Consider the following fictional town:
Located in Douglas County, Nevada (no state income taxes!), this town has a population of 1500 mostly young people. The town consists of modern houses and townhouses looking like this https://www.redfin.com/CA/South-Lake-Tahoe/628-Kiowa-Dr-96150/home/22355535 and this https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/3235-Louise-St-94608/home/143116118 .<p>The town has gigabit fiber everywhere, 2-day Amazon Prime delivery, delivery from a Whole Foods store, a small grocery store, a large coffee shop, a coworking space, a large park/pedestrian area and 2 restaurants. The minimum wage in the town is $15/hour. The town is located 45 minutes away from a skiing resort, 30 minutes away from Lake Tahoe, 1 hour away from the Reno-Tahoe International Airport and 4 hours away from San Francisco. The average high is 76° in the summer and 38° in the winter.
Would you want to live there? Why/why not? If yes, would you prefer living in a townhouse or a house and how much would you pay for one (either buying or renting)?
I think I do live in a remote working town. The downside is that it removes the upside of remote working. There are traffic jams at 2 PM, long queues at the supermarket every day. My wife often complains, "What's wrong with these people? Doesn't anyone go to work?"<p>Food prices are above average. There's a lot of premium grocers with cheap organic food. 2 restaurants are nowhere near enough; we have about 30, but there's "nowhere to eat".<p>Ironically, the city has turned into one of Malaysia's two fashion capitals. It started with Instagram sellers wanting a cheap place to use as a warehouse, with easy access to deliveries, and yet something which wasn't ugly, so customers could look through their goods.<p>One or two big name sellers settled on a cheap, abandoned row of shops. When those two set up, it suddenly became popular to set up up shop next to the big names on Instagram.
Planned communities of this sort almost always fail. There's no there there. No one has any reason whatsoever to move there.<p>People choose to work remotely to have portable income or to make their current location work. Remote workers have absolutely zero reason to move to a remote worker town. This is the exact opposite of why they work remotely.<p>I like the idea of no state taxes. For that reason, Nevada is a state I considered moving to. Washington, Texas, Wyoming and Alaska all lack state income tax as well. Nevada is the least appealing of the no income tax states.<p>I wanted to find it appealing. I was in Fresno. Reno was a short, cheap train ride away. But I couldn't make it make sense. And I tried.<p>It has water problems and environmental problems. Much of the state is badlands. There are two developed areas: Las Vegas and Reno and the surrounding cities. The rest of the state is an unpopulated wasteland.<p>It's also not cheap, has lousy transit options and terrible weather. I have been through Vegas once. It was not an attractive town and that was before boatloads of new homes were built and then ended up financially under water, creating extremely distressed communities that give a whole new meaning to my standard contemptuous dismissal of <i>suburban hell.</i><p>I am currently in a small town with high unemployment. I would very much like to promote remote work as a solution for people in this town.<p>I strongly suggest that you reconsider your plan here and contemplate this concept through the lens of injecting life into existing flagging small communities. Like a remote workers apartment complex in a walkable small town center with low cost of living and excellent internet. Then maybe consider training people or otherwise actively supporting the creation of remote workers from the local population.<p>Instead of focusing exclusively on attracting remote workers, make this a solution to the local unemployment problem of small town America while also trying to entice well paid programmers and the like to move someplace cheap.<p>You will need more selling points than low cost of living. Your sales shtick will need to be customized for every location, assuming you make this a chain.<p>I work remotely. I am not a programmer.
Probably not. The benefits seem minor (fast internet, proximity to vacation areas, limited taxes), and you're giving up the many benefits of living in a city. Planned communities typically lack the diversity and vibrancy that make city life appealing. For me, one of the perks of working remotely is the ability to be <i>more</i> integrated into a community, not isolated from it.
No due to US government and the high cost of flights to most of the world where stuff actually happens. Also, 'remote worker' hangouts tend to attract posers rather than doers.
What does 'built for remote workers' have to do with anything here other than 'gigabit fiber everywhere?' What other features are specific to a 'remote worker town' that aren't available in 'conventional' towns, aside being newly built?<p>You've perhaps described a University/College campus...
Who is the target market?<p>Many remote workers work remote because they are already committed to someplace.<p>I know somebody who works on IOKit for Apple who works remote; he started working in Cupertino and then they let him relocate. I imagine that people might want to leave places like Palo Alto and Boston when they start wanting to have kids. They would have their own amenities that they'd want. If you are young and single you might have an entirely different group of amenities you would want.<p>Two day Prime is not so special. The food co-op in my nearest town puts Whole Foods to shame. Gigabit fiber is nice, but 100 Mb/s cable is pretty good and much more available. I live 20 minutes from a lake and 45 minutes from a ski resort. If I did want to live in Nevada I'd probably end up near Las Vegas or Henderson.
I mean, it sounds nice, there's nothing wrong with the description, but as a remote worker with a self-employed wife…why would I go there? I am living like that already where I am.
What happens if you decide to have children? There's no mention of schools (and probably no budget for one with only 1500 taxpayers that don't pay state taxes)<p>Are you required to leave?
Sounds nice. What of non-happy-path: medical avalability? Where are the energy dependencies (whence power)? No other amenities, i.e. singles only, kids forbidden?
Yes, as a software dev, this would be something that I am interested in. Though as others have noted it might be better for existing remote friendly towns to simply try catering to this group more. One example that comes to mind is chattanooga and their gig municipal broadband.