In 2017, a mysterious company began buying large plots of land in Solano County, California. The company has since spent $900 million purchasing around 70,000 acres of farmland in what is currently the most rural part of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Then, in August 2023, after speculation began to mount around the project, the company came forward to the public as California Forever and announced its plan to build a new city.
The project has gained the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent billionaire entrepreneurs, including Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn; Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz; and Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective and widow of Steve Jobs. These investors view their proposed city as a blank canvas and an opportunity to create a new vision of city design and governance. They hold the lofty goal of building the “next great American city.”
Indeed, at first, the city seems almost utopian, with wide-ranging promises of well-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and sustainable infrastructure. Yet, beneath its shiny veneer lurk legitimate concerns over the proposed city’s infrastructure and environmental impact.
Solano County sits in one of the most drought-prone regions of California. The land acquired by California Forever lacks a sustainable water source, with no natural reservoirs to serve a city of its size. Adding high-density urban development to the region could also compound the city’s risk of wildfires. California Forever has yet to provide a clear plan for where the future city would draw its water from.
The company must also contend with the land’s proximity to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The Delta provides a vital source of drinking water and irrigation, but it also constitutes one of California’s most ecologically sensitive regions. Effects of urban development near the Delta, like urban runoff and construction, could destabilize the ecosystem: harming fish populations, increasing salinity, and threatening the region’s water distribution system.
Much of the land itself is currently used for wind energy production, and those existing wind farms would reduce the availability of land for development. Paving over these wind farms for housing would undercut California’s clean energy goals — ironic for a project that proclaims to uphold the “highest sustainability standards.”
The area also lacks the infrastructure needed to support the massive growth that the proposed city would entail. The land is largely rural and disconnected, with a two-lane highway that is already overly congested. California Forever’s leaders envision the city growing to 400,000 residents, which would double the population of Solano County. Adding hundreds of thousands of residents would require a tremendous investment in roads, transit, sewage, utilities, and emergency services. If California Forever failed to cover the costs, those infrastructure upgrades could lead to a fiscal deficit for the county, according to a Solano County report.
Solano County’s Incorporated and Unincorporated Areas with Suisun City Highlighted | Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Currently, the land is zoned for agriculture, and under Solano County’s 40-year-old Orderly Growth Ordinance, any significant development outside existing urban boundaries must be approved by voters. In January 2024, California Forever released its city plan and announced a ballot initiative for voters to approve the project. However, the project’s environmental and infrastructure concerns drove residents to largely oppose the project.
I spoke with former Solano County Supervisor Duane Kromm about his work with Solano Together, a coalition of environmental groups that oppose California Forever.
“We stand for protecting farmland or open space and having city or city-oriented growth in the county,” Kromm told me. “So when California Forever bought what’s now about 70,000 acres, and said, ‘We want to build a new town out in the middle of between Rio Vista and Suisun [City] not connected to any existing city’ — that’s just diametrically opposed to what we value.”
In the face of growing opposition, California Forever withdrew its ballot measure in July 2024. Since then, the company has sought to move forward by circumventing the process of gaining voter approval.
In March 2025, California Forever announced plans for a shipbuilding project as part of its plans for the city after the Trump administration proposed tax incentives for shipbuilding. This plan would take advantage of the fact that the area is already zoned for shipbuilding. Yet, like other urban development, a large shipbuilding project would pose a threat to the environment of the Delta Region.
In September, the company also began to push for the Solano Maritime Projects Act, which would adjust the boundaries of an industrial area on the Collinsville waterfront that is currently zoned for shipbuilding. The legislation would decrease the county’s power to regulate developments and protect the environment.
Now, California Forever is shifting away from its original plan to build an entirely new city in unincorporated Solano County. The company is instead seeking to make a deal with Suisun City’s municipal council for the city to annex most of the development’s land. California Forever submitted an annexation proposal to Suisun City, and the city government deemed it complete earlier this month. The company and city government will now work together to create an environmental impact report as the next phase of the annexation process.
In his announcement on X, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek praised Suisun City: “They are now on the way to becoming California’s best example of the Abundance Agenda.”
California Forever fits into a larger pattern of this abundance movement, which calls for addressing societal issues by expanding production rather than limiting consumption, coming into conflict with environmental regulations. Proponents of the movement have criticized these regulations for slowing down progress. Lately, support for abundance has been growing among Democrats, with the California legislature rolling back environmental laws in favor of building more housing in June.
Overriding legitimate environmental concerns in favor of “progress” is antithetical to the abundance movement’s ultimate goal of human flourishing. Yet abundance and environmentalism are not mutually exclusive. If California Forever truly believes in upholding “the highest sustainability standards,” the company should work with the local government and community to create an environmentally conscientious plan, instead of trying to find backdoors and loopholes around public approval. The proposed city could lead the way for a new era of abundance — but it must do so responsibly and sustainably, with residents’ input.
Until California Forever seeks to work with residents, however, it is difficult to believe that the company has their best interests in mind. Kromm believes that California Forever’s sidestepping of voter approval raises a key question: “Can billionaires with lots of contacts in DC and Sacramento get what they want just because they’re billionaires, without regard to what local communities want, and without doing adequate environmental analysis of what the proposals are?”
Only time will tell — but as the annexation process pushes forward, the answer may very well prove to be a damning “yes.”
Featured Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
