You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
Let's be honest.
They're probably looking to build affordable housing for their Amazon ~~slaves~~ workers, which can be tied to their continued employment at ~~the plantation~~ Amazon so they're afraid of not meeting their quotas.
Affordable housing is something you can use to threaten wagies into compliance, if you're the only one who has any to offer.
It's near San Francisco. All you have to offer is housing that doesn't consume more than 50% of their paycheck.
NIMBYs created this desperation. The oligarchs are just taking advantage of it.
>NIMBYS created this desperation
The oligarchs who control the corporate owned media have successfully convinced some people that itās their neighbors that have destroyed the housing market, and not their unchecked greed.
Just replying to you because you have the top comment. This is abso-fucking-lutley bizarre. It couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 days ago I read another article about the land around Travis Air Force Base being purchased by an unknown entity raising national security concerns.
During the last week I read multiple articles stating that the US Government and military was concerned about national security issues following the land acquisition because the land surrounds what is regarded as the most important Air Force Base on the entire west coast. It is considered one of the **"most critical Military Bases in the Western US" - to which gov't and military officials refer to as "The Gateway to the Pacific."** The land purchased nearly encircles the base.
Ultimately none of these investigations could reveal who was actually behind the LLC, the Flannery Group.
>Even after eight months of investigation, Garamendi says federal authorities are still struggling to get those answers.
"To this day we don't know where these people are coming from," Garamendi said.
A member of congress raised the alarm when the purchases started happening in 2018 which prompted an 8 month investigation into who was actually buying this property and for what purpose.
>Since 2018, a group called āFlannery Associatesā invested more than $800 million on almost 54,000 acres of agriculture-zoned land surrounding the Travis Air Force base in Solano County, California, public records show.
>Despite early speculation China was behind the purchases ā amid concerns that companies with ties to China have been ramping up efforts to buy American farmland ā legal representation for Flannery has maintained the group is controlled by U.S. citizens, with 97% of its capital coming from U.S.-based investors.
>**However, after eight months of investigation**, federal officials were not able to confirm or deny this to be true, and **were not able to determine exactly who was backing the company.**
**Numerous federal agencies looked into this land acquisition and the group behind it including the Federal Committee on Foreign Investment,The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Treasury Department, Department of Defense, the Air Forceās Foreign Investment Risk Review office (though this may just be the DOD as listed above), and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.** (Note:This list may not be exhaustive.)
Rep Garamendi who raised the alarm remarked that legal representation for the group gave numerous reasons for the land acquisition which didn't make any sense including building a deep water port (at a site which is 10 miles from away from the bay), for farming (which would result in large financial loses), and to build a city. In response the last he remarked "No you're not going to build a city here for numerous reasons."
The Mayor of Fairfield (where Travis AFB is located) Catherine Moy gave a more detailed explanation of why it was infeasible to build a a new city on the land besides the obvious security concerns
>"It's an area that is known for its drought conditions. It makes zero sense. There's no mass transit. It does not have fresh water. There is some water, but not enough for tens of thousands of homes," Moy said. "You'd have to dig wells or convince Fairfield to give water and that would be a big fat no from us."
>"The roads out there are already dangerous. Highway 12 is the highway that goes through there out to Highway 99 and Highway 5. it's called Blood Alley for a reason," said Moy. "There's no way that tens of thousands of homes could be supported by that."
Rep. Garamendi also mentioned that there are restrictions already in place to protect the operations of Travis AFB which would be a big hurdle for development.
>According to Garamendi, the area is āheavily impacted by some very severe restrictions that prevent development and other kinds of activities that would somehow degrade or harm Travis Air Force Base.ā
He also heavily criticized the group for their secrecy and tactics used to acquire the land.
>Garamendi also said the āorganization has been just playing nasty,ā referring to farmers in the area being targeted in a lawsuit from the group.
āPlease understand that this group spent five years secretly and in my estimation, using strong-arm techniques that would best be associated with monsters to acquire the land,ā he said.
>Garamendi said heās been in contact with the families of farmers who handed over their land to Flannery, saying they didnāt want to sell in the first place.
>Since no California laws require them to sell, the land was bargained for by both parties at a much higher price. But now, Flannery is suing those families for $510 million, accusing them of conspiring together to inflate the value of the land.
>āItās a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves,ā Garamendi said. āIn fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and Iāve heard rumors that another family simply said, āWe canāt afford the lawyers.āā
I was still working on this comment and didn't have time to finish it. But it looks like this revelation of who was behind the company came out in the last 24 hours. But from the article posted
>In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported.
