In 2017, venture capitalist billionaire Michael Moritz set out to build an entirely new city in the Bay Area, teaming up with several other tech billionaires including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Laurene Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. Over the past five years, their coalition, Flannery Associates, has paid for over $800 million to buy 55,000 acres of land in Solano County, an area north and east of San Francisco.
It’s hardly surprising that trying to turn this massive plot of drought-ridden and somewhat remote land into a metropolis is a terrible idea and a clear display of tech giant hubris. In their haste to realize their dream of a green, utopian city, Flannery Associates only ended up with a half-baked, idealistic plan that failed to properly plan out both logistics and legalities.
To begin with, the plot of farmland the new city will be situated on is simply not suitable for any sort of urban development. Historically, early civilizations and modern metropolises rose up around sources of water, which is the most important resource to sustain life. Solano County has historically been prone to severe drought, and has no access to large sources of freshwater. In modern times, cities end up borrowing water from neighboring cities, but other Solano County cities such as Rio Vista have already stated that they are unwilling to share what little water they have.
To make matters worse, PG&E, the primary utility company in the Bay Area, does not have the infrastructure or ability to provide power for an entirely new city. In the past six years, PG&E has been the cause for over 30 wildfires and paid $13.5 billion in damages. Its faulty electrical system has malfunctioned countless times in the past, causing mass outages and fires.
PG&E is already purposefully cutting off power to certain power districts in times such as high winds or temperatures, and the occurrence of these will only increase as their already strained infrastructure is stretched even further. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and Flannery Associates is not being responsible for where the proposed city’s power comes from.
Government officials have also said they are reluctant to grant Flannery Associates the rights to start large-scale urban development. The plot of land lies near Travis Air Force Base, and building an urban metropolis with skyscrapers will hinder its ability to conduct aircraft operations. Building a huge city next to an Air Force base isn’t the best idea for security, either, especially considering that Travis AFB operates the newest aircraft in the nation’s arsenal.
“It’s very concerning. The land they purchased is right up against the fence on three sides of the base, positioning whoever is there to be in a place to gain intelligence or information, or possibly to disrupt operations,” California congressman John Garamendi told NBC Bay Area.
Garamendi also expressed concerns about Flannery Associates, which he considers to be a shady organization at best, and at worst a Trojan Horse for other countries to spy on the U.S.
“The bottom-line question is: Who the hell are these people? We still don’t know,” Garamendi said. Without the authorities’ stamp of approval, Flannery Associate’s utopian city project is setting itself up for legal trouble and failure in the future.
If any city is to be economically successful, it also should have easy access to major highways. The plot of land in question only has a 2 lane highway going through it, which would make traffic absolutely miserable. Commuting to nearby cities would become nearly impossible.
The billionaires’ intentions seem good in one sense, as they say they want to solve California’s housing crisis through the nice gesture of building an entire city for people to live in. The crucial thing that they fail to consider, however, is the fact that living in their city is logistically infeasible, not to mention an incredibly unattractive option to most Californians.
There are so many factors people take into consideration when moving, including geographical location, price and school districts. The only one of these factors Flannery Associates realistically provide is relatively cheap housing compared to the rest of the Bay Area, so what about the terrible location and lack of any schools? Even if they do build schools, there is no guarantee that those schools will be good anytime soon.
Instead of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a lost cause, these tech billionaires should consider alternate solutions to help alleviate the housing crisis, such as helping fund the building of the 3.5 million homes desperately needed by 2025 in the cities that do already exist. Alternate solutions include subsidizing smaller companies for suburban development, distributing relief funds to those in need, and developing more apartment buildings, which are cheap and can house a greater number of people.
As for their “utopian” city, it’s about time they realized that they’re fighting for a lost cause in all the wrong ways.
