!
In the California suburb I live in (read: you need to drive everywhere) my rent is more than twice as much as what I paid on my walkable college campus.
The college I went to FINALLY tore down the slums south of campus (I guess maybe that was the city that condemned them) and built more, affordable student housing. It only took them 100 years.
I guess my point is, even college administrators from Texas can eventually learn that affordable housing for students and staff can be a benefit.
Agreed, suburban US lifestyle really aggravates that sense of isolation.
You go from your two car garage to Costco and back on an SUV with nothing in between but roads, gas stations and the occasional McDonald's drive-through.
A college campus and smaller European towns are the polar opposite of that, with mixed zoning, everything being walkable/bikeable, and everybody intermingling in the same space.
Those roads have plenty between the gas stations and McDonald's - other people's McMansions. The reason everything is so spread out is so that everyone can get their 4-bedroom house with the car garage and a generous yard, possibly a pool. Which is what kills density. It's a tragedy of the Commons, in part, because it's a problem because everyone was sold that same dream.
Here's a random musing: I recently thought about joining a fraternal organization just to have a ready-made friends group. Granted, they all seem WAY more extrovert than me, and the group is one of the ones with a mystos, so I don't think it's going to be a solution for EVERYBODY.
Maybe we need something like "Tech Masons" where you have a built-in social group, continuing ed and everyone promises not to disrespect each others' tech stack decisions. "Oh. So you're going with COBOL? I'm sure there are aspects of the project I don't understand that make COBOL the ideal language for that project. Let us grab a beer and talk about inverting trees, brother (and/or sister.)"
And how will kids be supported on such a campus? Among the ones I have seen, there were hardly any amenities (daycares, playgrounds, preschools and schools) for kids. Also, loud parties every weekend.
Well, all campuses are different. But see my reply to the other person who asked about that. We do have playgrounds, and a daycare for all, and 500 acres of athletic fields for football, soccer, cross country, lacrosse, baseball, etc. There's a community garden as well that kids get involved with to learn about gardening.
As for schools, there is an elementary, middle, and high school within a 3 block radius of the campus. Obviously these are funded by the city, but a lot of that funding of course comes from the school and employees through their taxes, so it's a symbiotic relationship. Many faculty here make it their mission to outreach to these local schools. We have events for children all summer long where they engage in physics, chemistry, computer science / robotics, environmental engineering, art, and music projects etc.
Loud parties are annoying but are only held off campus. There are noise ordinances on campus.
I was going to say "meh. you have to try harder," but the last paragraph made sense to me. The "real world" will make you feel isolated and alone unless you put in A LOT of work to find a social / friends group. And I think you have a point that college campuses are sort of set up to make socializing easier (if not easy.)
So... congrats... you changed someone's opinion on HN comments. I'm not sure it happens THAT often.
I welcome competition to the towns between SF and San Jose. They are very expensive to live in, and the amount of municipal taxes I pay for bad public schools is scandalous. I suspect bad governance that managed to get away with it because of tech money and the good times rolling.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadyou got me pegged for the wrong political party. and it aint red or blue.
In fact the imagery on the website furthers my point. Looks like modern apartment buildings and malls, very similar in feel to those in Demolition Man.
They are one of the pioneers of 'master planned' communities, in that they owned almost all of the land that became the city Irvine. They carefully selected various lots for types of homes, which areas would be luxury homes, which would be industrial, which areas would be 'cheaper' homes and the like.
It is a fancy real estate development company, but they're really building cities and reshaping them in a holistic way.
https://fortune.com/2022/08/06/marc-andreessen-billionaire-n...
So, to reiterate, you're literally just describing a NIMBY.
Believe or not, but the majority of companies in the US respect the place they operate despite what you might think.
tldr. we were great at planning cities up until the 20's then the depression happened, then WW2 happened. These two events killed off anyone in America who could build a city, the car was invented, and then horrible urban sprawl happened.
Great book.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/geography-of-nowhere-the-rise-...
