Opinion: Rural California Cheers as Plan for Utopian Tech City Hits the Skids
Seven generations after his family first settled in California’s Solano County, 23-year-old Aiden Mayhood went online on Monday to see he had done his predecessors proud by thwarting a band of bullying tech billionaires.
Seven years ago, a mysterious entity that only made itself known as Flannery Associates began buying up more than 60,000 acres of agricultural land. Farmers who resisted selling were pressured and families were deliberately divided. More than $800 million had been spent when The New York Times revealed that the project’s backers included Silicon Valley titans, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist Marc Andressen, and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs.
They unveiled a plan to build—from scratch—an idyllic, “walkable” city for 400,000 people just 60 miles from San Francisco.