A California Dream

One of them is caused by geographic separation. Without either proximity or regular public transit to a nearby population center, you lose your ability to market the community to potential new members. Like Apple, or Tesla, in order to break into an entrenched market you need visibility in high foot traffic locations. Regular festivals that draw crowds, retreats, etc, can help.

The other big one is unity of vision. Many of these communities lay down very specific rules in their bylaws. But humans tend to go through cycles in their ability to stomach group strictures, no matter how noble their intentions. Without an outlet on the property for counterculture, residents are pushed out every time you go through one of these cycles. Often these strictures come from a central personality. See Arcosanti and Paulo Soleri's refusal to entertain young anarchists vision for the place.

I would also say many of these communities fail because they don't separate enough from mainstream governance concepts. Many require you to make a big financial investment up front, or use a democratic governance model. Neither of those should be necessary in the age of microfinance and cryptogovernance, but we're only human, and it's hard for us to give up old habits.

And lastly, poor generational diversity is huge. Most of these communities die of old age, with a few geriatrics keeping the dream alive while their secular children live as close as they can, but outside the "community". You must have immigrants in every single age bracket throughout the life of the collective. As soon as you miss a generation you make it exponentially harder to recruit for the following one.

I would be interested to see a city concept based on freedom. Big enough for good separation between activity centers, and designed to support bifurcation of governance as much as unity. "What if we didn't have to agree?" would be the motto. Not "should you be allowed to do that?" but "if one were to do that, where would the best place for it be?"

New York Times story about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/realestate/high-hopes-and-...

OpenStreetMap showing the area (mostly from US Census TIGER): http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/34.5005/-106.6235

An advertisement of the property: http://books.google.com/books?id=RlUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA89-IA2&lp...

You can read a bit more about it here [shameless plug, but I feel it's relevant]: https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/crypto-city-5d48a33a9f4...

https://www.google.com/maps/@26.9825804,-82.1857099,31160m/d... https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6300975,-81.9789861,24756m/d...

Others, not so much:

https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6204017,-81.6442622,17018m/d...

There's also this curious region which started as a land scam but ended up becoming a somewhat lawless area now ruled by a hunting club:

https://www.google.com/maps/@27.7771326,-81.3102668,7540m/da...

The place is dangerous and violent but remote, and authorities keep their distance. It feels strange to think that a place like this exists an hours drive from Disney World.

I had a class in Economic Geography. Cities grow where there are resources to support them. Most major cities, like New York, San Francisco and L.A., sprout up and boom due to natural ports that can be easily developed. A river meets the ocean or there is some sort of bay or quirk of the coastline. It takes little or nothing to start using it as a port. Traffic begets development.

This is why where we lay infrastructure like highways and rail lines can be such a heated debate. When cars began, the world had dirt and cobblestone streets. This was not sufficient. Proper roads developed.

During The Great Depression, people fled the Dust Bowl and arrived in California to start over. The route they traveled became the famed Route 66. The exodus birthed small towns along the way.

When interstates became the new norm, the towns along Route 66 mostly died. The traffic was diverted from roads that ran through the middle of town to roads that went around the town.

I quoted the snippet above because there is a borax mine -- a natural resource that fosters job creation -- and a correctional center. Prisons tend to be built in the middle of nowhere. No one wants to live near them. They do attract some development because they provide jobs. These are often federal or state government jobs. They can pay well, be secure and come with good benefits. They are worth putting up with some inconvenience.

Lots of good federal and state jobs involve some degree of burden. Military jobs, jobs at nuclear plants and so on can be a burden for the person who holds the job. When I was a military wife, military spouses had something like a 30% unemployment rate compared to about 6% or so for the general population. Locals don't want to hire military spouses because they know you are going to move again when the military member gets assigned elsewhere.

But the other reason unemployment is so high for military members is because it is a job with excellent benefits. The entire family has access to good medical care, most of it outright free. You just show your ID card to access it.

Military benefits have eroded in recent decades. They are making more of an effort to charge the insurance of employed spouses and a lot of small things have gone away. But it is still a situation where it is possible to make the traditional nuclear family with one breadwinner and one homemaker work. Money will be tight, but lack of savings is not a problem. If you stay in 20 years or more, you will get a retirement check for life and continue to get access to medical benefits and other benefits.

Wow, I seem to be rambling. My point is that sprawling cities don't just randomly pop up. They start with geographic resources, usually including waterways because water is critical for life and waterways provide transportation options. Once established, they may have an accumulation of intellectual capital, material capital, etc that grows them further.

Hershey, PA was laid out from scratch. But it was laid out from scratch by the Hershey company. It was a company town. They built their new factory there and built housing for their employees. It was naturally seeded in this way and had no problem attracting other businesses to serve the population. It is technically an unincorporated community, but (according to Wikipedia) it has more than 14k residents and has amenities like a local library.

There has to be a reason to move there. This is why these sorts of schemes so consistently fail. There is no real raison d'etre.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

Would reduce strain on bay area and its only a few hours south so good connectivity.