[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?
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Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?
With increasing remote work, are there rural communities where many
people are tech workers? Curious globally, but mostly interested
in USA/UK. I would like to live a more pastoral life, but
anecdotally I've heard that people tend to be very different to
those you find in a city.
Author : dkarp
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-04-22 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
| mattlondon wrote:
| Silicon Fen in UK? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Fen
| bombcar wrote:
| Snide answer - look at voting records from the places you are
| interested in, and find those that match you as closely as
| possible so you don't have to be confronted by anyone different
| from you.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I lived in a Southwest Virginia college town for a few years
| after college.
|
| * Fast and cheap fiber internet. Reasonably priced utilities.
|
| * A reasonably sized and maintained home with a yard goes for
| under $200,000.
|
| * Small airport with a connection to Charlotte on AA that I
| believe had federally subsidized aviation access.
|
| * Small risk of natural disasters.
|
| * I did a photography gallery and the mayor of that town stopped
| by to see it.
|
| I enjoyed my time there but after friends slowly moved to bigger
| cities, I did too. I can't see myself happy there anymore. I
| probably wouldn't be married now and probably would have had a
| harder time forward in my career. Even if there was a tech scene
| there, it wouldn't be larger than 10 or so people, and the local
| tech companies were far less advanced.
|
| But if I had a choice as a kid where would be more fun to grow
| up, I'd say back in Virginia. More room to roam, outdoor
| activities nearby without parking issues, yard for hosting get-
| togethers, and far less pressure in school/extra-circulars.
|
| Hope this helps a little :)
| CalRobert wrote:
| Well, I moved to a village of about 250 people in rural Ireland,
| and I've met some other rural Irish tech workers online, but
| don't know of any concentrations of tech workers, we're all far
| apart. I do wonder if this will change over time as housing in
| cities gets less and less affordable.
|
| It's.... Fine. The locals are mostly bemused. I'd struggle to do
| it in rural US where the political divide is much wider. I'm only
| here because it's cheap though.
| scandox wrote:
| How is the broadband? I'm in Dublin and often contemplate
| moving out but I run into connectivity issues in many of my
| favoured locations.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Fastest I've ever had, gigabit fibre.
|
| Not to plug but I built www.gaffologist.com to find my house.
| You can choose rural fibre routes as an overlay
| scandox wrote:
| That's worth plugging. Thanks.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Yes, they do tend to be very different, because their needs and
| lifestyles are different. If that's a problem, perhaps that's not
| a good environment for you. You're not going to find a rural,
| small community where nobody is a farmer, these communities exist
| on interpersonal, familial relationships with one another.
| cdkmoose wrote:
| A possible target would be paper mill towns or similar. They tend
| to be rural to be close to the wood supply, but having a staff of
| engineers means there is a chance for a tech component to the
| population. I grow up in a small town in Maine, 1500 people in 45
| square miles. The next town over from the mill town. Our regional
| HS had a strong science/math component again connected to the
| engineering population I think. Interestingly, cable was so late
| in getting to my town that when it arrived it was cheaper to run
| fiber than copper, so my parent's have fiber to the house,
| excellent internet speeds. I have been able to work very
| functionally in my software engineering job from there.
| Joey21 wrote:
| Why not look to small towns around state universities? Also, in
| the USA, look for micropolitan towns. Places that aren't tiny,
| but aren't major metro areas along with those kinds of
| challenges. Smaller towns can be easier places to afford homes,
| shorter distances to truly rural places. The people can be - not
| always though - challenging. May be more conservative politically
| and culturally. May be resistant to progressive ideas and
| efforts. Wife and I live in a smaller university town and love it
| here. It is a small community of similarly minded people who like
| the town and like technology and/or share similar progressive
| ideas. Fortunately we can hop in a car and be in a big city in an
| hour or so and enjoy big city entertainment and shopping. That
| said, our town punches well above its weight with plenty of
| shopping and entertainment opportunities.
| sophacles wrote:
| Seconded - I live in a university town in the Midwest (usa).
| Several big tech companies have offices in town. The university
| itself employs a lot of tech folks, and spawns startups. There
| are also a few smaller/medium tech firms that are local. On a
| normal day, you're never more than 15 minutes drive from farm
| fields, and quite a few tech workers live out in the country
| and drive into town occasionally or daily for work.
|
| It's nice, there's enough tech folks to maintain several maker
| spaces and co-working spots, and the students are a steady
| stream of enthusiastic youngsters to keep things feeling fresh.