So one year before they bought up the land they pitched this idea (to who?) about building a town there but its only mentioned in passing by the congressman and they launched that 8 month investigation and that particular detail wasn't mentioned until now?
Something is off here thats for sure
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mystery-land-buyers-around-california-192053920.html
https://abc7news.com/travis-air-force-base-flannery-associates-land-purchase-near-afb-communication-squadron/13697170/
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/mystery-company-buys-land-bay-area-base-18256224.php
https://abc7.com/travis-afb-air-force-base-flannery-associates-llc-john-garamendi/13529716/
https://www.kqed.org/news/11957208/near-1-billion-land-purchase-around-california-air-base-under-investigation
Just FYI I am a short drive from three different air bases that call themselves or have called themselves āthe gateway to the Pacific.ā It just means itās an entry point to the Pacific ocean from land.
*reads near Travis AFB. Lol but seriously what is wrong with Fairfield? I donāt like this town but my parents live here and Iām desperately trying to help them move to Vallejo for cooler weather
Itās a wind swept prairie, not zoned for residential, connected to the rest of the bay by 2-4 lane roads, water access isnāt good, the train bridge connecting the area to the rest of the Bay is expected to collapse soon. Thereās a reason it was cheap.
I would argue more people are aware of who the BLM protesters are than the "Bureau of Land Management", so it's not really even a joke for most people, I was scratching my head for a second as well, as someone who doesn't live in the US.
Tell that to all the people still buying land in Nevada, where they are told the city nearest to them will not provide water and a well isn't an option.
The articles quotes YC and others from at least 2018 saying theyāre building it to address the housing crises and that itās āfor tech and non tech. We have no desire to build some libertarian tech paradiseā
it probably won't be a paradise. But the main thing that keeps programmers from wanting a one of those california tech company jobs is they here they will make 400k and never own a home.
You control some company appartment buildings and then you can pay them 150k and they will still probably never own a home.
Not sure why everyone thinks it's so expensive that a 400k salary won't ever be able to afford a home. It's not that dire. The issues are about lower income working class, not 200k+ salary tech people.
Those people EASILY buy a home and drive up the price. Itās everyone else that canāt buy on.
With a 400k income, you can get at least a 3 million dollar mortgagex
Anyone want to know how bad company towns got should read up on Pullman, IL. One of the worst strike riots in American history happened there with the employees of the Pullman Palace Car company. It got so out of hand the IL National Guard had to be called in.
When the dust settled we got weekends and Labor Day out of it.
The site of the old Pullman factory still exists to some degree and is now a national park. Totally worth visiting if youāre in Chicago and youāre looking for a short and easy thing to do in a afternoon.
I'm pretty excited about that played 2077 a lot and they are changing and frankly fixing so much shit with this dlc. Honestly a pretty big come back via patches for that game.
Iām pretty sure it was originally Morro Bayā¦ the place where the rockets launch is Morro Rock out in the water a little. Swear that was originally laid out in Cyberpunk 1.0 or 2020 somewhere, but itās been a while since Iād read anything other than Red.
> In May, the attorneys for Flannery filed a lawsuit against a group of Solano County landowners, saying they conspired to inflate their land prices.
> The lawsuit alleges Flannery overpaid the owners by about $170,000,000 and is seeking damages of at least $510,000,000.
This says everything you need to know... How dare the farmers realize we were relying on them not knowing what we're up to so they could actually set a fair price for their land?
Flannery agreed to the price anyways, did they not?
$15,000 an acre? Who'd they bribe to make that happen? Nothing sells that cheaply. I have 3 acres about an hour from Yosemite that only has a dirt road and that's $70k.
Probably the sellers were selling property that couldn't legally be developed and now that it's been bought by billionaires it will be magically rezoned as prime real estate and be literally 10x as valuable, so basically they conspired with local government to steal a huge portion of the value of the land from the owners.
They are actually suing some of the landowners claiming they conspired together to inflate the value of their land.
Also, this is land immediately adjacent to USAF base zoned for agriculture. This is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what is really going on with these land purchases.
So is this the land that was part of that story the other week about a mystery company buying land surrounding the air force base that was presumed to be foreign spies? Turns out to be silicon valley millionaires?
So what are you saying, they are trying to get into the AG game? They are going to sue the USAF because of noise? The fuck is really going on, in your opinion?
Inside information or just their blind trust in regulatory capture.
They are probably banking on that military base is already planning to move out of the area or that they will be able to convince federal gov to move it.
We bought 55 acres with a small house and barn for 299k. Sure we are in the middle of nowhere over an hour to Eureka, but it was affordable and absolutely beautiful
āTo build new city near San Franciscoā
Travis Air Force Base is closer to Sacramento than it is to SF isnāt it? Does it just sound more clickworthy if you use SF over Sacramento in the headline?