Can't recommend his blog enough: https://kunstler.com/writings/clusterfuck-nation/ .
if the car hadn't been invented yet, how do we know those purported to know how to build cities would know what to do with the cars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)
Later they built they town of "Celebration", but have divested most of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida
What this "California Forever" proposal most reminds me of though is "Golden Oaks", which is Disney's latest attempt, less like a city, more like a large-scale retirement community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Oak_at_Walt_Disney_Worl...
Stop giving insanely cheap water to large growers with inefficient water usage practices, and the market will quickly right itself and move production elsewhere. At a more sustainable price, with less ecological imbalance.
I suspect that agricultural users are being charged too little, and so they have too little incentive to be efficient. (Or they are pumping groundwater and paying nothing.) And residential users are being charged more than the service really ought to cost.
The only semi-legitimate justification I can come up with is that there are fixed costs associated with water users, and each residential user uses much less water than an agricultural user. But there are better ways to handle this.
I'm rather sure that America/the world could easily survive a California without crops without much fuss.
https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
I quickly googled and it suggests Sacramento pulls from the rivers and underground, SF gets its supply from Hetch Hetchy.
I guess they had to scramble to hire some PR firm to spin their plans to Solano County residents and had to come up with something. But completely glossing over what they actually intend to do - attract techies and technology jobs - seems kind of like an insult to the intelligence of the people this is addressed to.
> This project can bring new employers to Solano, and independently create thousands of permanent, good-paying local jobs in construction, energy, services, and other industries. We are also interested in building trade schools and other educational paths that help Solano residents learn the skills they need to get those new jobs and build long-lasting careers
This sounds a lot like a community development project. This sounds very similar to other community development projects like Levittown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
I don't think the investors in this project are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts even though the brochure website seems to imply that. If I am not mistaken this is a money making venture. They will provide value however by investing and building up Solano.
Built after World War II for returning white veterans and their new families, the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments.
This is not accurate. World War II was the de facto end of The Great Depression and to their shock they were able to produce "more guns and more butter" because unemployment rates had been as high as 30 percent in the previous decade.
There was a tremendous need for housing. During the Great Depression, some people lived in the basement of their house and rented out the house to try to not lose the house. Others moved every thirteen months because if you could pay your rent on time and in full for twelve months in a row, you could get the thirteenth months free.
Levittown was the birth of the modern suburb and it helped resolve a massive need for new housing. It was so successful, we are still haunted by this ghost of Christmas past.
The entire country turned its collective will away from the newly finished war and towards building new housing. They created new policies and financing mechanisms and to this day it is challenging to build anything in the US other than suburban-style single family detached homes because our entire financing and policy infrastructure and collective subconscious supports the idea that a home in the 'burbs is the ideal home.
So we have grown 1950s-style suburban homes to be ugly homes on steroids, a la McMansions, and can't manage to build much else and then we wonder why there are so many homeless.
We are victims of the overwhelming success of Levittown.
I'm aware that racism tended to exclude people of color. I don't think this had much to do with it being the suburbs. If we had built towers of apartments in downtowns, I imagine redlining would have still kept out people of color.
Racism is not why they were suburbs. Them being suburbs is not primarily why people of color were excluded. Racism is people being shitty and they were going to be shitty in this particular way in that particular era regardless of the style of home which helped fill the overwhelming need this country had for additional housing and it finally had the means to build some of that for at least some people.
That shittiness would have been associated with any housing type they built at that time to solve the housing issue. Sorry for the negative association and I wish we would find a path forward on more diversity in housing options, more walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, more genuinely affordable small spaces, more homes where you can easily live without a car, etc. instead of remaining mired in this same argument about who to blame and who to hate on.
Hating on me doesn't get more housing built. Full stop.
So please kindly find something else to say about my comment. Because this take is not productive.
The AI art definitely gives it a beautiful dystopian / 1984 vibe.
Strangely, the major issue homeless people all have in common is not drugs or mental health issues. It's -- drum roll please -- a lack of housing.
And studies show this strongly correlates to a lack of housing stock and a lack of affordable housing. (Tip: Simply building more housing of pretty much any kind helps bring rents down. Something having to do with market forces. Supply and demand. Yadda.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Are you say that would be reason not to build this?