| Added benefit that I've discovered talking to people in bigger
| cities: there's enough going on here that I often want to do
| several things in a day, and since much of it happens in the
| same 2 mile radius, you don't have to factor travel time into
| planning. (For example, I can go to a python meetup that ends
| at 7 and get to the theatre to see a 715 show with friends on
| the other side of town - a lot of places make that into an
| either-or proposition).
| tclancy wrote:
| Yeah, here in Southern NH near Portsmouth/ UNH there's a strong
| tech scene but you're also close to fairly rural areas.
| njoubert wrote:
| I grew up in an area like this and it was pretty great!
| nextos wrote:
| Any examples of micropolitan towns?
| glial wrote:
| Decorah or Grinnell Iowa, or Northfield Minnesota.
| linusgetonskype wrote:
| +1 for Chattanooga, TN. Municipal fiber, white water rafting,
| Rock City; what more could you want?
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| I don't know any off the top of my head but I am also very
| interested if there are any existing hubs. I assume it would be
| somewhere with good internet.
| braingenious wrote:
| I don't know of any for sure either, but I'd look around in the
| area around Chattanooga, Tennessee and similar places with
| affordable fiber.
| beauzero wrote:
| Agreed. Sylacauga, AL has metro fiber/provided by electrical
| company. The three counties around Carrollton, GA (Haralson,
| Carroll, and Heard) are getting it from now through the next
| 6 years from Carroll EMC. Phase 1 has started and is focused
| on Haralson and Heard counties first. With a few in more
| rural areas of Carroll. Start here
| https://carrollemc.com/broadband Carrollton, GA also has
| UWG...the cheapest "state" school for tuition in Georgia.
| toast0 wrote:
| Some of the Seattle 'suburbs' get fairly rural, lots of trees, at
| least some lots are a couple acres, a few working farms, lots of
| hobby farms, but still have a lot of tech workers.
|
| If remote work is important to you, check out internet options.
| There's a chance of Comcast and CenturyLink, but both get shifty
| about actually servicing homes in places (Comcast won't run a
| drop to my house even though their cable is on the pole at the
| corner of the lot; CenturyLink has run out of DSLAM ports in some
| neighborhoods, and some homes are too far from the DSLAM to get
| usable speeds); some public utility districts do fiber, but if
| your prospective house isn't already passed by their fiber, you
| would need to pay actual costs to extend the network plus actual
| costs to run a drop to your DMARC (which gets spendy if you've
| got underground wiring and a long driveway; I've got a $50k
| installation quote which 40% is undergrounding along my driveway
| and 60% is stringing the fiber on poles for 2ish miles); but some
| counties don't do that. I've seen relatively good reports for
| Starlink, but waiting time is unknowable and bandwidth and
| latency fluctuate during the day.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'm on a train and just went through some charming town south
| of Centralia. Wonder if it would appeal to remote tech workers.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Is there bad air quality there from the coal fire?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Fair, out of context it's unclear. I'm in Washington state.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I think you're thinking of Centralia PA?
| manacit wrote:
| Very much agree with this, I know a number of people that
| commuted (pre-pandemic) to the East Side (Redmond/Bellevue)
| that live in North Bend, Monroe, Sultan, etc. These are all
| cities that are very much part of the 'Seattle area' and are
| not really considered rural, but would tick many of the boxes.
|
| If you want to go farther out, there are plenty of parts of WA
| that are really rural - but you might not find things like high
| speed internet are very accessible.
|
| The one thing you won't get moving into any of those places is
| lower housing costs, however. These are all priced with the
| fact that high-earners are living in these cities and commuting
| into Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond and getting paid those salaries.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Starlink is pretty capable, been running it side-by-side in
| that sort of area vs. the local and only big name ISP. For a
| month+ of two remote tech workers doing video calls, hasn't
| been an issue.
| niblettc wrote:
| Huntsville, AL, & Chattanooga, TN both have tech communities.
| Huntsville has NASA's MSFC and Redstone arsenal, so there's a ton
| of tech talent from all over the country there. Companies like
| Boeing, Blue Origin, Lockheed all have a presence. They're now
| starting to see non government / defense tech companies spring
| up, Like CommentSold. Gener8tor is launching a new accelerator
| program there.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like by the time you have a community that is worth noting
| that they're not very "rural" anymore. At the very least it is
| then suburban.
|
| Number of tech worker's that's hard to know.
| bombcar wrote:
| People's definition of "rural" varies widely.
