Venetians fear ‘museum relic’ status as population drops below 50k

Hubs and communities are two vey different things in my book.

And major tech hubs with top paying jobs or a concentration of rich tech workers tend to score poorly at anything related to the sense of "community" as you have major gentrification issues from the giant wealth disparity and a caste system of those with tech jobs and money and those without. And the modern, compensation oriented tech workers, have rarely been great at forming any kind of community together, let alone with others, being more individualistic and preferring always to do things each their own way. Just ask them to unionize and see what happens.

>even if those are revolving doors

And "revolving door" communities are the worst. S-E Asia and Latin America are full of these gated communities of western remote workers and digital nomads and it kinda sucks, as everyone treats the place like a holiday amusement park. Not learning the local language, not integrating with the locals, not adapting to local laws, customs and traditions, they're just there to have their fun of being the top 1% earners there, consume, party, Tinder around, and once the novelty wears off, move on. That's the worst kind of community I can think of.

For me, community, is what I see in small european villages/cities with small family businesses going back generations and everyone investing back into the local community and in the local environment for the future generations in the long run.

Seems like you're mixing this with tech hubs and online communities. Or my understanding of what a real community is, is different than yours.

Then you probably never actually experienced a real community.

I’ve grown up in a small town of about ~3000 inhabitants, who all pretty much knew each other. Random people knew my family, I could walk anywhere and meet someone who went to school with my dad or who had worked with my grandfather in the 60s/70s. I was often taken care of, as a small child, by people who I didn’t know directly but that knew my family, and who my parents knew. There was also gossip of course, and some darker patterns (early 90ies), but the core idea was thar everybody knew each other and had formed long lasting bonds over the decades.

This is what community means when we’re talking towns, not Internet forums.

And by the way: most natives will stick around when things are not so great too, nomads will just go somewhere else… in this sense digital normads are more like leeches than anything. They will make prices rise and only improve the pockets of few people (landlords, mainly).

You are certainly in a community but you are probably not much of a part of the community you're visiting. And if my experience as someone who grew up in a tourist destination is any guide, the locals whose job it is to be nice to you probably swap stories about your cluelessness about the local culture, and a lot of the locals whose job is not being nice to you view you with vague disdain at best.

You are raw material for the local economy and, we will generally do our best to politely pick you up by your ankles, shake you until money stops falling out, and send you on your way, while making sure you have a good enough time doing this to come back again once you have more money.

Living in a place where tourists outnumber permanent residents will always kind of suck no matter what. The same type of issues impact beach towns in the summer and ski towns in the winter.

It's kinda unfortunate, but Venice has basically been a museum of itself for centuries. It stopped being a world power and became a curiosity in the late 18th century. It took until now for tourism to ramp up from "part of the Grand Tour for British lordlings" to "cruise ships bringing tens of thousands of tourists per day".