SACRAMENTO – The plan by a group of San Francisco Bay Area venture capitalists to build an entirely new city on ranch land in Solano County between the Bay Area and Sacramento has become one of the most controversial housing plans in Northern California in years. The East Solano Plan might be delayed, but the proposal sparked a necessary debate about building new cities and planned communities to meet market demand and offset California’s housing crisis.
In a new booklet, the Pacific Research Institute’s Steven Greenhut, director of PRI’s Free Cities Center, analyzes the proposal and what it means for the future of city planning. “Building Cities from Scratch” looks at America’s long and successful history of building new cities. It argues that such proposals not only offer the promise of more housing, but offer opportunities for experimenting in urban design and in improving the provision of municipal services.
“New cities are in fact nothing new in America,” Greenhut said. ”They have always provided the impetus for innovation. California’s housing crisis is driven by an excess of government planning and control. The state needs to free private investors and developers to meet market demand if it ever hopes to turn the corner on its housing crisis. There’s much we can learn by past new-city examples.”
Click here to download “Building Cities From Scratch”
The California Forever proposal in exurban Solano County is designed to be a walkable “real” city that would house 50,000 new residents to start, but the plan was derailed for at least two years by local opposition, low approval ratings and a tight-lipped and ineffective public relations campaign. The group recently pulled a measure from the November ballot that would have allowed the rezoning of the property. Interestingly, the proposal sparked a debate within the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) community, between those who applauded its plan to build more housing and those who viewed it as sprawl.
But whatever California Forever’s fate, the idea of building new cities is an important one. The PRI booklet recounts the history of some of the nation’s most significant ones, from post-war communities such as Levittown, N.Y., to Midwestern utopian communities built along religious lines to Irvine in Orange County, Calif, which embodied some of the most forward-looking design concepts at the time.
“Building Cities from Scratch” looks at real-world proposals and new-city thought experiments as a means to create innovative urban thinking.
PRI’s Free Cities Center cultivates innovative ideas to improve urban life based around freedom and property rights – not government. It regularly releases incisive reporting and analysis on crime, housing, education, homelessness, and social mobility. Follow PRI on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