They're releasing land for developers to increase housing stock and hopefully improve housing affordability. Creating shelters. That's reasonable and realistic behaviour. They mention potential schemes for residents becoming home owners (rent to own, something like NRAS in Australia, etc).
Maybe there's an opportunity for charities or government entities to speak with them about a mix of affordable stock, but usually that's done as a trade off for concessions. And not going to appear in the first brochureware site.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Read somewhere the land acquired was 2x the size of the City of San Francisco.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/business/california-solan...
It was a wasted neighborhood, with parking lots, old motels, fast food, and a Hooters.
Two billionaires that I’m not super fond of, Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos, put a bunch of money on the line to make a pretty nice, walkable area, with restaurants and parks and whatnot. I’m glad they did.
Who knows if these people can pull this off - it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t - but I wish them the best.
California, legendary NIMBYs included, built the most prosperous and popular state in the nation, with its largest and fastest growing companies, with more innovation and scientific discovery than any other part of the country, with by far the best public university system in the country, and with maximal tolerance for immigrants and people with uncommon religious beliefs, sexual and gender inclinations, and approaches to work and life generally.
It was historically flexible enough about development to accommodate more people than any other state. I wouldn’t be so cynical as to think that greenfield development in a place where basically no one is now will not win over a substantial part of the population (even if some of the supporters would oppose the project if it was in their own metaphorical backyard).
As an ex Californian I know as well as anyone how easy it can be to take the state’s many unique strengths for granted when you live there. But believe me, you miss a lot of it when you leave, and you also realize most other states face similar problems, or will, including with nimbyism, homelessness, addiction, you name it.
California is great and retains the capacity to surprise. And I think one of the strongest pieces of evidence for that is even the critics building this development away from everyone else in the state still called it California Forever.
think how great california could have been if it hadn't stopped growing and the immense economic output had been harnessed over the past decades. SF would be amongst the largest cities in the world.
For example, even if only 10% of new residents insisted on driving a car no matter what for daily transportation, due to whatever personal reasons, then that would still be enough to put the city in permanent gridlock all day.
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/how-people-traveled-through-san-f...
Plenty of room. Panhandle upper deck, pave Dolores and GG parks. Bulldoze The Mission and Hayes like the Fillmore was... Plenty of room for flying car landing pads and Manhattanization. Utopia denied.
Anyway, SF has desicively destroyed whatever formerly made it unique. The arts community has been extirpated by the housing cost crisis. Even the gay rights activists don't live there any more. The whole city has been hollowed out by Boomers like Cleve Jones who live elsewhere and maintain their vacant pieds-à-terre in prime SF neighborhoods.
I remember Sunnyvale downtown projects were abandoned you can explain it but the reality is they (developers and city) did not meet their commitments and it leaves a bad taste. I saw aggressive campaigning myself in front of Cupertino library which was in line with reports of aggression and manhandling that the opposition to Valco talked about. And I supported the NIMBYs even though I was a renter because the opposition was just so ham handed.
So when citizens feel overpowered, in mega cities they don't have much choice but in mini cities they can have a say, and they do revolt and get called nimbys. If we had double the nimbys maybe the construction corporates will try a better faith negotiation with them. No?
There was a good Joeys, Chandler’s crab house, and more which died during the wait. Now it’s Amazon central with carbon copies of restaurants from other places and ridiculous lines. Not a locals spot. It does look better now, and is walkable during work, but to find many day-to-day basic services requires leaving the neighborhood.
Originally there was a Central Park plan that Vulcan proposed, but when that didn’t pan out they gave up on development for a couple decades.
Denny Park used to be a huge green space for gathering, with outdoor movies and concerts, but those parcels have been bought from the city and sold against the wish of the commons. They’ve also closed the basketball courts (!?).
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/vulcan-plans-to-replac...
https://www.globest.com/2022/04/19/biomed-realty-buys-seattl...
https://crosscut.com/2015/12/south-lake-union-could-have-bee...
