> Although areas of California City have not developed as expected, California City has grown from 3,200 people in 1985 to over 14,000 in 2018. Cerro Coso Community College closed escrow on 22 acres (8.9 ha) in the heart of California City for a Community College to serve Edwards AFB, California City, Mojave, Boron, North Edwards and the entire high desert in the Antelope Valley.
Many of southern California's big cities used to fit a similar description.
I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years California City was the fastest growing metro area in California, with residents drawn by the low cost of real estate, good schools, a new UC campus, booming aerospace industry, and proximity to Los Angeles.
It's in the middle of the desert. Looking at it on a map, it's something like 100km from the coast, and ~50km from any major lakes. That means it's even more dependent on bringing in water from elsewhere than LA is. At least LA could theoretically build a bunch of desalinization plants along the coast if they don't find another solution to their water shortages vs. their increasing population.
California and the rest of the Southwest should be abandoning places like California City, IMO, not building them up.
I grew up in the inland Southern California desert (Palm Springs area).
Ironically, it's is more able to water itself than LA because of an aquifer that gets replenished by snowmelt annually (also, last I checked, they make the golf courses buy water rather than tapping the aquifer).
There are more sources of water than just proximity to a visible body of it.
> California and the rest of the Southwest should be abandoning places like California City, IMO, not building them up.
Maybe, but history has repeatedly followed a different path. Southwestern desert cities find a way to get water. How that happens is another matter, but the water eventually comes.
Also, I'm not completely sure about the claim that places like California City should be abandoned. Living in the desert means that you're not, for example, living in a forest. Clearing forests for urban development reduces CO2 capacity and increases reflectivity, both of which can contribute to global warming.
Also, desert urban areas are ideally position to benefit from advances in solar energy technology. They can use that source almost every day of the year. Cities can be located very close to the source. Inexpensive land means that large-scale facilities can be built nearby.
LA doesn't have water problem but a governance problem that is causing them to not address their water supply issues by e.g. making obvious investments to produce all the water they could ever need using a combination of desalination, recycling, and less waste.
Desalination plants have been in use across the world for decades and would be an obvious solution for LA as well. Cost for desalinated water is in the order of a couple of dollars for a thousand gallons.
That and California City's weather is a bit better than most places in that area (including the central valley), because it's built on a high plain.
I know someone who owns a house out there and someone who owned a Subway out there. California City is similar to the ghost cities in China in that most of the people who own houses out there buy one for retirement and haven't moved in yet. This creates a slow growth where I wouldn't be surprised if there was more houses out there than people. Of the city so far, it's very suburban middle class looking. Lots of grass and terraforming. In the areas without terraforming sand can fly into the house when the front door is open, so imho the area needs it badly.
There are a handful of retirement cities in Southern California around the Riverside area, and a handful in AZ and NV, but California City is imho one of the more interesting secrets. Not because it's better, but because it's unusual.
We drive by it on our way to Vegas. I always felt it was ripe of either building a "company town" or a giant battle simulator for counter strike fans.
As a company town it would work for some company that wanted to co-locate tech workers, a campus, and maybe a factory in such a way that they would be tempted by "live in Calfornia economically!" and realize that they were kind of stuck where they were.
As a battlefield simulator its wide open spaces with a bit of underground 'works' (for things like effects and replenishment) could make it a more active entertainment destination than Universal Studios or Disneyland.
That doesn't seem as remote. It's only a 27 minute drive to a populated edge of Hyderabad (Canara Nagar, Peerzadiguda). Whereas from California City it's an 81 minute drive to San Fernando, the nearest populated edge of Los Angeles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California
Many of southern California's big cities used to fit a similar description.
I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years California City was the fastest growing metro area in California, with residents drawn by the low cost of real estate, good schools, a new UC campus, booming aerospace industry, and proximity to Los Angeles.