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

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.

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 housing with ADUs to be included “wherever the owner wants.” Initial phases of construction have been estimated to cost around $800 million. 

The New York Times went behind the scenes of the scrutinized land grab that took place in the months leading up to its revelation this past fall, while local outlets focused on the combative neighbors still resisting the idea of transforming more than 16,000 acres of prime agricultural land into a new peri-urban community that resembles parts of nearby Sacramento or Alameda county.

The plan is being advanced by a group of international financiers apparently fed up with housing and zoning policies and so alarmed at the rates of homelessness and other forms of poverty in the state that they are indentured to create their own self-designed answer underpinned by the careful study of advanced theories about city planning and urban policy from Ebenezer Howard, Leon Krier, and others. Their vision has antecedents in contemporary China and evokes the same scope and social tenor of the BIG-designed Telosa desert city proposed by billionaire Marc Lore in September of 2021.

“It’s medium density,” Gabriel Metcalf, California Forever’s Berkeley-trained head of planning, described to Politico. “It’s not traditional suburbia, it’s not Manhattan, it’s in the middle.” 

The initial infrastructure could be in place by the end of 2026, according to their reporting. The urban design for the plan is being done by San Francisco-based studio SITELAB, while its landscape program is undertaken by CMG. Fehr & Peers will provide the transportation strategy. 

Backers now have until early April to accumulate 13,000 signatures before county officials decide whether or not it will be put up for a vote this fall.