> The person at most fault for the failure of the Seattle Commons is Paul Allen. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft asked voters to approve $250 million in new taxes to build the park. During the second Commons campaign Allen made $1 billion during a stock rally on a single day.
> the Commons-less SLU is a neighborhood without a center, a heart, or a great park.
This is extremely dishonest reporting. So what that he made a billion in a single day? He probably also lost a billion some other day...
If he didn't make a billion in a day, would he not be at fault for the failure?
Seattle needs housing more than anything, and I’m glad they added a ton when they developed the area.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/us/as-amazon-stretches-se...
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/community/amazon-return-to-...
South Lake Union has added ~6000 units in the last decade.
https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/WA/Seattle/South...
https://kidder.com/wp-content/uploads/trend_article/2023-Apa...
Employment to housing is like a 6:1 ratio. All those units are full. There is less housing per employee in the area now.
Now the Kraken office took over the Joey restaurant spot. And nothing is in the Hooters or Chandlers locations. Duke’s also moved out of that dock area to a larger location east but the service leaves something to be desired.
If SLU is your model for what California Forever could be... uh... I don't think that many people will willingly choose to live there.
How so?
Dollars don't live in cities, people do.
Perfectly manicured lawns and open green spaces. Everyone has a purpose. Housing and facilities are planned to meet needs. Walkable environment where cars are often times banned. Wifi everywhere. Health services are provided for all residents. Maker spaces are still a thing on campuses providing access to fabrication equipment, 3d printers, etc. Libraries with access to any book or journal article you could want. There's a strong sense of community and comradery - even strangers feel connected to one another. Even the police are nicer, as they try to build a lot of good will with the community.
It's easy to meet people and engage in activities and hobbies. You can walk to a show put on by the local orchestra or drama group, go to a game played by the local team, eat food prepared by the local culinary students, or visit an art exhibition featuring world-famous or local artists. Or you can get involved in any of these activities by playing music or sports or making art!
And that's not to mention the world-class lectures and research that happen all the time.
When I graduated and went into the "real world" I was isolated and alone. Everything felt so chaotic and unorganized, and a huge step down from the kind of close community I was used to. In the "real world" everything seems centered around commerce and consumerism instead of people. I was unable to find anything like I had experienced in college, so I just went back and never left.
Don't want to have to cook all the time, nor go to fast food, et al. Having a default place on site is crucial.
I dont see how it scales outside of a college community.
Scaling is a problem though, that's for sure, although many colleges are in fact towns outright (like Penn State). However, there's a big incentive for colleges to turn into hedge funds/real-estate holding firms which works against the educational mission of universities IMO.
As for overpriced... I mean, you get what you pay for. I don't think it's overpriced because I've tried the alternative, and I've found it lacking. Although I see several avenues to cut costs while keeping service levels.
But if you think college campuses are just for the students, you're missing half the picture!
I guess my point is, even college administrators from Texas can eventually learn that affordable housing for students and staff can be a benefit.
You go from your two car garage to Costco and back on an SUV with nothing in between but roads, gas stations and the occasional McDonald's drive-through.
A college campus and smaller European towns are the polar opposite of that, with mixed zoning, everything being walkable/bikeable, and everybody intermingling in the same space.
Maybe we need something like "Tech Masons" where you have a built-in social group, continuing ed and everyone promises not to disrespect each others' tech stack decisions. "Oh. So you're going with COBOL? I'm sure there are aspects of the project I don't understand that make COBOL the ideal language for that project. Let us grab a beer and talk about inverting trees, brother (and/or sister.)"
As for schools, there is an elementary, middle, and high school within a 3 block radius of the campus. Obviously these are funded by the city, but a lot of that funding of course comes from the school and employees through their taxes, so it's a symbiotic relationship. Many faculty here make it their mission to outreach to these local schools. We have events for children all summer long where they engage in physics, chemistry, computer science / robotics, environmental engineering, art, and music projects etc.
Loud parties are annoying but are only held off campus. There are noise ordinances on campus.
So... congrats... you changed someone's opinion on HN comments. I'm not sure it happens THAT often.