I don't think you can run a "utopian project" in the USA at all. You're subject to US laws, and that means you're easy prey for litigants (even sufficiently motivated pro se litigants) -- and the civil justice system is an ordeal where there's only one outcome: You lose.

In most cases, you lose lots of money in legal fees that you won't be able to claw back; in virtually all cases, you're slapped with injunctions and other roadblocks to development, which can be fatal and can take years to resolve; in all cases, you lose tremendous amounts of time, which could otherwise have been spent productively.

The utopian planners should have attempted their scheme somewhere on Nevis or a Bahaman island -- where the government would probably be cooperative rather than nakedly adversarial.

Land is developed all the time in the US.

> let SF devolve

You have to ask yourself whether SF would have been 'let' to devolve if the type of people who support projects like this instead were active in the governance of their own city.

You might also ask yourself whether the devolution of SF is entirely organic; to me, some of the decisions being made there seem rather like deliberate sabotage.

I find the hubris of these people that just want to run off and do their own thing a bit disturbing; it's the 'you're standing on the shoulders of giants yet think you are seeing the answer with your own eyes alone' thing.

By and large I find the type of people that support these projects to be alarmingly lacking in any sort of empathy.

A 'gated community' on a much larger scale. Not open to the public. Few entrances/exits. Big walls/fences. Private security force. Residents booted out when they lose their big tech jobs.

Suddenly the utopian vision looks pretty bleak.

This is fully what I expect it to be. Peaceable by keeping out unwanted people (poor people). I don't think we have it in us as Americans to truly build a proper egalitarian society. We don't really know what that looks like. As a substitute we use whitewashing and just shuffle around the unfortunates out of sight and pretend it's been fixed. If this "city" doesn't have low income housing and community social services you'll know it for what it is.

They can automate away an increasing number of low-wage jobs, but they'll still want people to clean their offices and serve overpriced coffee.

Maybe they'll have service entrances and hidden car parks where they let the low-wage workers in and out. Conceal the fact that eco-utopia still relies on a whole lot of road traffic bringing people and goods in and out. Really, it'll be an 'eco-utopia theme park'.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence

Until you're hit by the next wave of mass redundancies through no fault of your own, and are kicked out into the 'real world', to discover how much further it has fallen.

Paradise compared to having to walk over heroin addicts and face the threat of physical violence