0:00

On Today Explained, we've talked a lot about

0:02

the problems with cities, their

0:04

post-pandemic doom loops.

0:06

As remote work pushes down property

0:09

values, eventually the taxes

0:11

collected from those offices and

0:13

urban retail will also fall.

0:15

Their crime vibes. I see

0:17

a lot of people just going and grabbing

0:20

people's bags, hitting them. It's

0:22

like they don't care. Their fight to unshrink

0:24

their shrinking populations with cash

0:26

and amenities. I had laundry. That was

0:28

huge. Their fires,

0:31

their weed frauds, their parking dilemmas,

0:33

their traffic failures. And yet, most

0:36

Americans live in cities and love

0:39

in cities and work in cities and just

0:41

want them to hashtag do

0:43

better.

0:44

Today,

0:46

a possibly deranged plan in California

0:49

to build a city from scratch and

0:51

why it's so tempting to just start

0:53

over.

0:59

I'm Jonquelyn Hill and this

1:01

week on The Weeds, a growing piece

1:03

of the care crisis. It used to be that

1:05

there could be seven people to take care of each person

1:08

and that number is going down and down and down. So

1:10

that has impacts for the people who need care and

1:13

has impacts for the people who are giving that care too. Millions

1:16

of Americans are caretaking for children

1:18

and aging loved ones at the same time. Why

1:21

it's difficult to bridge multiple care gaps and

1:24

the policies that could fix it. Listen

1:26

and subscribe.

1:32

We're

1:33

turning this November in Los Angeles. Vulture

1:35

Festival is a pop culture spectacle where

1:38

Vulture, the website, not the bird, comes

1:40

to life right before your eyes. This

1:43

year, we're celebrating even more of the art that

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unites us. Comedy, reality,

1:48

TV, film, music, and more.

1:51

Join us for intimate panels, performances

1:53

and conversations with iconic stars

1:55

like Weird Al, Henry Winkler, Meg

1:57

Stalter, Casey Wilson, Sharon Hicks, and more.

1:59

Aaron Stone, Adam Pally, Billy

2:02

Porter, Matt Rogers, and many more

2:04

to be announced. It's all happening the weekend

2:07

of November 11th and 12th, and we

2:09

can't wait to see you there. For

2:11

tickets, lineup announcements, and more,

2:13

visit vulturefestival.com. Today

2:23

Explained, I'm Noelle King. My co-pilot

2:26

J.K. Dineen is a reporter covering housing

2:28

and real estate for the San Francisco Chronicle.

2:30

He's been writing about a literal whodunit

2:33

that started in 2018 in a rural area located between

2:38

San Francisco and Sacramento. It

2:40

starts with some unexpected investment.

2:46

This mysterious group of

2:49

investors started paying

2:51

well over market value and buying

2:53

up thousands of acres of dry

2:56

farmland at a time. This

2:58

was farmland that's suitable for wheat

3:01

and barley and alfalfa

3:03

and grazing of cattle and especially

3:06

sheep. The investors

3:08

were getting increasingly aggressive.

3:11

These folks have used strong-arm

3:14

mobster techniques to

3:16

try to force landowners

3:19

to sell. I'm going, come on guys,

3:21

you've created a very, very bad

3:23

atmosphere in Solano County.

3:26

So that was dividing the community,

3:28

it was dividing families in some cases. It made

3:30

a lot of Solano County farmers

3:33

very rich. Eventually,

3:35

it caught the attention of

3:38

two members of Congress, John

3:40

Garamendi and Mike Thompson, who represent

3:43

different portions of Solano County. And

3:45

they were interested in it because of

3:48

the fact that much

3:50

of the farmland was surrounding Travis

3:52

Air Force Base, which is a

3:55

very important military

3:57

facility. A lot of the aid

3:59

going to... Ukraine right now is being

4:01

flown out of that airport. They

4:03

were concerned with, I mean, is it the

4:06

Chinese who is really

4:08

encircling the Air Force base? Since 2018,

4:11

a group known as Flannery

4:13

Associates has bought more than 50,000 acres of farmland

4:16

near the Air Force base. Some proposals

4:18

being considered to protect the farmland include more

4:21

disclosure of agricultural land purchases

4:23

and prohibiting foreign ownership

4:25

of farms. At

4:29

that point, pressure was really building.

4:32

It hit the media. I started writing

4:34

about it. And the rumors

4:36

and speculation were running rampant

4:39

to the point where the investor

4:41

group finally felt

4:43

pressured to

4:47

show their face, to reveal themselves.