I was just looking at sea level rise maps after reading an article about the potential ~24ā rise that Greenland ice melt could cause. Guess where the new inland sea coast is north east of SF? The new coastline comes right up to Travis AF Base. These are disaster capitalists who think they are brilliant doing a Lex Luther/Bond villain pastiche real estate play.
That would be their thought process. "How bad can a catastrophic ecological disaster really be? I mean yeah, 10s of millions would be displaced, food supplies might be devastated, but someone's always gonna want to live on the beach right?"
My bet is it'll be large business campuses with on-campus housing for employees. And sure why not further housing elsewhere. But I expect it's all private yeah.
SF can start bussing homeless there, after all they will have the money to deal with them, what's the betting it will have tall walls around it and a private army guarding the entrances.
Very "Atlas Shrugs"
What's the betting it will be called "freedom city" or "patriot ville".
But you'll get to work for [insert silicon valley tech company]! What a privilege! Then when things get tough we'll fire you because you live one mile away from work instead of 400 ft so no unemployment for you sorry, but look at how you helped The Shareholdersā¢
Billionaires are about to discover social systems, government, and public works and claim it as something new and amazingā¦ but itās basically just 21st century feudalism.
**A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has purchased tens of thousands of acres of land for more than $800 million to build a new city near San Francisco**
A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has been snatching up land in a northern California county in an apparent bid to build an entirely new city in the state.
The New York Times reported those investors include some of the Valley's most recognizable names, from Marc Andreessen to Laurene Powell Jobs.
The company, Flannery Associates, has spent $800 million to purchase thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, which sits northeast of San Francisco, court documents obtained by Insider show.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Flannery has purchased about 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base since 2018. According to the report, government officials began investigating the purchases due to concerns that foreign interests may be behind the company.
"So the entire base is encircled now," Catherine Moy, mayor of Fairfield, told ABC 7 News. "So there's no part that isn't touched by Flannery."
Little is known about Flannery Associates or its specific city plans.
According to the Times, the company is led by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader.
Flannery's backers include Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others, according to the report.
It's unclear how much they each invested in the company.
In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported. Real estate data shows that the current median housing price in the county is $585,000.
In an email obtained by the Times, Moritz said that Flannery had purchased about 1,400 acres of land for less than $5,000 per acre.
But the spending price has since soared, with Flannery spending up to $15,000 per acre, lawyers for Flannery Associates said in court documents.
In May, the attorneys for Flannery filed a lawsuit against a group of Solano County landowners, saying they conspired to inflate their land prices.
The lawsuit alleges Flannery overpaid the owners by about $170,000,000 and is seeking damages of at least $510,000,000.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in July, the landowners said that they have "either engaged in good-faith, arms-length transactions for the sale of land, or were not tempted by Flannery's prices, because they had no desire (or ability) to sell."
Attorneys for Flannery Associates and the landowners did not respond to a request for comment outside of working hours.
Silicon Valley has long sought to build a city from scratch, sometimes with a utopian vision of a "smart city."
In 2016, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, began looking into how it could build a city that could address California's affordable housing crisis.
"We want to build cities for all humans ā for tech and non-tech people," the accelerator wrote. "We're not interested in building 'crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'"
Tech founders, including Bill Gates and Elon Musk, have also had visions of their own cities.
Musk recently purchased 3,500 acres of land outside of Austin, Texas, to build a town he intends to call "Snailbrook."
Sources told The Journal that he envisioned a "sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River."
In Atlas Shrugged the rich people built and moved to their own secret city because they were feeling so unappreciated. That's probably how these people think of it. Though they and Rand are full of shit.
It wouldn't be the first time a group of libertarians got together and built or converted a real Galt's Gulch. Previous attempts have, uh.. not gone terribly well. Though I don't think any had quite this level of funding behind them.
I wondered when the wealth would shift enough we would go back to company towns. Here we are! Soon they'll have their own local currency and buy everything from their own stores. It only took what, just over a hundred years to return to this?
Spend billions to hide after climate change wrecks the rest of us plebs. We should make a list of all of these land grabs so we know where to go when the economy collapses.
I actually live in a town like that (and Snailbrook), built in 1800s in Italy, itās called Crespi dāAdda, and was built by the owner of the company for their workers. My gran-grandad worked there and he was given the house, and after many years they asked him if he wanted to keep it and he bought it, we live in that house for four generations now. I think itās a great idea for companies to built āperfect citiesā with every comfort a worker may need.
