'Utopian' City 'California Forever' Announces Huge Tech Manufacturing Park
- Reference: 0178414294
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0022209/utopian-city-california-forever-announces-huge-tech-manufacturing-park
- Source link:
> California Forever [1]announced on Thursday [2]plans to build a massive manufacturing park called Solano Foundry , the newest addition to its master-planned "utopian" city backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. Solano Foundry is 2,100 acres that can host 40 million square feet of advanced tech manufacturing space. The manufacturing park will be built as part of its planned walkable city with over 175,000 homes, CEO Jan Sramek said at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit.
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> Sramek [3]tweeted that U.S. manufacturers can't win by "building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere. The best people don't want to work there." This site will offer expedited permitting, transportation for finished goods, and plenty of power from renewable energy, he said. The hope is that it will attract hardware, engineering, and AI talent from relatively nearby Silicon Valley. Solano County is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco.
[1] https://californiaforever.com/california-forever-unveils-the-solano-foundry/
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/17/utopian-city-california-forever-announces-huge-tech-manufacturing-park/
[3] https://x.com/jansramek/status/1945897306579939709?s=46&t=dDcpMIMYg6fdPePSTT9k6w
at the Reindustrialize Detroit meeting (Score:2)
"I'm building a factory in SF and you can't stop me."
In many ways, Tech Billionaires are the dumbest people on Earth.
Re: Noooo stop (Score:2)
How many factories full of American workers making high wages have they attracted?
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I was wondering about the idea of factories attracting the best people. That's not how factories work, the few people doing the maintenance aside. The work for the people on the line is designed to not require the best people.
Re: (Score:1)
This is the safest time in history to be alive. Crime is low, we can cure diseases and treat some forms of cancers. Well at least in the rest of world where they still believe in science. But you get the idea.
It'll be as successful as... (Score:1)
Their "High Speed Rail"... Many billions stolen/wasted, while literally nothing, gets built...
Sigh, let us welcome our new plutocrat overlords (Score:2)
When American companies [1]finance their own "utopia" cities [apnews.com], I can't help but be reminded that the ruling class [2]loves to design and build [wikipedia.org] [3]their own cities [wikipedia.org] to protect their power and interests.
What can I say, other than let us welcome our new plutocrat overlords.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starbase-texas-city-incorporated-f6404f050b7025c5ce95d0a0114df61d
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Administrative_Capital
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naypyidaw
Avoid Tossing Space (Score:2)
My boss at Urban Decay refused to adopt spinning chairs. Now look... Now look... if he sold advertising space (by impressions) he could sponsor a 20-year incubator. I haven't had one complaint on my Commodore.
I support this (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a lot of billionaires out there with way more money than they know what to do with. It turns out that most humans are pretty bad at dealing with that level of resources. We’re clearly not evolved to handle that sort of thing. When people get a million times more money than they need, their brains clearly start misfiring. The result tends to be purchases of supercars, superyachts, castles, or various pet projects that don’t go anywhere and have almost no impact. Musk buys X and turns it into a chewtoy. Zuckerberg throws wads of cash at literally anything except selling ads and fails. Hell, even the well meaning stuff tends to be a bust. All due respect to the Gates foundation and Bezos’ ex, but the NSF and NIH would have spent that money smarter. It’s like watching Python code execute and seeing “overflow error” in these guys brains. In a way, I’m sympathetic - iheir hardware isnt equipped to handle the input they managed to accumulate and I certainly couldn't do any better.
A bunch of them banding together and building an industrial city could actually leave an impact. The rest of US society has mostly given up on big construction, and it’s clear that we need more. It would have been even smarter to just fund infrastructure - write checks to refurbish and replace a thousand bridges and sewer systems, or maybe update the power grid. But that’s boring. I get it. A new city would be the second best thing,
However, they’ll only succeed if they build a PRACTICAL city, not some stupid attempt at a futuristic utopia. Try that and they’ll get something like NEOM. They should build an actual functional city, where large numbers of both people and companies can operate simultaneously. In texas, where theres lots of land, that probably means a grid of streets, apartment clusters, LOTS of cars, industrial parks, and permissive zoning. Lots rectangular buildings with boring sheet metal exteriors and tons of 5+1 apartments. Throw in some nice walkable planned mixed-use residential/retail/entertainment zones to make it pleasant, but THATS NOT WHERE THE REAL WORK GETS DONE, so dont go overboard on that stuff.
Do that, and it just might still be standing and operating 200 years from now.
Re: (Score:1)
For a person to enjoy "toy pet projects" is indeed the definition of a "broken brain". Mature, discerning adults distinguish between deep-but-ignored problems and a cultural narcotic.
Re: (Score:2)
You’re thinking small. Most super-wealthy want to do things beyond “blow my money on enjoyment”. We’re talking about people who have probably bought every veblen good and status symbol they could possibly want, a hundred times over, and still have billions left. These people are well past the point of enjoying their money. They’re thinking “whats the point” and want to do something actually real.
For almost everyone, there’s a limit to how much hedonism i
Re: (Score:2)
Five over one wood frame construction is inefficient. The future is as always prefab. It's just that when land costs 10x everything else, the future can wait.
Land should be relatively cheap here, so efficiency matters. The amount of construction is large enough to just put a prefab factory on site. They can do their own zoning too, so the number of stories is just a question of taste.
As someone who's been in water for 20 years... (Score:3)
I hope they've thought about water. And I don't mean in a profity, "sure there's enough for us" way.
Where? (Score:3)
U.S. manufacturers can't win by "building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere
The hope is that it will attract hardware, engineering, and AI talent... Solano County is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco
Great plan.
Re: (Score:2)
I want to know where in Solano County? Seems like silicon valley has run out of space, so they need to destroy a new area.
Welcome to Company Town! (Score:5, Insightful)
Our new financial overlords bid you greetings.
Re:Welcome to Company Town! (Score:5, Interesting)
Most towns grew out of a couple big companies.
Somewhere along the line the economy of scale ran away with things and instead of new company towns and agrarian service hubs, we got ever growing cities. Then we put artificial growth boundaries around those cities, making it harder and harder for normal people to afford a nice detached home near their work (which is how almost everyone wants to live, as long as we still have to work).
Nothing wrong with a new company town compared to the dystopian status quo.
Re: (Score:2)
Most major cities grew out geography first and foremost.
Also you cannot build a major city with detached housing alone, that's a very 20th America-brained type of thinking. I mean go to Europe and see the cities that have structure going back centuries, how much of it was detached? A minority to say the least, if thy had the means to build taller they would and did when they could.
Agreed on artificial growth boundaries and one of those is single-home-only zoning pretty much anywhere but especially in major
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No worries, the project will die after tax rebates have been paid in advance.
Re: (Score:2)
The project will die because the higher paid tech talent doesn't want to live there, and lower paid don't want to commute there.
Unless they build onsite dormitories for the $15/hr staff, the support/service workforce won't exist either.