Contributor: Clear the way for expansive urban experiences like California Forever

Beginning this fall, Silicon Valley Dreamers offers To build a city of 400,000 people And the production facility in Rangeland, 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, issued a detailed report Their planwhich they call “California Always”. It is unlike anything the United States has seen before: unique in location, intensely urban in design.

A new city will be built in one Compact gridWith closed streets, rapid transit routes and greenways for pedestrians and cyclists. The city’s lowest residential lots will be zoned for 85-foot apartment buildings, taller than any pre-1880 apartment building. House hunters will be able to buy row houses as if they were shopping for real estate in 19th-century Brooklyn, not in the cookie-cutter suburbs of Upper Rao.

This look – more distant and more dense – represents a significant break with what has generally sold well on the foreign border. The WoodlandsTexas, one of the most successful outdoor developments of the past 50 years, is only 30 miles from Houston and is built largely around single-family homes. Only in fundamentally inferior housing in California can you even imagine selling Americans apartments that are far from existing centers of employment.

Yet California always represents more than the bet that is the Bay Area a lot The housing shortage has created a strong market for “high-end commuters” based in the Central Valley. Rather, it is a bold attempt to put into practice the last 30 years of research in urban economics.

One of the lessons of this research is to “build” on existing neighborhoods Often depressed To people who live nearby. (If you can put your new city somewhere else.)

The second lesson, more important and less intuitive, is to pack more people and businesses into smaller geographies. Makes everyone more productive. People who live and work together learn from each other. They can take business risks, because if one scheme doesn’t pan out, other opportunities await. Tight labor markets give workers bargaining power and enable them to find the right employers. Individuals and companies also benefit from shared facilities that have high fixed costs to build, such as an opera house or an airport. Economists call this package of benefits the “gross benefits” of urban density.

But there’s a catch: A small-scale developer who builds a house or a small apartment building doesn’t get the benefits of density accumulation that they bring. If the people displaced by the developer open a restaurant or give a worker a raise, the developer does not make a profit. Ordinary builders have no claim on the collective imagination of the city. Thus, left to their own devices, developers invest less in density. NIMBY pressures make things worse.

California’s biggest ever bet is that by acquiring enough land to build an entire city, investors can take advantage of agglomeration economies. Their front row houses and apartments may lose money, but the population density will increase the value of the city’s headquarters and manufacturing districts. Because investors who own residential land also own urban and industrial areas, they will consider the benefits that the new building will bring to the entire community, not just what potential residents will pay to live in the new building.

Owning it all also gives California the highest-powered incentives ever to improve schools and public safety, and to reduce traffic congestion. In many large cities, well-meaning planners lack the resources and incentives to overcome urban barriers. Forever in California, investors’ fortunes depend on creating an urbanism that thrives.

If it ever starts.

The obstacles in the way of building a new city are tough. Almost everywhere in the United States today, a major development requires the approval of multiple local, state, and sometimes federal agencies, each of which has a veto. Research One of us discovered that strict land use regulations encourage developers to pursue smaller projects and ultimately fragment the building industry. This reduces productivity and innovation in the construction sector.

At a minimum, the California Permanent Project would require the approval of one city (Suisun), one county (Solano), and ultimately one state agency (California State Water Resources Control Board). Each approval triggers a review under the California Environmental Quality Act and potentially years of litigation and delays. The Solano County Supervisor already has said California forever, “go somewhere else.” If he convinces his two colleagues, the project is dead.

California requirements Millions From new homes. The state has passed hundreds of housing laws, but few have them The needle moved In production. The forces of NIMBYism are deeply embedded. California Forever could transfer the dynamism of Silicon Valley to the Central Valley, backed by incentives from investors to create an efficient and scalable society of dense urban housing and high-tech manufacturing. No single city or county should have an absolute veto over such an important project.

Clean energy policy offers one way. at the Massachusetts and CaliforniaLawmakers have created “comprehensive permit” programs for significant statewide energy and transmission projects. A single official under the governor makes the decision to approve the project, after hearing proposals from multiple state and local actors who would traditionally have a veto on the project.

The comprehensive permitting model should be extended to statewide urban development projects, including California Forever. A generation ago, the California Supreme Court declared that local governments have duty of care The needs of their area. but experience It has shown that locally elected officials are rarely good guardians of local interests. A new state permitting approach could unlock tomorrow’s vital experiences in city-building.

Chris Elmendorf is a professor of law at UC Davis. Ed Glazer is a professor of economics at Harvard.