4:49

After weeks of speculation, we now know who's

4:51

behind a big land buy out in northern California

4:54

and what they plan to do with it.

4:55

It turned out they're not from China.

4:57

They were not even really real estate

5:00

people at all. They were, in

5:02

fact, a bunch of very successful,

5:05

wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

5:08

and investors. Some

5:09

of those on the list include billionaire

5:11

venture capitalist Michael Moritz, the

5:14

widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs,

5:16

billionaire businesswoman Laureen Powell-Johnson,

5:19

LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman, and

5:21

Patrick and John Collison, the sibling

5:23

co-founders of San Francisco-based payment

5:26

technology company

5:27

Stripe. Some of the people that the real early

5:29

investors in Google and PayPal,

5:31

and that was just a shock because

5:35

nobody really expected that a bunch of Silicon

5:38

Valley Palo Alto billionaires

5:41

would want to buy a bunch of

5:43

dry farmland in an

5:46

obscure corner of Solano

5:48

County, which isn't really a place

5:50

that one associates with tech billionaires.

5:53

Okay, so tech billionaires,

5:57

50,000 acres

5:57

of what is more or less

5:59

farm-wise.

5:59

land, it's near a military base,

6:03

they finally reveal themselves because

6:05

the pressure's on, the pressure's coming from farmers,

6:07

ranchers, also Congress by

6:10

the time it all comes

6:10

to a head. And what

6:12

do these people want to do with

6:14

their 50,000

6:14

acres of land? Yeah,

6:18

so the name of the company is called

6:21

California Forever, which

6:24

sounds delightful and scary at the

6:26

same time, and they

6:28

want to revive the

6:31

California dream and build this utopian

6:35

city, walkable, bikeable,

6:38

densely populated, new California

6:41

city, which they hope will rival

6:44

the great American cities. The group

6:46

of investors want to build a mega city,

6:49

which will offer good-paying jobs, affordable

6:51

housing, clean energy, sustainable

6:53

infrastructure, open space, and a

6:55

healthy environment. They talk a lot about solar

6:58

farms, they talk a lot about

7:00

preserving, you know, plenty of open

7:02

space, at least 10,000 acres.

7:05

The renderings of the proposed city look

7:08

like something out of a fictional book. Streets

7:10

without cars, children on bikes,

7:12

people on kayaks, neighbors gathered

7:14

at their local coffee shop.

7:16

The renderings of this futuristic

7:19

California Forever city

7:21

doesn't show any automobiles, which

7:23

is interesting. It shows

7:25

a lot of people on bicycles

7:28

and walking, and the images, by

7:30

the way, are all AI-generated.

7:33

So there's like some weird things, like a girl on

7:36

a bicycle who only has one foot.

7:38

I'm sorry, she

7:42

doesn't have one foot because something bad has happened

7:43

to her. She has one foot because it's an AI rendering.

7:46

I was so worried about this woman. No,

7:48

the girl, she'll be fine. Right

7:51

now they are saying, you know, we want to

7:53

build an environmentally friendly

7:56

live work, play,

7:58

sustain. green

8:02

city. They look at

8:04

the great neighborhoods in America

8:06

and they like row houses. They like Boston's

8:09

Back Bay. They like parts of San

8:11

Francisco like North Beach or Noe Valley

8:14

or you know like the West Village in New

8:16

York.

8:22

All of the places

8:23

JK that they've modeled

8:25

this city on are very nice.

8:28

I like the West Village. I like the Back

8:30

Bay. I like Noe Valley. However,

8:32

I don't live there. How did local

8:34

people react when they found out this

8:36

was the plan to build an entirely new

8:39

city? I

8:39

think locals are baffled.

8:41

I

8:42

don't know that it's realistic what

8:44

they're talking about at all. It makes zero

8:47

sense. There's no mass transit.

8:49

There's no water

8:49

for that. You have

8:52

cities like Fairfield

8:55

and Vallejo and

8:58

Dixon. The people there have been

9:00

desperate for especially Fairfield.

9:03

They have a train station. It's the county seat.

