Tech Billionaires’ Quest to Build a New City in California Is Already Mired in Trouble::A legal battle is already brewing over a quixotic attempt to build a new city on Bay Area farmland.

  • db2@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    I say let them do it. But only them, nobody that isn’t a tech billionaire is allowed in at any time for any reason.

    • lolrightythen@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      That would be so interesting. They’d have to automate almost everything.

      Can they not be allowed to leave as well? I’d enjoy watching that petri dish. A billion dollars doesn’t mean much without disparity.

      • db2@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        They’d be screwed the first time they needed a sink unclogged or a tire changed. Assuming they even got as far as building structures that didn’t collapse immediately.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          9 months ago

          It would go bad way before that. These people wouldn’t clean up after themselves.

      • drislands@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        They’d certainly think it’s possible. Like a game of Factorio. But what they wouldn’t consider is that the protagonist in that game is fully capable of doing all the work by hand.

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I recall county officials raised concerns as to whether they had the ability to support a new city’s needs for water, electricity, and sewage.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They don’t.

      Already a high-population water stressed state with rolling brownouts. Don’t need some high-tech pseudo paradise with huge homes needing extra energy and water.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The cohort of Silicon Valley tech titans who have been hoovering up Bay Area farmland in the hopes of converting it into a new city have been accused of deploying “strong-arm tactics” and a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to gobble up as much acreage as possible.

    A number of local farmers say Flannery Associates, the parent company behind the quixotic California Forever project, has used underhanded tactics in its pursuit of a regional real estate hegemony.

    In August, the New York Times reported that Flannery, which was then a totally mysterious company, had managed to buy up $800 million of farmland in the Solano County region.

    The Times also revealed that Flannery was backed by a coterie of influential Silicon Valley billionaires, including folks like Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and a variety of other big names in the tech industry.

    In the recent court filing, the farmers dismissed the lawsuit’s claims, alleging that Flannery had repeatedly engaged in “strong-arm tactics” in an effort to pry loose the land.

    The whole thing seems like a giant expensive mess that is doomed to fail but I guess you should never count out the disruptive potential of a tech mogul’s unquenchable hubris.


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