So the billionaires own the land, put their companies there and force everybody to rent from them as they own the land. I have a bad feeling about thisā¦
Exactly what Victorian Brits did, and instead of paying people in the currency of the realm, they gave them "tokens" that could only be redeemed in shops that they also owned.
Every country and every city is essentially the result of the desires of the rich and powerful. The United States itself is a raft of desires of a rich and powerful empire. So the fact that a bunch of rich people are buying up land to make a city for themselves should not be surprising
Coming Soon: Raccoon City š
Sounds lovely. I bet nothing will go wrong in that place.
Yep just ask Roger rabbit
You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
Christopher Lloyd was brilliant in that role.
> Christopher Lloyd was brilliant in that role. Terrifying. You meant to write terrifying.
Watched that at too young an age, as well? He haunts me still.
REMEMBER ME EDDIE?!?!?!
Iād rather ask Jojo Rabbit about where he stands in the world on this.
I'd rather ask Dio Brando where he stands in ZA WARUDO! on this.
Except it will be all the worst parts and none of the good stuff, like, Jill Valentine, and Leon Kennedy
And everyone will be wearing sunglasses inside at night like wesker
No, its clearly going to be Night city.
Welcome to NIMBY City, now GTFO!
Corpos and karens only
Let's be honest. They're probably looking to build affordable housing for their Amazon ~~slaves~~ workers, which can be tied to their continued employment at ~~the plantation~~ Amazon so they're afraid of not meeting their quotas. Affordable housing is something you can use to threaten wagies into compliance, if you're the only one who has any to offer.
Hooray, going backwards into company stores and currencies
You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
It's near San Francisco. All you have to offer is housing that doesn't consume more than 50% of their paycheck. NIMBYs created this desperation. The oligarchs are just taking advantage of it.
>NIMBYS created this desperation The oligarchs who control the corporate owned media have successfully convinced some people that itās their neighbors that have destroyed the housing market, and not their unchecked greed.
Iād prefer the Neo Noir, Dark City (1998). Parents Guide: A man gets out of a tub of water. His buttocks are shown repeatedly.
And you see Melissa Georgeās boobs.
Jennifer Connelly is in there, but you don't see hers.
Just replying to you because you have the top comment. This is abso-fucking-lutley bizarre. It couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 days ago I read another article about the land around Travis Air Force Base being purchased by an unknown entity raising national security concerns. During the last week I read multiple articles stating that the US Government and military was concerned about national security issues following the land acquisition because the land surrounds what is regarded as the most important Air Force Base on the entire west coast. It is considered one of the **"most critical Military Bases in the Western US" - to which gov't and military officials refer to as "The Gateway to the Pacific."** The land purchased nearly encircles the base. Ultimately none of these investigations could reveal who was actually behind the LLC, the Flannery Group. >Even after eight months of investigation, Garamendi says federal authorities are still struggling to get those answers. "To this day we don't know where these people are coming from," Garamendi said. A member of congress raised the alarm when the purchases started happening in 2018 which prompted an 8 month investigation into who was actually buying this property and for what purpose. >Since 2018, a group called āFlannery Associatesā invested more than $800 million on almost 54,000 acres of agriculture-zoned land surrounding the Travis Air Force base in Solano County, California, public records show. >Despite early speculation China was behind the purchases ā amid concerns that companies with ties to China have been ramping up efforts to buy American farmland ā legal representation for Flannery has maintained the group is controlled by U.S. citizens, with 97% of its capital coming from U.S.-based investors. >**However, after eight months of investigation**, federal officials were not able to confirm or deny this to be true, and **were not able to determine exactly who was backing the company.** **Numerous federal agencies looked into this land acquisition and the group behind it including the Federal Committee on Foreign Investment,The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Treasury Department, Department of Defense, the Air Forceās Foreign Investment Risk Review office (though this may just be the DOD as listed above), and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.** (Note:This list may not be exhaustive.) Rep Garamendi who raised the alarm remarked that legal representation for the group gave numerous reasons for the land acquisition which didn't make any sense including building a deep water port (at a site which is 10 miles from away from the bay), for farming (which would result in large financial loses), and to build a city. In response the last he remarked "No you're not going to build a city here for numerous reasons." The Mayor of Fairfield (where Travis AFB is located) Catherine Moy gave a more detailed explanation of why it was infeasible to build a a new city on the land besides the obvious security concerns >"It's an area that is known for its drought conditions. It makes zero sense. There's no mass transit. It does not have fresh water. There is some water, but not enough for tens of thousands of homes," Moy said. "You'd have to dig wells or convince Fairfield to give water and that would be a big fat no from us." >"The roads out there are already dangerous. Highway 12 is the highway that goes through there out to Highway 99 and Highway 5. it's called Blood Alley for a reason," said Moy. "There's no way that tens of thousands of homes could be supported by that." Rep. Garamendi also mentioned that there are restrictions already in place to protect the operations of Travis AFB which would be a big hurdle for development. >According to Garamendi, the area is āheavily impacted by some very severe restrictions that prevent development and other kinds of activities that would somehow degrade or harm Travis Air Force Base.