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Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

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Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#1

Post by hamburga »

There are around 1500 towns in the US with population between 10,000 and 25,000 [1]

So it's not like this hasn't been done before. And sort of the ultimate chance to engineer the world you want to live in -- I'd think people would be really into it.

I know that YC has/had a "New Cities" initiative but I haven't seen updates in years.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241695/number-of-us-cities-towns-villages-by-population-size/

Re: Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#2

Post by willcate »

It's definitely been done. Once upon a time there was a thing called Planned Communities. Reston, Virginia is one such. So is "The Villages" in central Florida. But, especially since the sub-prime mortgage crash of the 00s, I haven't heard of anybody attempting it.

Re: Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#3

Post by staticautomatic »

I have often wondered if it's possible to build a successful, large-scale community/commune that is secular and run by sane people who engage in minimal financial thievery of their supporters. Think Wild Wild Country but without insane murderous narcissistic assholes at the helm. From a political perspective what they did was actually pretty amazing. The fact that the feds ultimately just asked them to leave the country rather than imprisoning them makes me suspect that the biggest impediment to building such a community may in fact be trying to do it underneath a bigger government.

Re: Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#6

Post by 0x4f3759df »

The founder of Dominos pizza built the city of Ave Maria, FL -- It gets high marks in the child safety/friendly category from the local press but feels suburban to me. The most famous example is probably Seaside, FL built buy Duany Plater-Zyberk, it was the set of "The Truman Show". The story is interesting they had to fight all these dumb zoning laws (eg. The Fire Department buys the biggest truck they can find and then think that every road in the state must accommodate it) -- DPZ has other stuff worth checking out: https://www.dpz.com/Projects/All

My favorite is in Jakriborg, Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakriborg

You learn about this sort of stuff if you are plugged into the urbanist blogs / podcast scene

Re: Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#7

Post by natoliniak »

willcate wrote: post #2

It's definitely been done. Once upon a time there was a thing called Planned Communities. Reston, Virginia is one such. So is "The Villages" in central Florida. But, especially since the sub-prime mortgage crash of the 00s, I haven't heard of anybody attempting it.

Check out Ave Maria, also in Florida. It is a mixed-zoning town build around a College and a Catholic cathedral, but unlike the Villages, it is actually quite age diverse. So, for those who are not bothered by the the religious aspect, it is seems very livable and I think will be successful.

Re: Ask HN: Who's starting new towns in the US?

#9

Post by esturk »

Another related phenomenon is the relocation of an entire town which often results in building an entire infrastructure from scratch. These are either caused by natural disasters like Pattonsburg. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattonsburg,_Missouri

Or it can be caused by planned hollowing of the ground from mining like Kiruna. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna

Either scenarios are fascinating to think about the engineering effort that goes into starting a town from scratch. Like literally sim city.

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