Opinion: Clear a path for sweeping urban experiments such as California Forever

Earlier this fall, the Silicon Valley dreamers proposing to build a 400,000-person city and manufacturing hub on rangeland 50 miles northeast of San Francisco released a detailed rendition of their plan, which they call “California Forever.” It’s unlike anything the United States has seen before: exurban in location, intensely urban by design.

The new city will be laid out on a compact grid, with interlocking streets, rapid-transit routes and greenways for pedestrians and cyclists. The city’s least dense residential neighborhoods will be zoned for 85-foot apartment buildings, taller than essentially every apartment building erected before 1880. House hunters will be able to purchase row houses as if they were shopping for real estate in 19th century Brooklyn, not in cookie-cutter suburban