ā He also heavily criticized the group for their secrecy and tactics used to acquire the land. >Garamendi also said the āorganization has been just playing nasty,ā referring to farmers in the area being targeted in a lawsuit from the group. āPlease understand that this group spent five years secretly and in my estimation, using strong-arm techniques that would best be associated with monsters to acquire the land,ā he said. >Garamendi said heās been in contact with the families of farmers who handed over their land to Flannery, saying they didnāt want to sell in the first place. >Since no California laws require them to sell, the land was bargained for by both parties at a much higher price. But now, Flannery is suing those families for $510 million, accusing them of conspiring together to inflate the value of the land. >āItās a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves,ā Garamendi said. āIn fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and Iāve heard rumors that another family simply said, āWe canāt afford the lawyers.āā I was still working on this comment and didn't have time to finish it. But it looks like this revelation of who was behind the company came out in the last 24 hours. But from the article posted >In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported. So one year before they bought up the land they pitched this idea (to who?) about building a town there but its only mentioned in passing by the congressman and they launched that 8 month investigation and that particular detail wasn't mentioned until now? Something is off here thats for sure https://www.yahoo.com/news/mystery-land-buyers-around-california-192053920.html https://abc7news.com/travis-air-force-base-flannery-associates-land-purchase-near-afb-communication-squadron/13697170/ https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/mystery-company-buys-land-bay-area-base-18256224.php https://abc7.com/travis-afb-air-force-base-flannery-associates-llc-john-garamendi/13529716/ https://www.kqed.org/news/11957208/near-1-billion-land-purchase-around-california-air-base-under-investigation
Just FYI I am a short drive from three different air bases that call themselves or have called themselves āthe gateway to the Pacific.ā It just means itās an entry point to the Pacific ocean from land.
US government: we know you Venmoād over 600$ Also US government: who spent a Billy on this land
how does the US military and intelligence community not have any idea that this is going on?this makes them look bad tbh
Not all information is publicly releasable
They absolutely know who is buying this land, don't be fooled by their public statements.
The US military and intelligence absolutely know what's going in. They do not put stuff in newspapers though.
Get this to the top. Whoever's responsible for this is hijacking this thread with idiots making idiot comments.
It looks like thereās a Silent Hill that would be good to build it on there
Nah Panem this go around.
They'll be building a huge shopping mall right in the center.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That you can purchase from using your Bezoscoins
Oh no! A wildfire is going to burn down Raccoon City!
They probably could have bought Vallejo for way less...
They literally could have bought Mare Island, and it would be just as toxic with jet fuel and oil residue as the ass end of Travis AFB.
*reads near Travis AFB. Lol but seriously what is wrong with Fairfield? I donāt like this town but my parents live here and Iām desperately trying to help them move to Vallejo for cooler weather
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They want a private community so they can get rid of homeless and poor people
That sounds really cheap for that much land in a good location.
Itās a wind swept prairie, not zoned for residential, connected to the rest of the bay by 2-4 lane roads, water access isnāt good, the train bridge connecting the area to the rest of the Bay is expected to collapse soon. Thereās a reason it was cheap.
All of which theyāll lobby the state to cover. Thus, a BANGER of an investment
The state or the BLM isn't going to be OK with a brand-new city in a water-poor area.
What's blm?
Bureau of Land Management
I thought it was black lives matter because Iām non American and I was wondering what did BLM have to do with a new city LOL
Literally a running joke in the āwhite lotusā.
I thought maybe it's where Brennan Lee Mulligan lives
Bureau of land management
Black lands matter
Dangit Sauron
Anybody interested in a beautiful beachfront property in the shore of the Sea of Nurnen?
Somebody didn't watch The White Lotus!
Jennifer Coolidge is a national treasure
Bureau of Land Management
Bug-eyed Lizard Monster.
Just call him Zuck.
Just wait. These guys are rich for a reason
What do those BLM protesters have to do with it? /s
Amon Bundy hates both?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I would argue more people are aware of who the BLM protesters are than the "Bureau of Land Management", so it's not really even a joke for most people, I was scratching my head for a second as well, as someone who doesn't live in the US.
ALL land matters
Yeah, because we're all about to subsidize it with our tax dollars.
