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Details emerge for billionaire-backed startup community plan northeast of San Francisco

2024-01-24T19:14:00-05:00

The once-secretive plan for a startup new community in Solano County, Northern California, is beginning to materialize as the company known as California Forever has begun publicizing details for their proposed development ahead of a potential November vote to determine its future.

Details made public with the start of a requisite petition drive showed a preliminary map, renderings, and area plan for the project, which would notably be the first large-scale demonstration of the "walkable city" concept designed entirely from scratch in North America.

Image courtesy California Forever

Billed as a future "amazing success story" by the company’s founder Jan Sramek, the development intends to construct some 20,000 new affordable residences plus a solar farm and network of public parks before 2040. The plan reportedly allows for further growth to support a population of up to 400,000. As the announcement post notes, much of the preliminary proposal is focused on creating missing middle ho...

Cheezburger founder/CEO joins YCombinator's 'New Cities' project

2016-10-28T13:44:00-04:00

YCombinator, the Silicon Vallley start-up accelerator and investment firm behind Airbnb and Dropbox, announced its entrepreneurial reach into city-building this past summer, with the goal to develop "a city for humans" with reduced housing expenses and a simplified planning code.

Some SV investor-speak aside, YC's so-called "New Cities Project" doesn't sound particularly controversial to anyone who likes cities and wants them to support better lives. But there is a bit of learned defensiveness in YC's blog post announcing the venture: "We’re not interested in building 'crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'"

Now, they might have a bit more explaining to do. Ben Huh—founder and CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, the meme-generating website that birthed lolcats—has joined the urban utopian pursuit as an "Explorer", as Huh announced on Medium earlier this week:

For the next 6-months, I am joining YCombinator Research’s New Cities project as an Explorer. My goal? Create an open, repeatable sy...