9:05

They have government jobs and courthouses

9:08

and they would love to

9:10

have a developer come to downtown

9:12

Fairfield and build you know

9:14

a nice modern apartment

9:17

building. They have been trying to get

9:19

somebody to do that for years. They

9:21

could truly

9:23

do a lot to help Solano County if

9:25

they cared really about what's going

9:27

on here. We have a lot that

9:29

they could invest in and change the

9:32

face of Fairfield even. We have

9:34

a whole city block down there. They're welcome

9:36

to come and develop for a little project

9:39

to show us what you can do. So the

9:41

idea that this group of

9:44

strangers with unlimited

9:46

resources would come into their county

9:49

and not invest

9:51

where they want to do, where they want

9:53

to build, where they want to develop, where they want

9:55

to revive their downtowns, but

9:58

in a completely...

11:32

out

12:00

there and we had to assemble a large land holding. In

12:03

order to do that, we had to be

12:05

quiet about the plants so that we didn't have reckless

12:07

speculation and tracked from developers

12:10

coming into the area. Given the California

12:12

Forever folks have been fit of the doubt, they

12:15

are a group of people that have created

12:18

tens and tens and thousands of jobs

12:21

throughout the Bay Area and they

12:24

know firsthand how difficult

12:28

it is for workers

12:30

to afford housing in the Bay Area. And

12:33

so some of them have spent

12:36

quite a bit of money investing in sort

12:38

of the Yimby movement, the Yes

12:40

in My Backyard movement and trying to make

12:42

it easier, faster and cheaper to

12:44

build housing in the Bay Area. They

12:47

have run into roadblocks in Silicon

12:49

Valley in San Francisco where

12:52

there is so much opposition to housing. And

12:54

this report from the governor's office is calling

12:56

out San Francisco

12:57

for making things very difficult for

12:59

people trying to create more housing. So far this year,

13:01

San Francisco has permitted less than one

13:03

home per day.

13:04

And so I think

13:07

giving them the benefit of the doubt, there is

13:10

an honest desire

13:12

to create a new city that

13:15

combines maybe the best of American

13:17

cities but is also affordable.

13:19

Okay,

13:19

so this is not for Laurene

13:22

Powell Jobs. She does not want to live in this city.

13:25

This is for the people.

13:27

Yes, I think the image that they are

13:30

propagating is one of middle

13:32

class mixed income

13:34

community.

13:35

Do you think this is really going to happen? Do

13:38

you think this city is really going to get built?

13:39

The fact that these people have already spent a

13:41

billion dollars leads you to believe that

13:43

they're very serious about it. They're rich

13:46

but maybe not rich enough to throw away

13:48

that kind of money. So they are taking

13:50

this very seriously. Their

13:53

first big test will

13:55

be in November of next year

13:58

when they go before the voters. of

14:00

Solano County to try to get

14:02

basically permission to build this city in

14:05

order to go forward and

14:07

so they are going to be spending a lot of money

14:10

over the next year to try

14:13

to build community support and

14:15

we'll see. They got off to a very

14:17

bad start but there's a lot

14:19

that they could do to win

14:22

people over you know once they

14:24

start building gyms

14:27

and playgrounds and libraries and

14:29

health clinics. I mean the amount of money

14:31

that they have already

14:33

spent would lead you to believe that they

14:36

would not have a problem with

14:38

spending lavishly to make lives

14:41

of some of the people in Solano County better

14:44

in order to

14:45

win support.

14:54

J.K. Dineen of the San Francisco

14:56

Chronicle ahead. New City

14:58

Fees.

15:05

Hi I'm Avishai Artsy and I'm one

15:07

of the people whose names you hear in the credits of

15:09

today explained. I helped produce

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our recent series Blame Capitalism. We

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got into how companies became solely focused

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on profit, how the bank bailout launched

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populist movements on the left and the right, and

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16:02

Forward. We're talking to some of the most

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successful people in all facets of

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Forward isn't just about sports, it's

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We're talking about how to chop wood and carry

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16:41

What about us? We'll

16:45

always have them today.

16:47

I'm Sarah Moser. I'm a professor

16:49

of urban geography at McGill University.

16:52

And I conduct research on new cities

16:54

currently being built from scratch in

16:57

Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

17:00

So I examine the global phenomenon

17:02

of new city building as well as individual

17:05

new city projects. Have you heard about

17:07

this initiative in California? I have.

17:11

This is pretty exciting news for someone

17:13

in my line of work. Ha! I've

17:16

been following the news quite diligently.

17:19

What do you think

17:20

as a researcher when you see this?

17:22

I'm disturbed by it.

17:25

I'm disturbed by the secrecy

17:27

and the scheming, all of which

17:30

has occurred behind closed doors.

