Tech riches want to build utopia near San Francisco

Several tech billionaires want to build a brand new dream city outside of San Francisco. Many are against the proposal and believe that the investments are needed for other purposes.

Solano County residents now get to vote on the proposal.

A number of dollar billionaires from, among other things, the tech industry in Silicon Valley have agreed to create a brand new metropolis between San Francisco and Sacramento on the west coast of the United States. The proposal in Solano county has sparked fierce debate, several lawsuits and enormous speculation, writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

On Wednesday, the proposal was formalized when it was decided that a vote should be held in connection with the autumn presidential and congressional elections.

No name

The new district, which has not yet been given a name, will be located just north of Rio Vista, where the company California Forever has quietly bought up land worth the equivalent of around eight to ten billion kroner over the past five years, reports the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.

The city is supposed to house around 400,000 inhabitants when it is finished, and will include everything a city should have: schools, public transport and parks. In a first part, it is about 50,000 inhabitants.

The city must also be built in an environmentally friendly and pedestrian-friendly way, according to Jan Sramek, CEO of California Forever, who sees a dream-like utopia ahead of him.

Receives criticism

But critics rage. Landowners, many of them farmers who had livestock and crops on the land, want to stop the construction.

The new landowners have been sued by residents. Countersuits have been filed by California Forever that those who sold land have pushed up prices in a kind of cartel formation.

But the more philosophical question of the city’s being has been debated at the same time in the densely populated Bay Area region around the San Francisco Bay.

A former Solano County official, Duane Kromm, is critical of the owners:

– We don’t yet know exactly what they are after, but this is about rich autocrats who think they can buy anything.

Support for the region

To silence the critics, California Forever has also proposed a separate support of around two billion kroner for the development of more vulnerable parts of the region, as well as other grant and scholarship promises.

But the twin cities of San Francisco and Oakland have other pressing problems: homelessness, poverty and drug-related misery.

“New data shows grim calculation: San Francisco’s worst year for fatal overdoses,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle, noting over 800 confirmed drug overdose deaths last year.

The article in the newspaper gets more space than the one about the dream city in Solano.