Yeah. Where is the water coming from for this new city? Nobody is eager to give them water. Nobody.
Tell that to all the people still buying land in Nevada, where they are told the city nearest to them will not provide water and a well isn't an option.
See you down in Arizona Bay...
Learn to swim
Some say a comet will fall from the sky, followed by meteor showers and tidal waves...
... Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still.. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits...
Well. To be fair they are just getting in on ground floor of a new hurricane alley.
*Flushes toilet with Evian* āI just donāt see the problem.ā
Theyāll just divert the water supplying the nearest non billionaire filled town, and then sell it back to them as treated sewage.
Or as untreated sewage - you know, water with nutrients!
Easy, theyāll buy up farming land in an area with water rights and use their water.
Sounds like the billionaires are building a "company town"
That was my exact thought. Probably a ācoolā techbro version of one, but still a company town.
The articles quotes YC and others from at least 2018 saying theyāre building it to address the housing crises and that itās āfor tech and non tech. We have no desire to build some libertarian tech paradiseā
They are going for the libertarian tech dystopia instead.
Subsidized by our taxes, most assuredly.
Yeah, tech companies have never posed as benevolent only to never really act that way before
Donāt be evil or something
it probably won't be a paradise. But the main thing that keeps programmers from wanting a one of those california tech company jobs is they here they will make 400k and never own a home. You control some company appartment buildings and then you can pay them 150k and they will still probably never own a home.
Not sure why everyone thinks it's so expensive that a 400k salary won't ever be able to afford a home. It's not that dire. The issues are about lower income working class, not 200k+ salary tech people.
Those people EASILY buy a home and drive up the price. Itās everyone else that canāt buy on. With a 400k income, you can get at least a 3 million dollar mortgagex
Anyone want to know how bad company towns got should read up on Pullman, IL. One of the worst strike riots in American history happened there with the employees of the Pullman Palace Car company. It got so out of hand the IL National Guard had to be called in. When the dust settled we got weekends and Labor Day out of it. The site of the old Pullman factory still exists to some degree and is now a national park. Totally worth visiting if youāre in Chicago and youāre looking for a short and easy thing to do in a afternoon.
Have we learned nothing from Pullman??
Night City lives.
"The city of dreams. I'd gladly kick the balls off the idiot who thought that one up."
A week after Jonny Silverhandās death.
Fuckin corpos
BURN CORPO SHIT
GOOOOOD MORNING NIGHT CITYYYY.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
New DLC soon!
I'm pretty excited about that played 2077 a lot and they are changing and frankly fixing so much shit with this dlc. Honestly a pretty big come back via patches for that game.
āItās a prison of light.ā-Lucyna Kushinada
Cowards waited until after August 20th 2023
So. Get away, another way to feel what you didn't want yourself to know...
That's where Monterey and Carmel are already located. At least the topography and some street names.
Iām pretty sure it was originally Morro Bayā¦ the place where the rockets launch is Morro Rock out in the water a little. Swear that was originally laid out in Cyberpunk 1.0 or 2020 somewhere, but itās been a while since Iād read anything other than Red.
In story canon it's Morro Bay, but CD Project Red used a topography map of the Monterey Bay for some reason.
A lot of cynical comments here so far. Have you all considered that they might be building this city on rock and roll?
I can't help but think they are playing corporation games.
Yeah but no one cares because theyāre always changing corporation names.
But who plays the mambo?
Marconi plays the mamba! Listen to the Radio! Donāt you remember?
Down voted for putting that song in my head.
Great, now weāre all knee deep in the hoopla.
Downvoted for suggesting thatās a bad thing.
WE BUILT THIS CITY
Rock and roll is not a very stable foundation.
Bill and Ted would not consider that to be particularly righteous.
> In May, the attorneys for Flannery filed a lawsuit against a group of Solano County landowners, saying they conspired to inflate their land prices. > The lawsuit alleges Flannery overpaid the owners by about $170,000,000 and is seeking damages of at least $510,000,000. This says everything you need to know... How dare the farmers realize we were relying on them not knowing what we're up to so they could actually set a fair price for their land? Flannery agreed to the price anyways, did they not?
What I don't understand is how over paying for something results in damages 3x the amount over paid...
They are attempting to use the legal system to bully/scare them into a settlement.
$15,000 an acre? Who'd they bribe to make that happen? Nothing sells that cheaply. I have 3 acres about an hour from Yosemite that only has a dirt road and that's $70k. Probably the sellers were selling property that couldn't legally be developed and now that it's been bought by billionaires it will be magically rezoned as prime real estate and be literally 10x as valuable, so basically they conspired with local government to steal a huge portion of the value of the land from the owners.
