Jan Sramek: California Forever: The Startup Building America's Next Great City

The segment opens with a promotional video that sets out the project's goals. It describes a plan to build a "livable, affordable, eco-friendly community" on land in Solano County. It says California Forever owns more than 100 square miles there and is backed by Silicon Valley investors. The video presents the project as a return to what Northern California did "back in the 60s and 70s and 80s, when it was the center for high-tech manufacturing in America." It also says the city "will be entirely self-funded and sustainable," but nothing later in the talk explains how.

And the fact that we are frotling it by not building up housing is just crazy.

After an introduction (the speaker's name is garbled in the transcript), the presenter describes California Forever as "building the next great American city" and responds to the obvious objection, "California, really?" The answer is that California, whatever its problems, has no substitute. The speaker argues that no other place in America can play the role California plays, so the state's failures have to be fixed rather than abandoned.

despite all of its flaws and challenges, California is irreplaceable.