|
| Many "rural" people live in small towns/cities where their
| nearest neighbor is mere yards away, others would only consider
| "rural" to be where the nearest neighbor couldn't be hit with a
| high-powered rifle.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah that's a challenge. Last article I read about people
| "fleeing" San Fransisco was very vague until they mentioned a
| family who moved to a "rural community".
|
| Later they mentioned where they moved it was ... it was the
| suburbs. Very much not rural.
|
| Where I live there's a farm down the road, that doesn't make
| it rural either.
| shasts wrote:
| Would there be a backlash from the local community? I think
| unless the said tech community makes a positive impact to the
| native society live there, the reception is not going to be
| welcoming, I think.
|
| Majority of the places I have seen tech people move to, the first
| thing to happen is increase in prices, be it housing or services.
| dkarp wrote:
| I do worry about this. It feel like I often hear complaints of
| an influx of tech workers leading to higher prices for locals,
| especially real estate. I have friends in Denver, CO and Bend,
| OR specifically who have made that complaint over the last
| couple years
| paulorlando wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I grew up in a rural area / small town.
| I've been trying to get back to that life (main drivers: I have
| young kids and like the outdoors more than office buildings).
| Happy to discuss this concept or try to help anyone interested.
| I've been discussing with a couple groups but they are in EU.
| Building this in the US would be a lot more straightforward.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| You might be interested in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Digikey
| is based there and one of the largest electronic retailers in the
| world, but the town itself is relatively small (few thousand
| people)
|
| Afaik they're the only company to work for so it's a bit limited.
| But I have a friend who lives there and is one of their many
| developers and she loves it. I understood from her that they're
| staying permanently remote even after the pandemic, but they
| might give you preferential treatment if you're willing to move
| anyways. And I know she still has the possibility of going into
| the office whenever she wants and has great relationships with
| her coworkers.
|
| Some of their problems are very interesting too, as much of the
| software is to run their highly optimized warehouse. Their whole
| schtick is that they can get your product out of the warehouse in
| just an hour or two, so if you can pay for fast shipping it will
| get to you however fast you want. And this ends up being a very
| interesting optimization problem with human and machine
| components as well.
| oblio wrote:
| Company towns should probably not count.
| sereja wrote:
| There is "Programmers village" ("Poselok programmistov") in Kirov
| Oblast in deep Russia.
|
| It is not exactly a rural community: it's just 20 or so families
| of remote tech workers (mostly freelancers) living a few
| kilometers from a small old town with dirt cheap land and local
| labor (like "buy a two-story house with one month's SF salary"
| kind of cheap). It was founded before the pandemic by a guy who
| used to work as an SWE at Yandex and grew tired of living in
| Moscow.
|
| I wonder if something like this exists elsewhere.
| m82labs wrote:
| The Raleigh NC area has quite a bit of tech, and if you stay
| about 20-25 minutes outside of downtown you can get that rural
| lifestyle while still being close to the city and tech companies.
| Specifically if you stay south of the city. I have 2 acres and
| regularly see cows across the field in my backyard but I also
| have a good selection of local tech conferences and reliable
| fiber internet.
| tcoppi wrote:
| Agree Raleigh and the general Triangle area is a good one.
| Maybe surprising for most here but Maryland and Virginia is
| like this as well. We're more expensive but you can get 1-3
| acres within an hour commute of DC and/or Baltimore with a
| relatively robust tech scene, especially if you're willing to
| work for the government. Areas like Frederick, MD even have
| reasonable rail commutes into DC!
| chaostheory wrote:
| Isn't this an oxymoron? i.e. the second enough techies converge
| in the same location is the same second it transforms from a
| rural community into a suburb
| Kerrick wrote:
| Absolutely not. You'll find plenty of communities in rural
| areas: churches, American Legion, quilting groups, hunting
| buddies, continuing education classes at the county extension,
| etc.
| s3233323 wrote:
| codingdave wrote:
| I live in a rural community. It is a mile to my nearest neighbor.
| Many farmers live here, but also many people who just have long
| commutes to a town/city. I would not say that they are very
| different people - we all have more in common than we are
| different. But they do have different backgrounds and skills.
| Most of them are pretty sharp and are interested in technology,
| but they just don't know much about it. Some of them have tried
| to learn some basic coding. Many of them are intrigued by what
| tech can bring to agriculture. I think that if you wanted to take
| the lead and build a tech community locally, focused on helping
| people come up to speed and figuring how it would have direct
| benefit to the local community, most areas would be receptive to
| such a thing.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| They're trying to build one in Water Valley, Mississippi:
| https://everesthub.org/. No publicly available fiber internet
| yet.
