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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Jan. 25 - Jan. 31, 2016 - Less Wrong
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If I look in Google Maps at California there seem to be huge open spaces. What's stopping new cities in California to be build on land that's outside of the existing cities?
Cities are where they are because of actual reasons of geography, not just people plopping things down randomly on a map. You need to get stuff into them, stuff out of them, have the requisite power and water infrastructure to get to them (ESPECIALLY in California)... they aren't something you plop down randomly on a whim.
Also, previous attempts at doing exactly this have only had modest success:
There are planned desert cities in Arabian peninsula. If land value in California grows because people value geographical proximity to San Francisco that much at some point it will outweigh costs of having to build infrastructure in the middle of the desert.
There are multiple problems that need to be solved here. Buying land is one of them, and yes, it seems like a reasonable investment for someone who has tons of money. The other problem is water.
Yet another problem could be the transit from the new city to SF. Geographical proximity may be useless if the traffic jams make commuting impossible.
A lot of Californians like those big open spaces. Others don't want developments that make it easier for poor people to live around them (due to fear of crime, "bad schools" or other unpleasantness.)
San Francisco is now one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world, and the populace wants to keep it that way.
Alright so how do we keep these people away then while lowering prices?
You can implement Hukou system. Obviously, it would lead to other problems.
You wouldn't even need the hukou; private covenants would be quite enough. However, these conevants are banned as an infringement of civil rights. But the real solution is to decouple education from local real-estate markets, by allowing people to freely choose their preferred schools (public, charter or private, via student-linked vouchers) regardless of their home address or VAT code.
I am a bit doubtful that free school choice will solve the "in some places real estate is really expensive" problem.
For example, NYC has a notoriously bad public school system and very expensive real estate.
The problem is not expensive real estate persay; it's supply restrictions that make real estate more expensive than necessary. Free school choice would remove much of the motive for these restrictions.
E.g. in New York City..?
I don't think school is the only or even the main reason for supply restrictions. People like to live with neighbours of approximately the same social standing and will actively oppose hoi polloi moving in, even without schools being involved.
Even people with no children buy property in good locations because that's where the jobs are. If remote work became more popular it would make living in a big city no longer a necessity.
Environmental Impact Statements :-D
On a bit more serious note, the usual thing -- you can build a city in the middle of a desert, but why would people want to live there? People want to live in LA or SF, not just in Californian boondocks...
People might want to live in LA or SF but on the net the high prices cause people to migrate out of California with 94.000 more people leaving California than joining it in 2011.
It seem like there's open space in 1-hour driving distance of SF. Living there at a decent rent might be preferable to leaving California all-together.
I guess because people want to live in the existing cities? It's not like there is nowhere to live in California--looking at some online apartment listings you can rent a 2 bedroom apt in Bakersfield CA for $700/month. But people still prefer to move to San Francisco and pay $5000/month.
High quality infrastructure and community services are expensive, but taxpayers are reluctant to relocate to the new community until the infrastructure and services exist. It's a bootstrap problem. Haven't you ever played SimCity?
Then how are new cities ever founded? How did Belmopan, Brasília, Abuja and Islamabad do it? Look at the dozens of new cities built just in Singapore during the past half century.
The OP's proposal to build a city in the middle of the desert strikes me as similar to the history of Las Vegas. What parts of it can be replicated?
Well all of these are deliberate decisions to build a national capital. They overcame the bootstrap problem by being funded by a pre-existing national tax base.
Again, government funding is used to overcome the bootstrap problem. Singapore is also geographically small, and many of these "cities" would be characterized as neighborhoods if they were in the US.
Well, wikipedia says it began life as a water resupply stop for steam trains, and then got lucky by being near a major government project - Hoover dam. Later it took advantage of regulatory differences. An eccentric billionaire seems to have played a key roll.
There seem to be several towns that exist because of regulatory differences, so this seems a factor to consider - at least one eccentric billionaire seems fairly serious about "seasteading" for this reason. Historically, religious and ideological differences have founded cites, if not nations, so this is one way to push through the bootstrap phase - Salt Lake City being a relatively modern example in the US. Masdar City - zero carbon, zero waste - is an interesting example - ironically funded by oil wealth.
By traditional mythology, the reason Las Vegas exists is because the mob (mafia) wanted to have a playground far far away from the Feds :-)
Or because it's the place closest to San Francisco where gambling was legal.
San Fran is not that special :-P
Besides, gambling was legalized in the entire state of Nevada and there are certainly places closer to SF in there (like Reno).
It's expensive but interest rates are low and the possible profit is huge.
But similar profits are available at lower risk by developing at the edges of existing infrastructure. In particular, incremental development of this kind, along with some modest lobbying, will likely yield taxpayer funded infrastructure and services.
It seems like you can't do incremental development by building more real estage inside the cities because of the cities not wanting to give new building permits that might lower the value of existing real estage.
I think Seattle's South Lake Union development, kickstarted by Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos, is a counter example ...
http://crosscut.com/2015/05/why-everywhere-is-the-next-south-lake-union/
Perhaps gentrification is a more general counter example. But you're right, most developers opt for sprawl.
No, it's not in California. In California a city like Mountain View blocks a company like Google from building new infrastructure on it's edges.
In what sense? Gentrification simply means that rents go up in certain parts of the city. It doesn't have directly something to do with new investments.
Not at all. Gentrification is the replacement of a social class by a different social class. There are a LOT of consequences to that -- the character of the neighbourhood changes greatly.
In my experience gentrification is always associated with renovation and new business investment. The wikipedia article seems to confirm that this is not an uncommon experience.
I'm dreaming of a huge solar panels field that powers a desalinization complex and Nanoclay seeded desert... Alas, if I only had a couple hundred million dollars...