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Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

And yet, if either my hometown (population 6,000 when I left), or the small town where I went to college (35,000) had retained their downtowns and their walkability, I might still live in them. I don't farm, I don't work in a factory. But I do telecommute, so I can set up shop pretty much anywhere. And I do have a soft spot for the kind of small town full of character that I spent my childhood roving semi ferally with my friends and our bikes, popping in and out of ice cream shops, chalking up the sidewalks, buying trinkets at the variety store, playing in the town playground, etc.

I'd like for my kids to have something like that.

The closest approximation I can find seems to be a city with a population in excess of 1 million.

Or at least, that's where the sidewalks and community playgrounds are.

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Those kinds of communities aren’t created by towns full of telecommuting programmers — they are created by diverse economic activity and people out on the street doing their jobs.

Kind of. I live in a town with a population of 3,000 which has a town playground, kids whizzing around on bikes, a handful of little local shops (plus four pubs), etc... and yet it's full of telecommuting programmers.

The main disadvantage is that property prices are high, largely caused by the real commuters rather than the telecommuters (we have a mainline railway station); and that's meant a slow decline in the number of local shops simply because conversion to residential use is much more lucrative. But we've pretty much stabilised now.

This is in the UK, and it's not rare over here - there's quite a niche for slightly boho, close-knit small towns. Hebden Bridge, Stroud and Frome are the best known (populations 4.5k, 12k, 26k respectively) but there are plenty more.

Which town is that?

Hebden Bridge I always got the impression was a bit touristy (as well as being the lesbian capital of the country). A bit further south to Marsden, also on a rail line into Manchester and Leeds, is remarkably cheap

Well assuming those people out on the streets doing their jobs want to "import" goods, the town needs to "export" something. Code is one possible export.

No, but if you’re trying to balance your imports and exports get to g some telecommuters certainly helps.

Part of what kills small towns is all the money draining out. Big box stores accelerated that because nothing but the retail labor and utilities are local.

Hmm nothing says it can't be created by telecommuting programmers. Get 10K people to pitch in 10K a pop and that's 100 mil to buy land and start a town

It’s been in my head for a while - finding an area with good weather and a farm landowner willing to sell. I would love to find a developer with core competencies - we used to build cities because of common interest. Why can’t we do it today?

Historically those towns were most likely built around a common economic interest; intersection of trade routes, mining, logging, etc. The town was created because the people were already there. As far as I know artificial communities don't seem very resilient. I guess 10,000 telecommuting programmers could support a pretty robust economy, but it sounds like a bit of a pipe dream, honestly.

I think a set of programmers seems like a common economic interest. At 10,000, that’s enough that it won't only be telecommuting at some point. You would likely need a fair amount of additional labor.

The alternative is finding a struggling city with good bones that is willing to take a chance, but that can introduce all sorts of hostilities.

Starting fresh gives you a lot of interesting options

No clue why none has done it so far I guess idea for kick starter :)

The Bay Area, for all its faults, is full of downtowns like this. Get a bike or a Clipper Card and visit all the little downtowns between Mountain View and SF. You may need to search a bit — the real downtowns are often hidden a couple blocks away from El Camino. And the populations are (individually) far, far less than 1M.

As long as you stay out of Palo Alto, you can even find housing for merely crazy prices instead of ludicrous prices.

New England has lots of little gems, too.

I'd like to toss in Campbell, CA and Cambridge, MA into this mix in terms of walkable downtown. Shelter-pricing aside, walking and transit gets you a good mix of places in each.

> real downtowns are often hidden

You're not kidding. This is part of why I explore around an area, often on foot. There is no counting how many times I've found That Awesome Place Literally Around The Corner by just walking around that corner that's been "off my radar" for however long it's been and then lamenting that I didn't do that sooner due to the auto-pilot many of us use.

> between Mountain View and SF

You conveniently left off Sunnyvale. ;)

When I read the article I thought it was describing Sunnyvale — with a once-large downtown, replaced by a mall (now failing) while the sliver of a downtown remaining is a popular spot for evening meals, walks.

I haven't been in the area recently but I believe they were planning on razing the mall and putting back a downtown.

Re kids: did curfews and age limitations exist in your childhood? I'd love to allow my child to go out for an ice cream all by herself, but at 9, she's not yet legally allowed to be alone on the streets.

