I’ve been enchanted by the question of our cities, and in particular the thought of building new cities, since I was a little boy obsessed with the themed communities, the monorails, the hydroponic gardens at Disney World. But even at that early age, I was haunted by the question of why our real world was so lacking in this kind of imagination. I chased these subjects throughout most of my adult life, and by 2020 it was clear the problem of our American city was not merely a failure to progress, but something much more like the opposite — our urban core was dying. Solving this problem is the challenge of our generation, and our journey begins with a project not only practical, but inspirational, and therefore capable of jump-starting our sclerotic society back to life. I think California Forever just might be that project.

Jan Sramek, CF’s founder, is building a whole new city in the Bay Area. Devon Zuegel, a talented, thoughtful writer and technologist wrote a fantastic primer on the project, which we’ve excerpted below (and be sure to read the full series on her great site here). Today, Devon and Jan join me on the Pirate Wires Podcast for an exciting discussion on California Forever’s ambition, the challenges ahead, and our country’s great potential.

— Solana

Check out the full podcast here —

California Forever wants to build the urbanist dream: a walkable city that improves quality of life and brings down cost of living by prioritizing walking, cycling and public transit, using space efficiently, and removing unnecessary rules that limit housing supply. And all this would be in Solano County, roughly 50 miles from San Francisco.

The dominant framing by the press is that this city will be a futurist utopia run by tech nerds, but the initiative and company website feel like they were written by YIMBYs, renewable-energy advocates, and walkability activists who echo the philosophies of Jane Jacobs and Donald Shoup, not Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.

California Forever was founded by Jan Sramek in 2017 as a way to create an economic engine for Solano County while helping to solve the region’s growing housing crisis in a scalable, financially self-supporting way. He began pitching the project to wealthy Californians who were committed to the long-term health and success of the state. Jan described it as an investment that would achieve these goals and also make money long-term if successful. This resonated with people like Laurene Powell Jobs, Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman, who together have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the project.

Over the next 6 years, the company bought over 60,000 acres of land in Solano County. This is a lot of land. For context, San Francisco is about 30,000 acres. They made these purchases without telling people what their plans were, knowing that if they announced the plan upfront, the land prices would spike and the project would no longer be possible.

As California Forever bought more land, neighbors grew curious and later became concerned about who was behind the project. In summer 2023, the team was preparing for a public launch in the fall. But before California Forever could make their planned announcement, the project leaked, which began a rocky rollout to the public.

In January, after incorporating input from Solano stakeholders, California Forever announced the ballot initiative that will go in front of voters this November. Some key aspects of the project:

• The city would use just 17,500 acres, or about a quarter of the total land that California Forever owns. Of that acreage, 4,000 would be used for things like parks, trails, urban ecological habitat, and community gardens.

• Neighborhoods would be centered around local shopping, streets, and schools and designed so that families can live within a short walk for most daily needs.

• The community is designed to provide transportation alternatives to cars, including walking, biking, and transit service.

• The initiative describes 10 guarantees to ensure the plan will benefit citizens all across Solano County, such as tying the new city’s ability to grow to the creation of 15,000 new jobs and $400 million in down-payment assistance.

• The next step is for California Forever to collect approximately 13,500 signatures to place the initiative on the ballot in November 2024.

As an urbanism nerd, the aspect of California Forever’s plan I was most eager to hear about was land use and urban planning for the new city. The company’s plan recognizes that the dominant sprawl pattern is not working, and California Forever is trying to set an example for how cities and neighborhoods are developed in California.

Here are some of the details from the initiative that stand out to me:

Emphasis on walking, biking, and high-quality transit: Compact development is at the core of this proposal. Imagine being able to walk or bike to most of your destinations, with public transport as a convenient option for longer trips. The city plans to embrace townhomes and small apartment buildings that create gentle density, moving away from the sprawling single-family homes that dominate much of American suburbia.

A focus on “missing middle” housing: The plans feature housing that is high density but not high rise: a combination of two to four-story "row houses" and apartment buildings going up to eight stories. This type of housing is made with the cost-effective, wood-frame construction methods that are present in the world’s most beloved places like Amsterdam, Venice, Santa Monica, Lake Como, Kyoto, and Lisbon. The towering condo buildings of Hong Kong or Manhattan aren’t necessary to solve California’s housing crisis — simply going from standard suburbia to row houses, cottage courts, and small apartment buildings can quadruple typical suburban density.

Flexible building use: Unlike conventional zoning, which restricts how buildings can be used, form-based codes focus on how buildings interact with each other to create a cohesive neighborhood, allowing for more flexibility and creativity. Conventional zoning might enforce rules like “you can only put restaurants and shops over here and you can only put homes over here,” whereas form-based zoning says “as long as the building doesn’t generate noise at night between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., and its height is less than or equal to 4 stories, it can be used for whatever the owner thinks the neighborhood needs.” If someone wants to open a coffee shop on the first floor of their home, they can do so as long as it meets the standards set for neighborhood impact.

Granularity: The city also plans to embrace row houses and small apartment buildings, which allow for changes over time. This is in contrast to large blocks, whether through homeowner’s associations of single family homes or big apartment complexes with hundreds of units, which often freeze development. Granularity is what makes places like Tokyo so special. Small storefronts will enable small businesses to thrive, and mixed uses will be encouraged.

Parking minimums set at zero: Most U.S. cities require a tremendous amount of parking along with all construction, regardless of demand. The result: The area of parking per car in the U.S. is larger than the area of housing per human. California Forever’s proposal sets the minimum parking requirement at zero for the entire city — this bold move encourages alternative modes of transportation and reduces the dominance of cars in the urban landscape.

Minimum density is 20 units per acre: The ballot initiative locks in at least 20 units per acre as the minimum average density. This is similar to beloved neighborhoods such as Marina in San Francisco, Centrum in Amsterdam, Kensington in London, and Historic Charleston in South Carolina. Though people love these places, we’ve built close to zero of them in the past century.

Parking garages at the periphery: One of the more novel ideas in California Forever's plan is that “each transit line terminates at a parking garage at the edge of the city, making it easy to store cars at the periphery and proceed in on transit.” This recognizes the reality that cars are the dominant mode of transportation in the region and need to be accommodated, while also taking strides in the direction of making public transit, cycling and walking the dominant modes in the city.

Rail-ready: California Forever seems to agree that rail is the right long-term solution. They speak about the project as "rail ready,” and the city plan includes a central transit station.

Predictable, fast approval process: One of the most radical changes by California standards is that California Forever intends the planning process to be swift and efficient. Its stated goal is that a complying project should be approved in just 10 days. This is a stark contrast to the often lengthy and cumbersome processes in most California cities.

I couldn’t dream of a better set of design principles for the most ambitious city building project that this country has seen in decades. It seems that the project has the right goals and team to build a truly special place. This is California’s best chance to build a walkable, sustainable, and vibrant community that learns from the past and looks to the future. I can't wait to see it come to life.

— Devon Zuegel