[adamgravitis]

Cities are largely about people, and people are largely about the difficult-to-describe sense of 'opportunity'.

Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in population.

Because of this, our generation is stuck on the wrong side of the supply/demand bit for property. Property in uninteresting cities is very cheap, because nobody wants to be there. Property in Silicon Valley or Toronto is on fire because it's the place to be.

I think there's a critical mass kind of problem. In many ways, my quality of life in a smaller (or even very small) city could be several times higher than it currently is -- except for the people. And, for better or worse, it's the people that matter. I don't have any real desire to be the best educated, or most creative, or most entrepreneurial person in a city: I want to be surrounded by them and call them my friends.

So perhaps there's some kind of Kickstarter-like critical mass sort of system that could be put into place to kickstart small cities whereby 50 or 100 mutually interesting people committed to moving to a more remote city iff their compatriots did as well.

Of course, to make that work, there would be have to be some kind of "opportunity", which is why I'm happy to see yC-folks looking into the problem.

[skewart]

> Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in population.

I'm not sure how you're defining "important" but I think it's safe to say that the list cities many people 'the place to be' has changed quite a bit from 100 years ago. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle would not have been on that list 100 years ago. But Cleveland and Pittsburgh probably would have been. So I would argue that things actually are kind of flexible. Of course, many cities would stay on the last - e.g. New York. That said, your point still stands that the list hasn't noticeably grown despite massiveky increased population (if anything I bet it's shrunk), which is kind of counterintuitive.

I totally agree with your larger point about the need for a critical mass of people to move to a city though. It's a tricky problem to solve.

I think it's worthwhile to look at small cities that have recently become much more popular - Portland OR, Austin TX, and Asheville NC. Their recent histories might provide some insights into how small cities go from being backwaters to attractive alternatives to the big coastal metropolises.

[krrrh]

To underscore your point a bit more, NYC's population actually declined from 7 to 8 million in the 1970s. I recall a poll done in the mid-eighties where more than half of New York City residents said they would move to a different city if they felt they could.

During this period artists and musicians took advantage of the cheap rent and renewed New York's status as cultural center, rebooting the gentrification process. The same thing was going on in Portland 15 years ago, where a lot of musicians and writers I knew at the time had insanely low rent, and incredible communities of like-minded people with a lot of free time. There may be other factors that contribute to why some cities take off this way and others don't, but the depression/rejuvenation cycle seems to have a momentum of its own.

[krrrh]

Day late typo: population declined from 8 to 7 million obviously.

[humanrebar]

> Property in uninteresting cities is very cheap, because nobody wants to be there.

Many more people live in 'uninteresting' cities than 'interesting' ones. They're cheap because of the relatively big supply, not necessarily because of the lack of demand.

[nine_k]

This is interestingly not exactly so. Large cities have disproportionally higher share of population. Compare these areas with equal population in the US: http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states-liv...

Worldwide, situation is funnier, 50% of population lives on 1% of the land: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3389041/Where...

[humanrebar]

I was meaning to compare, say, Washington D.C. and Memphis. Most Americans live outside the 'top tier' cities like DC, NY, SF, LA, Chicago, etc. About 26 million (out of 320 million) live in the ten largest cities in the U.S.

Even assuming half of the US lives in cities, about 130 million people live in smaller ones. My point was that smaller cities are actually more popular, and I think the numbers still support that.

[jandrese]

Washington D.C. is a bad example, the actual population of the city is tiny compared to the surrounding suburbs.

[rahimnathwani]

Popular != Populous

More people have kostabis than have picassos. Does that make kostabi more popular?

[alexophile]

I don't think opportunity is actually that difficult to describe, it seems to mostly be a product of labor markets. Either there's an untapped well of excess labor (like the post-war boom in Phoenix, AZ) or there are jobs in a high unemployment environment (like what's fueling growth in the bay area now).

In the case of Phoenix, they went from 99th in the US to 9th in about 30 years in large part due to the government building air force fields and pilot training camps. When everyone went back there after the war and realized they needed jobs, industry was happy to fill the gap because there was high competition among labor.

Similarly the bay has developed obviously because of tech, but for most of that early tech, the US government was the primary customer. Not just transistors, but before that, radio and telegraph research and operator training was done for/on behalf of the Navy.

That is all to say that the next step probably won't be fueled by some small-batch kickstarting program. People won't relocate en masse if they don't have long-term motivation. I think the best bet for inciting development of New Cities is mass investment by the government training people to do things like build and operate solar farms in the great plains, understand and combat coastline destruction in the gulf, etc.

If the government commits to buying clean energy and prioritizes investing in it's development, it can have a big say in where that happens and I think that's a great opportunity to rebuild dying old cities or start from scratch since so many people have abandoned those places already.

[samvj]

Basic income and the freedom to pursue things without having to worry about money, could be that opportunity.

[RussianCow]

You don't even need to go that far; wider adoption of remote work would create enough opportunity for a lot of people.

[adamgravitis]

Basic income is absolutely one route, but I can think of a few others. A startup could thrive in a smaller city where their employees could achieve a high quality of life without extraordinary expense. You'd still have to solve the recruiting problem, however, and employees would be wary of lock-in effects.

[enraged_camel]

Beat me to it. Without some sort of income guarantee, most people would not move to remote cities.

edit: not sure why this is controversial. other than retired folks, who would move to the middle of nowhere as a result of this "kickstarter" if they aren't going to be guaranteed a job there?

[jsprogrammer]

Money is not a worry, but food and shelter.

If everyone gets money and freedom, where do food and shelter come from?

[qznc]

> the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today

Silicon Valley was not a "place to be" 100 years ago. Maybe 200 years ago during gold rush.

New Orleans was more of a "place to be" before Hurricane Katrina.

In general, I agree that North America was remarkably stable in the last 100 years. Europe and Asia were much more affected by the world wars. Afghanistan and Iraq were much more places to be 20 years ago.

[contingencies]

Because of this, our generation is stuck on the wrong side of the supply/demand bit for property.

Speak for yourself. I've tried living in high demand cities the world over and frankly I find the supposed interesting bits are better and more valuable when visiting than living there (food, art and culture, typically). After having great jobs on a few continents I have returned to live in a second tier city in China, and 15 years after my first visit it's still awesome! (Startup costs: ~$0. Food: Great. People: Interesting. Supply-chain: Taobao) Sure, it has its limitations, but we are less than a half-day flight from heaps of interesting countries (half of Asia) and can get to Paris direct in 10 hours. The biggest issue is education for children, but even in the west this is an issue and I believe there will be novel solutions to this problem emerging in the next five years.