Developers build cities. Developers maximize profit. In the USA, the gov't defines where incentives are. That is why we have urban sprawl everywhere (including the bay area).

I always thought this project, S. Lake Union (Amazon), Toronto Waterfront (Google), Diridon Station San Jose (Google) was these large companies' response to no private developer or gov't entity building a city they thought was needed... in other words it's just a normal city built by a large company. It's not too different than one of these crappy master planned communities where I live like http://stonegatereno.com/ or http://damonteranch.com/ .