An investigation in August 2023 Wall Street Journal A business fund made up of some of the world’s biggest tech fortunes secretly purchased more than 13 square miles of rural land in Solano County, a company has revealed.

Names such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; Patrick and John Collison, founders of the payment company Stripe, or Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs were among the millionaires who invested in this project.

Barren land next to military baseThe land is located north of Silicon Valley, halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. The investment fund has been acquiring property around Travis Air Force Base since 2017, raising suspicions about who is buying up individual lots around the military facility.

Their secret intention was this: to build a new city that would solve Silicon Valley’s severe housing shortage and displace some of the population working for tech companies in the area. In the minds of the project’s developers, this seemed great. In the eyes of local residents, less so. They had already voted against the project once, and according to the WSJ, they will vote again.

A city that no one wantsThe initial project, backed by former Goldman Sachs investor Jan Sramek, was to build 20,000 homes, roads, schools, create local jobs and create green spaces for the first 50,000 residents. The project is called California Forever and is dedicated to solutions based on renewable energy and groundwater use and transfers from other counties, as reported on KQED.

However, the initial secrecy surrounding the operation, the fact that the area is a protected natural area and the water resources are already over-exploited by the existing population, caused residents of nearby towns to object to the project. The nearby air base reminded its developers that test flights were being conducted in the area, so a wide separation zone had to be considered between the base’s borders and the city center to prevent acoustic discomfort for new residents.

Discussion of stressful areas. San Francisco and the Bay Area, like many other regions around the world, are experiencing a severe housing shortage due to a lack of developable land. This is causing the prices of available housing to skyrocket until they become unaffordable for the local population. Newspaper IndependentHe described San Francisco as one of the most affordable places to live.

But for those living in the neighboring district of Solane, this need does not seem to be reason enough. IndependentThese citizens are calling on project developers to develop their plans within the boundaries of existing cities, putting ecosystems in natural areas at risk and adding further strain to the region’s already scarce natural resources.

Overpopulated poles and unpopulated areasThe main vector for the housing crisis in large populated cities around the world, such as San Francisco, New York, London or Madrid, is the concentration of companies. These companies attract large numbers of workers who need to live near their work centers.

One of the most common arguments for this concentration of work is often the creation of business ecosystems, but many of these companies are not afraid to pack their bags and move their headquarters elsewhere when tax policies are not favorable, as has been the case with companies that have moved to Florida or Texas in recent months.

Don’t build new cities, repopulate themIn the United States, states like Idaho are encouraging companies and citizens from neighboring states to relocate to their towns to take advantage of tax benefits.

In this way, demographics are being dispersed and some of the population lost decades ago due to the growth of large business concentrations such as Silicon Valley is being regained.

We also see a model in SpainNo one would think of building a new big city from scratch halfway between Madrid and Bilbao. Meanwhile, different regional governments are encouraging companies and citizens to repopulate areas that have been losing population for decades, drawing big capitals for job opportunities.

Examples such as Malaga or Zaragoza, which have become reference points in innovation and data centres, show that a business growth model is possible without mega-business concentrations that indirectly create an enormous housing problem in large cities.

On Xataka | This explanatory chart brings together the cities with the most billionaires

Image | Unsplash (Alexey Komissarov, Karl Magnuson)