17:33

I'm concerned that these are billionaires

17:36

behaving in a way that's anti-democratic

17:39

and actually more in line with Saudi princes

17:42

than what you'd expect from

17:44

citizens in a democracy. It

17:46

seems like a big moneymaker. If these

17:49

secretive billionaires and tech

17:51

bros are able to change the zoning

17:53

from agricultural to

17:55

urban, the land

17:57

will automatically quadruple in value

17:59

or more.

18:00

And so I'm skeptical that anything

18:03

will be built at all. I mean,

18:05

they could just sell the land, make their millions,

18:08

and then just sell it off to a developer, and the developer

18:11

could just make suburbs. There's nothing legally

18:13

binding them to the plan that they've

18:15

advertised to date. You

18:18

said your research focuses on three areas

18:20

of the world, which means

18:22

in those three areas of the world, there's

18:25

also a push to build

18:27

new cities. Is that right? Is this happening elsewhere?

18:30

Yeah, this is kind of a global phenomenon

18:32

right now. There are approximately 200

18:35

new cities being built

18:37

from scratch right now in about 45 to 50

18:40

countries.

18:41

Jakarta is Southeast

18:44

Asia's biggest capital, and it is also

18:46

the world's fastest sinking city. But

18:49

the Indonesian government has a solution,

18:51

building a new capital from scratch. It's

18:55

a 2.5 million person new metropolis that's going

18:57

to be built on the border of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

19:00

The Egyptian government are now investing $58

19:03

billion US dollars in constructing

19:05

the country's entire capital again

19:08

from scratch.

19:09

It's very aspirational for emerging

19:12

economies, which

19:14

maybe have wealth but not infrastructure.

19:18

Building a new city is often seen as a way to

19:20

leapfrog an economy from

19:23

oil, from manufacturing, from agriculture

19:26

into new types of economies. New

19:28

cities are also intended to address

19:31

all sorts of urban challenges facing

19:34

cities around the world. Congestion,

19:37

overcrowding, poor infrastructure,

19:39

a lack of housing, all of this. They're

19:42

really appealing to a lot of countries right

19:44

now.

19:47

One of my favourite projects that is endlessly

19:50

fascinating is Forest City.

19:53

This is a project being built by

19:55

China's top property developer in

19:58

the ocean on artificial

19:59

of the coast of Malaysia. The

20:02

project's

20:02

intended for about 700,000 residents.

20:07

It's basically an investment vehicle for

20:09

Chinese investors, particularly investors

20:11

who maybe can't get into the market in London

20:14

or Australia or Vancouver. They're

20:18

going to secondary markets like Malaysia

20:20

or Thailand or Cambodia to buy investment

20:23

condos.

20:24

With many properties bought as investments, there

20:26

are concerns about low occupancy rates.

20:29

For now, the sound of silence fills

20:31

the air. Another project

20:34

I think

20:34

is really intriguing is

20:36

the line in Saudi Arabia. This

20:39

is

20:40

an urban mega development that is

20:42

unprecedented in scale and budget

20:44

and ambition. It's basically

20:47

a linear city that's 170

20:50

kilometres long in

20:52

one single skyscraper. The skyscraper is 200

20:54

metres wide, 500 metres tall and 170 kilometres long. So 9

21:02

million people are supposed to fit into

21:04

this long, endless

21:06

skyscraper. Residents

21:08

have access to all their daily needs

21:10

within five-minute walk neighbourhoods. The

21:14

line's infrastructure makes it possible

21:16

to travel end-to-end in 20 minutes

21:19

with no need for cars, resulting

21:21

in zero carbon emissions. It's

21:24

not likely to happen as they claim

21:26

it's going to happen because it would require

21:28

the entire global production of

21:31

steel working simultaneously to

21:33

build this project. It would

21:35

take the entire global production of

21:37

mirror glass to create this project.

21:40

The entire project is supposed to be covered

21:42

in mirror glass. This

21:43

futuristic city that here

21:45

is planning to invest half a trillion

21:47

dollars in it. It goes wrong. It

21:50

could bankrupt the country. So we'll see what

21:52

happens. It's at the very early stages.

21:54

They're moving Earth around right now. It

21:56

sounds like a total

21:58

white elephant project.

25:59

That was Sarah Moser.

26:02

She runs the

26:02

New Cities Lab at McGill. Today's

26:05

episode was produced by Ovisi Aarti.

26:07

It was edited by Matthew Collett. Based in

26:09

the Bay Area, Matthew knows nothing about

26:11

this project. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard.

26:13

Patrick Boyd is our engineer. I'm Noelle King

26:16

and this is

26:16

Today Explained.

26:30

you