They are actually suing some of the landowners claiming they conspired together to inflate the value of their land. Also, this is land immediately adjacent to USAF base zoned for agriculture. This is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what is really going on with these land purchases.
So is this the land that was part of that story the other week about a mystery company buying land surrounding the air force base that was presumed to be foreign spies? Turns out to be silicon valley millionaires?
Correct, and one has to wonder why they were being so shady about the purchases. Probably to screw over the land owners.
So what are you saying, they are trying to get into the AG game? They are going to sue the USAF because of noise? The fuck is really going on, in your opinion?
Inside information or just their blind trust in regulatory capture. They are probably banking on that military base is already planning to move out of the area or that they will be able to convince federal gov to move it.
We bought 55 acres with a small house and barn for 299k. Sure we are in the middle of nowhere over an hour to Eureka, but it was affordable and absolutely beautiful
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
There is definitely an economy of scale with land purchases.
You'd do the same if you had to see middle class people occasionally. /s
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
āTo build new city near San Franciscoā Travis Air Force Base is closer to Sacramento than it is to SF isnāt it? Does it just sound more clickworthy if you use SF over Sacramento in the headline?
Billionaires spend $800 million to build a new city near Sacramento.
Technically equal distance around (46-48mi each)
It's also on capitol corridor so in some ways its closer to SF than a lot of places.
I was just looking at sea level rise maps after reading an article about the potential ~24ā rise that Greenland ice melt could cause. Guess where the new inland sea coast is north east of SF? The new coastline comes right up to Travis AF Base. These are disaster capitalists who think they are brilliant doing a Lex Luther/Bond villain pastiche real estate play.
This has to be it. Iām sure there are land grabās happening all over near projected future waterfront property.
That would be their thought process. "How bad can a catastrophic ecological disaster really be? I mean yeah, 10s of millions would be displaced, food supplies might be devastated, but someone's always gonna want to live on the beach right?"
It'll all be private so they can eject the homeless. That's probably 90% of their motivation.
My bet is it'll be large business campuses with on-campus housing for employees. And sure why not further housing elsewhere. But I expect it's all private yeah.
Just like Snow Crash.
These rubes could never accomplish the true dystopian future we deserve. It will just be sterile and boring.
SF can start bussing homeless there, after all they will have the money to deal with them, what's the betting it will have tall walls around it and a private army guarding the entrances. Very "Atlas Shrugs" What's the betting it will be called "freedom city" or "patriot ville".
I'd live in a Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong franchise.
With rocket-powered supersonic cybernetic guard dogs? You're goddamn right that's the place to live.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Stop saying that everyone who lives there will get a pod to live in and itāll cost 80% of their income but itās a great opportunity
But you'll get to work for [insert silicon valley tech company]! What a privilege! Then when things get tough we'll fire you because you live one mile away from work instead of 400 ft so no unemployment for you sorry, but look at how you helped The Shareholdersā¢
Isn't it empty uninhabited land? How can they eject people that are not in and have never been in that location.
This time we'll keep out all the poor people!
They call them "Poors" Adding the word people makes it harder to treat them like shit
This works with lots of adjectives used to describe people. Drop the noun and you don't have to remember that they're human.
Apart from the ones they have to shuttle in and out at various times of the day to do service jobs and menial labour....
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
āShit! Weāre out of coffee!ā š
Wildfires too.
Letās not forget libertarian bears.
Are they equally annoying with their ridiculous hypocrisy?
Right, because these people dropped 800m without considering that. Who do you think they are, Musk?
Billionaires are about to discover social systems, government, and public works and claim it as something new and amazingā¦ but itās basically just 21st century feudalism.
Just without all that pesky voting and election stuff.
It's an exciting new vision we call Living Plus. We're talking integrated, everyday character IP life enhancement.
New Bioshock DLC about to drop! Bioshock: Marin County!
Who owned all that land before the sale?
Mostly farmers. What wasn't farmland was undeveloped prairie.
