How to build the world's most extraordinary town

The tone of this site comes across as if it was written by a bunch of hippies with little knowledge of how the world (or people in general) work.

This is a process that will take years to even get started properly. They try to condense it into 4 steps, but... well, let's break this down.

- Need 10k enrollees. The definition of "enrollee" seems loose here, so given some mindless campaigning this is actually the easy part. Let's give it a modest 3 months.

- Ah, nice, so now that we've supposedly got enough people, we need to spin up a little marketing campaign to get people to sign off on it. Alas, this isn't a feel good movie, so we're going to give this a nice... six months (being pretty generous here).

- Oh, shit, uhh... hey guys, you all also need to be pre-approved for loans. We didn't really do anything to check this out when we got you all mentally invested (if you're even still interested by this point). We're lucky if we get half of you! Allocate at least a year for this, since there won't be the 10k people that originally got onboard, and numbers need to be shored up again.

- Step three begins when we get a board to actually approve all of this. There's really no guarantee this part will work; that said, if it does, we're saying 1.5 years for all of the basic setup.

- Step four, huzzah! We're building homes... for another 1.5 years. Can't live here just yet! No worries, though, we've got a super high speed build process... hey, wait, you're not listening, are you?

There are so many pitfalls with this it's not even funny (and I'm being incredibly generous with the numbers above). I'm guessing the people behind this are from the Bay area; surprised they never heard of a drop off rate. ;P

Speaking of the people behind this, who are they? There's absolutely no information on this site explaining why you should ever bother placing some level of trust in the efforts spearheaded by these people.

Then again, maybe this entire thing is a joke. I almost felt certain of it when I read this line:

This step is all about social networking. We need 10,000 enrollees to complete this step. Tell your friends, neighbors, cousins, distant acquaintances, cats, dogs, and anyone who will listen. If everyone does this, we will finish this step in about twenty five minutes.

A new 10,000 person town in the North Bay? Great. Except for the county plans for real estate in the counties (20 years each), the zoning laws, the inconvenient lack of open subdivided land, the $120,000 per structure planning/permitting/inspection overhead for new construction, etc, etc.

This isn't even close to realistic.

I know of a group of people doing something similar near where I live. They have successful serial eco entrepreneurs, experts in land acquisition, builders, teachers, and several doctors, involved at the higher levels. Not exactly a bunch of hippies. (Edit: If they were doing it somewhere more sensible, as in warmer, I'd be on their board as well. I think people should be encouraged to create intentional eco communities.)

They want to have full control and not all of the usual infrastructure required for a town like sewers, roads, etc. One of the major problems of course, is zoning laws, which can be circumvented by setting it up as a university... or a religion.

I skimmed through the omegaproject site and didn't see where it was planned or who was behind it, two things that would help. Without knowing more about the people involved, it does come across as suspect.

I legitimately can't tell if this is a troll site or not. "In step four the town chartered bank sells $2.5 Billion in prime mortgage backed securities and construction begins."

Groupon jokes aside, who trusts random guys on the internet with 2.5 billion?

It's quite a community selection bias to ask people to pay for houses before the whole town is constructed - presumably towards people who are already pretty wealthy (or incredibly risk-tolerant).

I also wonder with that kind of money and momentum whether you could e.g. buy a neighbourhood of Detroit and regenerate it.

>"pre-sell the homes, and use the profits to create the most extraordinary town ever built."

Profits are what is left over after you build everything. When pre-sales create profits, you have a scam.

0% unemployment? Communists tried that a couple of times, never worked. I wonder how they're planning to be different..

Sounds interesting, but a couple of points:

1) I live pretty close to someplace with a claim to be one of the more extraordinary towns in the world: http://bit.ly/r2JHIn

2) Universal health care & other benefits seem like it might be a lot to chew off.

Good on them for giving things a try though.

Is it just going to be Alphas in this brave new town?

I'd suggest picking a part of the world with less onerous planning laws. Texas, perhaps. For Europeans, Germany has a constitutional 'right to build'.

Oh man, where is that 250 grand I had lying around... :)

Seems like this site is coming under a lot of harsh comments. I am not sure about the sustainability, or even the ability of something like this being created. But (to use their term) with the power of the internet you can reach those who do know how to do it. Someone who knows all the legality of something like this might never have an idea like this.

I think the point was 'Hey if realtors can do it, we can too and turn the profit into something useful'. If a realtor knew how to do something like this than it wouldn't take too much to assume that other people would know how to accomplish something like this. From the posts you prove this, you have more insight into this than the creators, but the idea has to start somewhere.

One would assume that if they are hoping to build a grand community then they would be willing to take suggestions from their community as to how to build this community. Just because it is idealistic, and secretly maybe you want to be a part of it, doesn't mean it is going to fail.

I remember a similar initiative on Slashdot about 10 years ago. The goal there was to get a whole bunch of tech people to all move to the same state and work together as a (mostly) unified voting block to make that state a great place for tech people to live.

It seemed a lot better thought out than the OP's plan. iirc, they picked New Hampshire.

I don't have a bookmark and my googlefu is failing me. Can anyone else confirm that memory for me?

[EDIT] thanks waqf . Yes, those were the guys. Browsing their site, they seem a lot more nutjob than I remember them being. I wonder if that's just me getting old (get off my lawn!), me adding a rosy sheen to my memory, or them shifting focus over the years.

[EDIT 2] Looking at their original manifesto it's a combination of me getting old, and a rosy memory. If anything, they've gotten less nutjoby over the years.

Interesting. I think this incarnation of the idea is overly idealistic, but if it were more market-oriented and bit more small scale (think neghiborhood instead of town) it could be doable and not a bad way to fight against unsustainable real estate valuations.

This is brilliant, they should do this in many regions around the world. Now that we are running out of communist states because they are failing, we need new working examples of why it's a bad idea.

There will be massive problems with planning laws. Sad, but I can't think that there will not be.

I'd love to live in a town like this, where I can built a 1-2 person house of significantly smaller square footage for $30,000ish but I think without the power of an established player, or getting everyone who pledges money to pay up front and form a corporation before spending millions on lawyers this will go nowhere.

http://seasteading.org/ is an idea on similar lines by the free market libertarians and http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/ for the more communist minded libertarians led by Jaques Fresco.

You can't build an extraordinary community. You have to grow it.

The most important question is not about the technical etc. of the project per se, but rather about: How can a project like this gain enough traction to really get the first 20-30% funding. At this time (and by showing prominent investors etc.) it could take-off. In it's core the marketing of visions are not different to webpages...

They should: 1. Reduce the core msg to 1-2 Sentences ON TOP 2. Give it a better layout and support it with pictures 3. Give examples of interested people etc. and how this project could benefit them ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS 4. Overall a better structure... it's too confusing atm

I'm thinking a campaign where they get 'the internet' to all pitch in and buy $25 sponsored bricks would work better. I would do it, knowing my brick might never materialize.

Now if a lot of people did that, then you could start offsetting costs to the point where people might actually buy a house.

exactly one forum post, and it appears to be spam.

kudos for the raw ambition though.

"Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable men."

a tip of the hat to whoever's behind this

This looks like a leftist version of the free state project, but with slightly more cool-aid.

To build the world's most extraordinary town you first must be outside of US jurisdiction. I suggest you build a modular island out of plastic bottles instead.

Man, I'd freaking love to do this..

If only my wife felt the same way..

FML..