Your life here

There’s been a lot of curiosity about what the new city would be like. Here we pull together the whole vision to give you a sense of what it would be like to live there.

Homes

The new city is a place for everyone, for people at every stage and walk of life. The city will have both single-family homes and apartments, for sale and rent.

Choose from many different types of homes

The city will have different home types and different price points, all mixed together, which is what makes real diversity possible.

Maybe you start as a young person living in a small apartment close to restaurants, cafes, and bars. After working for a few years, you buy a starter home – a flat in a 4-story walkup. Later, when you start a family and have your first kid, you upgrade to a single-family home. Then one day, as your parents age, you build a “granny flat” in the backyard so your parents can live there.

Become a homeowner

While we will have homes and apartments for both rent and sale, our focus is on enabling residents to become homeowners.

Our plan includes several key features that make this possible:

Starter homes – We are building smaller homes that allow you to get your start on the ownership ladder years sooner.
Multi-generational households – Row houses with accessory dwelling units at the back and other multi-generational living options make it possible for two generations to combine their incomes to support homeownership.
Car light living – with the savings helping to pay for mortgage expenses.

Neighborhoods

The entire city is focused on making it easy to access the conveniences of everyday life.

Local shopping

We designed the city so that every home will be within walking distance of a local shopping street. This is one of the great joys of city life: being able to easily walk to pick up groceries, stop at a coffee shop, go to the hardware store, buy flowers – or just people watch. The goal of each local shopping street is to have the few things you need most often – a grocery store, a few restaurants, and a couple of cafes and bars.

Local school

In suburban neighborhoods, schools need to be located near arterial roads because everyone needs to drive in. In this city, because most people walk to school, we are able to locate the schools at the heart of each neighborhood, by a park, a few blocks from the shopping street. This will make life easier for young parents – you can pick up your kids from school, buy groceries, and head home – or see friends for a playdate or dinner. California Forever is in the River Delta School District, and we are excited to contribute to it.

Visitors welcome!

We are building a place that welcomes everyone. We hope that many Solano residents or their children move to the new city – but we also hope that everyone else comes to visit, often. We’re investing heavily in recreation, shopping, and entertainment – we want this to be a destination for people from around the county to come have some fun.

The city is not a “private city” or a “bubble city”; it is not gated and will not restrict access to anyone. It is a new city in Solano County, and we’re excited to have you join us!

Mixing it up

Great cities pack a lot of life, close together.

Schools and shops near homes. Restaurants near offices. Cafes near parks. Most areas of the city provide a mix, but the flavor of the mix is different depending on the area.

The Neighborhood Mixed Use (orange) is a place for homes, schools, parks, small businesses, and local shopping streets.
Downtown and the smaller District Center (pink) are places for major offices, cultural institutions, major shopping, entertainment, and larger apartment buildings.
Maker & Manufacturing (light purple) is a mixed-use zone modeled on the warehouse district you see in many older cities – an eclectic mix of jobs, nightlife, lofts, and small-scale manufacturing – kind of like R Street in Sacramento.
Industry & Technology (dark purple) is a place for manufacturing jobs, industry, warehouses, major hospitals, and other large uses. Residential uses are not permitted here.
Parks & Open Space are integrated across all of these zones. A few are shown in the map, but most are not. In total, the plan requires that at least 4,000 acres of the is used for Parks and Open Space – that’s about 20% of the total area!

Getting around

The new city makes getting around easy, giving you options that fit with your own lifestyle.

Walk to school, to see friends, or to go shopping

Many of our streets are designated as “community streets”, which accommodate cars but only at 10 miles per hour, and greenways, which are car-free spaces. These designs turn these streets into public spaces that foster community by making it easier and more pleasant to go for a walk, to sit on your stoop and chat with your neighbors, and to bump into your friends more often when going somewhere. Just as important, these streets make it possible for kids to walk to school alone, giving them more independence (and giving their parents a lot of time back!).

Go by transit

Transit will be a fast, fun, and convenient option, if you want to use it. We know that transit is not a good option in most cities in California. But we believe that with our neighborhood design, we will be able to run a system that is fast, fun, and convenient.

Amenities for drivers as well

We want to make walking, biking, and transit good options for those who want them, but most people need to drive — or want to — sometimes. That’s why every homeowner can decide to park a car in their backyard if they want one. We also intend to build some parking garages in the neighborhoods. Those can be used by visitors, by residents who live in apartment buildings, and by those homeowners who would rather park there and keep a larger backyard.

Public services

Like other cities, this new city will provide public services for the use and safety of all.

Services like elsewhere in Solano

The new city will be part of Solano County, just like others. Law enforcement, fire protection, and schools would be provided the same way it works in other parts of Solano. When it comes to healthcare, we are already in discussions with healthcare providers, and we expect to build a range of local clinics and eventually a new hospital.

