For the past five years, a small group of Silicon Valley investors has spent nearly a billion dollars quietly buying up over 50,000 acres of farmland in northern California. The goal? To create an ambitious new California dream city, something that hasn’t been done in America for over a century. The California Forever project aims to create a livable, workable, walkable city that puts working families at the heart of its design, creating new housing for up to 400,000 people. Skeptics abound, but could this be the solution to one of California’s most intractable problems? The city’s designated architect, urban planner Gabriel Metcalf, joins The Excerpt to discuss the hurdles and possibilities of developing an entirely new city. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.