They wanted to move fast and build things. Instead, they'll have to tread carefully and negotiate.

Last month, California Forever, the company behind a plan to build a city of 400,000 people on the fringes of the Bay Area, pulled its referendum from the November ballot in Solano County. The project, funded by a who's who of tech billionaires, was probably forced to pull its initiative by necessity. Polling suggested the measure would lose in a landslide. Instead, the developer will work with local elected officials to draft a new plan, in the hopes of putting forward a ballot initiative in 2026.

There was a great deal of premature dancing on top of California Forever's grave by opponents of the new city. In reality, it's way too early to say what will become of this project.

But it is now clear that California Forever tried to do things backwards. There's a reason why, in other countries, governments are virtually always the entities that spearhead the development of new cities and new urban neighborhoods. Securing public buy-in, weighing economic and ecological tradeoffs, connecting to transportation and utility networks -- these are hard problems that government is specifically designed to address.