Convenient transit

The term for the proposed kind of transit system is “bus rapid transit.” Bus rapid transit works a bit like rail, with vehicles that look similar to light rail and with their own lanes so that the buses are never stuck in traffic. The plan includes small buses running in a grid every half mile, so it’s always easy to get from anywhere to anywhere in the city, with at most one stop.

Parking garages

The city will have bigger parking garages at the end of each rapid transit line at the edge of the city. So if you want to get around the city on foot, bike, or public transit, but need a car to go elsewhere in the region, it’s easy to make the switch. Or you can just drive your car door to door. The same is true for visitors.

Homeownership

Our focus is to make homeownership attainable for as many Solano residents and their children as possible.

Building more starter homes – and bringing better jobs to pay for them

In the California of the 1970s and 1980s, a young couple could afford a modest starter home in their 20s, and trade up to a larger home later if more space was needed. This gave young people the chance to buy a home, start a family, and build equity.

New starter homes are now very difficult to build. Local land use policy and high construction costs limit buildable housing to expensive single-family homes with two-car garages and big yards. As a result, the first step on the homeownership ladder is now so high above the ground that many people cannot reach it until their late 30s, 40s – or ever.

The new city will offer a range of housing options for every stage of life, with a big focus on for-sale starter homes. Creating a variety of housing types makes it easy to up- or downsize through life changes like marriage, kids, empty-nesting, and aging. The mixed-use, medium-density, walkable neighborhood types we are building are uniquely suited to delivering exactly these types of starter homes. To truly be a place for people at every stage and walk of life, the new city will offer a suite of housing options in a range of forms, finishes, and price points.

Condos

Some of the most charming neighborhoods in America are built from 3-4 story row-house structures divided into condos, one for each floor. These are popular in both medium-sized towns like Charleston and Savannah, and in large cities like San Francisco and Chicago.

In addition to condos in walk-up row house structures where each story is one unit, we also expect to build many medium and large condo buildings. Those buildings create an opportunity to make condo living really amazing—with large floor plates, high ceilings, and great locations near shopping streets—for those who want it. Condos with large floor plates in buildings with elevators are also how walkable neighborhoods can work for seniors.

Here is a side by side example of two condo layouts in walk-up structures (in differently-sized buildings, not the same building). On the left, a 2-bed/1.5-bath unit, around 1,000 sqft, which we would expect to be able to offer in the low $400,000s. On the right, a larger 3-bed/2-bath unit. The units located on the ground floor would come with a backyard, the top floor units with a roof deck, enabling residents to entertain, grill, and garden.

Single-family homes

These homes will offer the joys of dense living, such as proximity to schools, groceries, and cafes, with all the privacy of owning your own home, like a full backyard with options for accessory dwelling units (ADUs), a garage, or both. Instead of using just two or three large builders, we will also work with many small and mid-sized builders who work at smaller scales, giving those homes a distinct look and feel.

Homes can be built in two-, three-, or even four-story configurations, with sizes anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000+ sqft. The starter 2-bed/1.5-bath homes just over 1,000 sqft would start under $500,000 in today’s dollars. Most will take the form of row houses with private backyards, but we also expect to build some detached single family homes on narrow lots that include side setbacks. Below is an example 2-story row house with a backyard and roof terrace.

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs)

For each single family home, there is an optional backyard structure. This can be an extra accessory dwelling unit (ADU), an office, a workshop, a garage – or nothing at all, just creating a larger backyard instead.

This space can offer a flexible, multi-generational space that improves access to homeownership. For example, a young person starting work can live in such an accessory dwelling unit in their parents’ backyard as they save for their own home. Friends or family can pool income to buy a home together and have one person live in the ADU. Someone can even buy a home and simply rent the ADU out to help with mortgage payments.

Here is an example with a garage on the ground floor, and a studio apartment above:

Building the right homes for everyone

Today, new construction in Solano County is almost entirely large single-family homes. In contrast, we’ll offer many different options for many types of people and stages of life. Just as importantly, we are committed to providing all of these options in the same neighborhoods and on the same blocks, to form truly integrated neighborhoods that include people from all walks of life sharing the joys of city life together.

This will also help address another major issue – multi-generational living. Solano County is one of the most diverse counties in the entire nation. However, our housing stock currently does not match that diversity. For example, the predominant type of new construction in Solano County – detached single family homes – do not lend themselves well for multi-generational living, an option that is so popular with many of our communities. The new neighborhoods are designed to create great options for multi-generational living – whether that’s on the same lot, or in the same neighborhood, with grandma and grandpa living a few doors or a few streets away.

Even for those not interested in multi-generational living, this brings major benefits. Right now, with most neighborhoods consisting solely of single family homes, if seniors want to downsize to a smaller unit but stay in their neighborhood, they often can’t – and if they leave, that means less time with old friends. In contrast, by including all types of homes in every neighborhood, we can make it easy for people to move into larger or smaller homes as their life changes, while keeping friends and family as close as ever.

Offering different home types and different price points, all mixed together, helps make real diversity possible. The new city offers a future where people from all walks of life can find their homes, making homeownership possible for many who otherwise would not have that option.