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
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.
Lol again with this? Wealthy fucks have been trying this since the 1700s. It never works.
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.
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.
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.
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.
