A company backed by SV has purchased 52,000 acres to build a new city | Hacker News Reader

A company backed by SV has purchased 52,000 acres to build a new city

businessinsider.com

20 pointswhack20 comments

Discussed on HN last 2 days, based on more reputable reporting:

* The Silicon Valley elite who want to build a city from scratch (nytimes.com) 117 points by pulisse 1 day ago | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37266398

* Silicon Valley elites revealed as investors behind $800M Bay Area land grab (sfchronicle.com) 93 points by jonah 14 hours ago | 102 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279521

What if Fyre Festival, but you lived there?

Building city in secret is a lot easier if you’re not doing it while surrounding a military air base on three sides. There has to be a reason for that. There are non-US backers as well.

Possibilities: 1. A city build underground ( a massive bunker). The air base can get you in and out easily and can bring supplies. Farmers can keep farming above your head. The problem is if the threat is external, wouldn’t they target us military bases first? That makes the area a target, but less of an issue if you are underground, maybe.

2….

I assume this will basically just be a master planned community and not quite as dramatic as it's being made out to be.

Yep. A retirement destination base with 40-something year old retirees with security clearances and access to VA loans…seems like a nice master planned community would have some appeal.

Nice to be close to a BX, commissary, and pharmacy.

And they are going to rent-seek the hell out of it.

https://archive.is/H6Kpj

It is strange they picked California which has many laws adverse to city building.

It might make sense through a "where would people really want to live and there's an extreme shortage of housing?" lens though

This just regurgitates the NYT reporting and others. Some of the facts don't line up. "Tens of thousands" of people don't occupy 55000 acres. 31000 people live in the westernmost part of SF's Sunset neighborhood and that's only 1000 acres, and it is developed at very low intensity with almost exclusively detached single-family homes.

If an entity were serious about building a "new city" as normal people understand the word "city" they would slap it down in the middle of an existing city like Stockton that already has transportation infrastructure of regional importance. That city practically deleted their entire zoning code in an effort to attract development in the central district. It's already a de facto libertarian ideal.

Given the billions they invested and who the backers are, I think they probably put more thinking into it than a casual HN dismissal. I say let anyone who wants to try anything new, especially with their own money rather than my tax dollars, give it a try.

Oh, I am positive they have a plan, but nothing here suggests "city". They are going to build Blackhawk North.

I’m curious about that reference, the Blackhawk North, but google is failing me

EDIT: GPT-4 to the rescue, “Blackhawk is a luxury community in Danville, California”

This demonstrates the fact that GPT is a lossy text compression system, not a thinking, reasoning robot. Blackhawk is not in Danville and the unincorporated area upon which it lies is the entire point of Blackhawk.

it indicated as much, and befuddlement but i didn't intend to start a pissing match about gpt. just was curious and didn't wanna wait for a reply. if we're looking for lessons google was utterly useless, gave it a good 5 minutes.

If anyone was serious about building a city from scratch they’d first buy an existing city? Not sure I follow the logic.

I imagine there would be some benefit around permitting, zoning, public utility interconnects and mass transit that are all controlled by the state. Might be faster to buy a town and raze it to the ground.

Are you implying that Michael Moritz, Reid Hoffman, etc. are Libertarians?

> In October 2016, The Guardian reported that Michael Moritz "donated $49,999 to a divisive ballot measure intended to clear San Francisco’s streets of homeless encampments, according to campaign filings". [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moritz

You capitalized it, I did not. What I am suggesting is the new lack of design controls in that city affords a developer much of what “from scratch” gets you on the farmland of Solano County.

San Francisco at 30,000 acres is about half the size of this space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com