I remember biking around town when I was 8. My son is 6, I find it hard to imagine that in two years I (and others) would let him bike around freely.

I wonder why this changed. Is it that people have become more aware of dangers? Or perhaps parents are having fewer children and being more protective?

You should let him ride his bike freely and not give into your fear-based biases. I'll bet if you look up crime statistics, your town is probably safer now then it was then.

So why would you keep him from exploring and learning how to take care of himself alone and with friends?

Car density plays into this a bit.

I know that my hometown has a LOT more cars than it did when I was growing up in spite of the fact that the population has actually declined.

And car accidents is probably one of the statistics that hasn't declined.

Definitely. Car injuries have stayed roughly the same per capita.

And it seems like many communities have quietly lost pedestrians (it seems like baby boomers are atypically car-dependent compared to the generations before and after them but they're a huge generation and the biggest one in many places).

And now they're in their 70s are far more likely to be involved in in-town crashes (while highway crashes may be weighted towards young men at high speed, residential crashes tend to be old people pressing Gas rather than Brake, or Reverse rather Forward)

More aware of dangers? More likely, more afraid of perceived dangers which are actually very small - and I admit that the same happens to me, even if rationally I know that I should be less worried.

It seems to be a common occurrence for people who grew up in a denser, more kid-friendly post-war suburb next to a walkable downtown, but are now raising kids in a new, barren, sprawling suburb surrounded by stroads and next to a 7-11.

it’s because from internet you immediately and constantly get bombarded with millions and millions of news every single day about what happened in far away places

6 is different than 8. My 8 year old rides to the library.

More news sensationalisation.

The laws vary a lot so check what applies for you http://www.freerangekids.com/laws/

Wow, you have to be 14 to be home alone for a lengthy period of time in Illinois? That's stupid. Maybe like, overnight, or for any meals that require substantial cooking, but my parent left me home alone with my younger brother way before then.

It's not very hard to make breakfast or lunch, and any issue that would need a parent to solve is probably something they would have to call 911 or bring us to the hospital for anyways.

“any minor under the age of 14 years whose parent or other person responsible for the minor's welfare leaves the minor without supervision for an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety, or welfare of that minor;”

Actual text of the law implies a lot worse neglect than the website interprets. In fact if you turn it around it seems shocking. A guardian can leave a 15 year old without regard to their health & well being.

The trouble is that the law is initially interpreted by social workers with a rather sour attitude. Thus "without supervision" could be that you were inside and they were on the lawn, and "unreasonable period of time" could be 5 minutes, and the rest of the law is also met if you assume that there is a pedophile around every corner trying to snatch a kid.

Utah recently had to redo some similar laws to prevent them from being abused.

The pedophile around the corner is a very rare case, the majority of abuse happens inside the family. Best way to fight this is of course social care and support.

If she can run away from a rapist/mugger she can run away from a cop

Europe has hundreds of options for small towns that are walkable. For example, the below has a population of 4,000, and it's going to probably have 50 restaurants, 50 stores, a school, church, town square, football stadium, market, cafes, marina, and park all within a 5-10 minute walk.

https://i.imgur.com/tHvem45.jpg

Where's that?

Piran/Portorož in Slovenia. It's certainly not a typical town but rather a tourist town.

A bit like Venice, which has 20 million tourists a year for a population of 200k. Portorož probably isn't far off from this population to tourist ratio, but with a population that's 100x smaller.

That having been said, it's true that Europe has many walkable cities and they don't even have to be small villages.

Photo is from Piran, Slovenia.

This is a significant part of what attracted us to Fort Collins, Colorado. It's not as small as you're describing, but much of the city is walkable, including the downtown area and dozens of surrounding blocks, along with multiple paved bike paths, etc. It feels more like a city built for humans than most of its size in the states.

I've seen touristy little towns with walkable downtown areas in USA. Walla Walla, WA and Wallace, ID. come to mind.

Royal Oak Michigan has kept a small but vibrant downtown and is going through a large bit of gentrification.

>The closest approximation I can find seems to be a city with a population in excess of 1 million.

You must not have put much effort into the search. I have been in many small towns that have had thriving downtowns and vibrant communities. But I've also been in many dead ones, where the local economy was decimated with the demise of a major employer. Maybe that's more the rule than the exception where you're from.

> [-]

Yeah, but really sucks to have to run up frequent flyer miles for interviews.

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