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Comment by Mobius01 | Hacker News Reader

It this price disparity will only last as far as the demand for these areas stays low. As the demand from remote workers fleeing large cities grows, so will the prices. See Austin for an illustration of rapid gentrification due to migration.

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There is a lot of open space in the United States. Time to plan and build the next Austin.

Indeed, there is a lot of open space. When you look at why Austin has the appeal for high tech industry, I think it largely was/is based on University of Texas and their strong record in computer engineering. This caused companies like IBM, Motorola, Samsung, etc. to locate there.

It takes decades to build out another such city from scratch. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be done, just that it doesn't happen quickly.

IMO the hardest part is convincing people to be part of such a task because they have self-reinforcing loops like workers go where jobs are, companies go where talent is.

Maybe time for a Kickstarter for cities?

That is doubtful. Consider scale. While there are a few dozen really densely packed cities, there are a couple orders of magnitude more small cities. There simply aren't enough people to 'fill up' the small cities in the US. There will of course always be regional places that are more in-demand than others, but overall it's like moving from a puddle to the ocean. It's just not going to make a dent.

I think you're missing the point that many of those moving out of the really big cities are going to the same smaller cities. Taking Austin as an example, it's growing by leaps and bounds. The gentrification is indeed happening.

If the outflow from the really big cities was equally distributed (say, as percentage of city's population), then your view would be accurate. But that's not what's happening.

Remote work will never become the standard way of working. 80% of jobs require a physical presence.

Of course. But for jobs that don't require physical presence, will remote work become the standard?

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