google maps seems to indicate that the purchased land has essentially zero infrastructure of any kind and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere ...
There was a scammer in Cal some years ago who got rich selling ideas like these to wealthy investors. The scammer even bought large tracts of land, put in a few model houses, etc, and signage.
Then when enough people got in the scammer bolted with loads of cash and changed company names, and did it afresh in a different locale.
From Google Maps, it looks like this is a potentially massive extension of suburban sprawl into the open space between the San Francisco Bay urban jumble, Sacramento, and Stockton. From the map in the story, it looks like the planned development will cover most of the area between Travis AFB and the Sacramento River.
Looking 50 years ahead — maybe 25 — SF, Sacramento and Stockton are likely to be one huge urban blob. And maybe a lot farther than that, given the rate at which democrats are flooding the country with illegals.
So: the question here is how this new development will balance residential, commercial and industrial development vs. agricultural preserves, parks and recreation. It could be a bulwark against unchecked sprawl. Or it could accelerate the sprawl. The devil is in the details. I would imagine that the project’s backers are fully aware of the choice and are probably hoping that it will be the former. If that’s the plan, I wish them success.
It’s private money. They have an opportunity to do long term planning better than the State of California. With a greenfields start, they also have an opportunity to simply step out of the SF mess, avoid the many mistakes U.S. cities have made since — well, pick your date. But if they want this to have staying power, they need to be planning with a hundred year timeframe in mind. That begins, above all, with a sustainable economy. People have to make a living. They will eventually lose the first generation of companies that invest in this new project. It is at that point that the successor generations will be tempted to abandon the disciplined perspective of the founders and sell out to rubbish development because they’ll be desperate for tax base and jobs.
I don’t know the area well enough to comment with any conviction. But my outlander’s perspective is that it’s a dubious gamble to bet on California — anywhere in California — in the long run. I can understand wanting to build an Escape from San Francisco refuge community. But can they hold the line in the long term?
I live in Washington DC. Our CMSA — the appropriate planning framework for transportation and economic development — is now the fourth largest in the country, with nearly ten million people. (Of this ten million, only about 700,000 live in DC proper. DC has gentrification on steroids, driven largely by intolerable commutes, so the era of all the suburban jurisdictions using DC as the dumping ground for the poverty population is ending. That means the era of exclusionary zoning in the suburbs must also end. But that’s another story.) The development pressure is relentless. Time and again, suburban counties have set limits to sprawl. And time and again, the limits are shattered a couple of elections later. We are building gridlock from Chesapeake Bay to the Blue Ridge. Montgomery County is a deep blue land of fruits and nuts, but I have to give MoCo credit for holding the line on its agricultural preserve in the western part of the county. They’ve done better than any other suburban jurisdiction. So far. But the pressure mounts continuously. I’m sure it’s the same in coastal California.
Of course, we could control the borders, and a lot of these problems would resolve themselves over time.
Ya wanna nowhere city?
Try The Eden Project; just sw of FortGarland, CO.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3645348,-105.4920278,12669m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
THAT area is NOWHERE NEAR THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE-—
YOU NEED TO DRIVE THRU THE WESTERN STATES MORE