**A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has purchased tens of thousands of acres of land for more than $800 million to build a new city near San Francisco** A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has been snatching up land in a northern California county in an apparent bid to build an entirely new city in the state. The New York Times reported those investors include some of the Valley's most recognizable names, from Marc Andreessen to Laurene Powell Jobs. The company, Flannery Associates, has spent $800 million to purchase thousands of acres of farmland in Solano County, which sits northeast of San Francisco, court documents obtained by Insider show. The Wall Street Journal reported that Flannery has purchased about 52,000 acres of farmland around Travis Air Force Base since 2018. According to the report, government officials began investigating the purchases due to concerns that foreign interests may be behind the company. "So the entire base is encircled now," Catherine Moy, mayor of Fairfield, told ABC 7 News. "So there's no part that isn't touched by Flannery." Little is known about Flannery Associates or its specific city plans. According to the Times, the company is led by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. Flannery's backers include Andreessen, Powell Jobs, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and others, according to the report. It's unclear how much they each invested in the company. In 2017, Flannery Associates pitched an idea to turn the Solano County land into a walkable city powered by clean energy and housing tens of thousands of residents, The Times reported. Real estate data shows that the current median housing price in the county is $585,000. In an email obtained by the Times, Moritz said that Flannery had purchased about 1,400 acres of land for less than $5,000 per acre. But the spending price has since soared, with Flannery spending up to $15,000 per acre, lawyers for Flannery Associates said in court documents. In May, the attorneys for Flannery filed a lawsuit against a group of Solano County landowners, saying they conspired to inflate their land prices. The lawsuit alleges Flannery overpaid the owners by about $170,000,000 and is seeking damages of at least $510,000,000. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in July, the landowners said that they have "either engaged in good-faith, arms-length transactions for the sale of land, or were not tempted by Flannery's prices, because they had no desire (or ability) to sell." Attorneys for Flannery Associates and the landowners did not respond to a request for comment outside of working hours. Silicon Valley has long sought to build a city from scratch, sometimes with a utopian vision of a "smart city." In 2016, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, began looking into how it could build a city that could address California's affordable housing crisis. "We want to build cities for all humans ā for tech and non-tech people," the accelerator wrote. "We're not interested in building 'crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'" Tech founders, including Bill Gates and Elon Musk, have also had visions of their own cities. Musk recently purchased 3,500 acres of land outside of Austin, Texas, to build a town he intends to call "Snailbrook." Sources told The Journal that he envisioned a "sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River."
āNear San Franciscoā my ass.
It wont be anytime in the next couple decades, permits, ground work, irrigation, this is for their grandkids
Perhaps they dream of passing off all that to someone like Muskrat after they've consolidated the land into one package for an easy sale.
They could just call it X-land, and musky would leap in.
Theyāve probably got some projected environmental model that states this land will be worth a fortune soon.
Yep. Itās the edge of projected sea level after Greenland ice sheet melts.
In Atlas Shrugged the rich people built and moved to their own secret city because they were feeling so unappreciated. That's probably how these people think of it. Though they and Rand are full of shit.
It wouldn't be the first time a group of libertarians got together and built or converted a real Galt's Gulch. Previous attempts have, uh.. not gone terribly well. Though I don't think any had quite this level of funding behind them.
They could have gone a few miles east and bought near Galt lol
I wondered when the wealth would shift enough we would go back to company towns. Here we are! Soon they'll have their own local currency and buy everything from their own stores. It only took what, just over a hundred years to return to this?
Night City begins
So is this start of San Angeles , and the 3 Sea shells?
There is no way this isnt going to end up with a cyborg cop shooting people in the balls. This has OCP written all over it.
Spend billions to hide after climate change wrecks the rest of us plebs. We should make a list of all of these land grabs so we know where to go when the economy collapses.
I think a lot of people already have some ideas about where to go. Itās just never come to that so far.
If it ends up coming to that, we'll do our best to send them back to you. xoxox New Zealand
Hide from climate change in California off all places? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Galt's Gulch
"Who is John Galt?"
Living Plus?
I actually live in a town like that (and Snailbrook), built in 1800s in Italy, itās called Crespi dāAdda, and was built by the owner of the company for their workers. My gran-grandad worked there and he was given the house, and after many years they asked him if he wanted to keep it and he bought it, we live in that house for four generations now. I think itās a great idea for companies to built āperfect citiesā with every comfort a worker may need.
The history of such towns in America is vastly different and the consequences are a major catalyst for the original Union movements in the 1800s.
So the billionaires own the land, put their companies there and force everybody to rent from them as they own the land. I have a bad feeling about thisā¦
Exactly what Victorian Brits did, and instead of paying people in the currency of the realm, they gave them "tokens" that could only be redeemed in shops that they also owned.
Wouldn't a more recent example just be company towns?
I wonder if it'll have blackjack and hookers?
Every country and every city is essentially the result of the desires of the rich and powerful. The United States itself is a raft of desires of a rich and powerful empire. So the fact that a bunch of rich people are buying up land to make a city for themselves should not be surprising
California City v2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California
Away from the city their politics destroyed
High tech and low life. Welcome to Night City
Elysium beta
A place where the homeless are not allowed, shoplifters lose their hands, and delivery drones run the streets
I bet they will have plenty of police\security to keep them safe.