|
| Water Valley (population ~4k) is often described as an artists
| community. It's near Oxford, MS, which is also known for its
| literature and art.
| eatonphil wrote:
| There are a lot of tech folks in western Mass and western
| Connecticut, both very rural. I've met a few. Grey beards working
| remotely for a decade or two. And I've even met a few young
| people with kids who work remotely for NYC companies out of rural
| NJ.
|
| Lancaster PA has or had a few tech companies.
|
| So I'd say probably yes. Pick a county of 500 thousand people or
| so and start looking through their Craigslist for job postings.
| You'll find them eventually.
| ben_w wrote:
| Depends what you mean by rural. If you literally want to walk to
| the local horse riding club from your front door, my old town was
| Cottenham UK, a 20 minute commute from Cambridge science park:
| https://goo.gl/maps/yeRNL3Dayu5eXYkx6
|
| Also I grew up in Havant, and basically all of the A27 is a thin
| strip of urban surrounded by fields -- my childhood home was
| almost equidistant between Lockheed Martin and a horse
| farm/castle.
|
| Outside of the U.K., a friend lives on the edge of Zurich[0], has
| fields with grazing sheep an arrow's flight[1] from their flat.
|
| [0] technically not in the city itself, but in a conurbation and
| you wouldn't notice the boundary by looking at an aerial photo.
|
| [1] a bit longer than a stone's throw; specifically 100 meters.
| ixfo wrote:
| UK? Pick any county within an hour or so of London. Oxfordshire
| and Berkshire is full of systems/tech people.
| mdasen wrote:
| > I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you
| find in a city
|
| In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech.
| Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative,
| lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to
| opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass
| for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a
| religious or racial minority? Do you have hobbies that might be
| more unique? Cities have the critical mass for so many groups of
| people.
|
| Before I go further, I want to take a moment to talk about three
| things: income, education, and opportunity. Someone lacking any
| or all of those doesn't make them a bad person. However, moving
| to an area without those things can have an impact on you. In the
| US, a lot of services are paid for by property taxes collected by
| the municipality and county. If you move to an area where people
| are struggling, there isn't the same kind of money for services -
| and even if your housing is cheaper, you'll be paying a lot more
| in taxes since you might be going from "above average" to "really
| rich". Education and opportunity can also be a problem. Do you
| end up in an area where many have resorted to meth or opioids? Do
| you end up in an area where chronic unemployment is an issue?
| Again, this isn't people being bad or anything like that, but it
| can cause fear and resentment.
|
| There was an article (which I can't find right now) about the
| unionization drive at an Alabama Amazon fulfillment center.
| Amazon came into a town that basically hadn't had jobs and
| everyone was living pretty poorly. The article interviewed some
| people and the sentiment came across as people thinking that the
| place was dying and even if they wanted a union, they didn't want
| to risk going back to a place that was a disaster.
|
| In rural communities with flood risks, FEMA has bought and
| demolished properties rather than pay to rebuild them. This ends
| up gutting the tax base and leaves the community as a shell of
| itself. If the main store in your town and 5-10% of the houses
| get bought and demolished, you still have the roads, police, etc.
| to pay for with a dwindling tax base - and less reason for you to
| be there.
|
| https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/in...
|
| Check out the census map and select "Population Change" and then
| zoom in one level so it shows counties. Many rural areas have
| lost 10-30% of their population over a decade. It isn't fun to be
| a part of a dwindling tax base. A lot of expenses don't go down
| as that tax base goes down.
|
| Along with this, I'd argue that there's a
| brain/income/opportunity-drain in a lot of rural communities.
| People who are richer, have more education, and more access to
| opportunity are more likely to leave. Are you buying into a
| location where the future isn't on your side?
|
| If you're thinking about the next 20-40 years of your life, I'd
| argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US
| will continue to subsidize rural life. If we're going to get
| serious about climate change, will that mean $10 gas? Even with
| electric cars, the cost will increase. Will we continue to spend
| a fortune on roads and other accommodations for rural life? The
| US spends a huge amount of money on rural telecom infrastructure
| our of taxes on urban areas. Will places like Amazon start
| differentiating shipping pricing? It's a lot cheaper for them to
| deliver in cities where the distance between stops is small. I
| don't expect anything extreme, but if things are getting 1% worse
| every year, that starts to add up.
|
| All that said, I do think that there are some good rural
| communities in New England - Central/Western Massachusetts and
| Vermont especially. You'll find high educational attainment, a
| population that is relatively stable, access to decent towns and
| cities, and a liberal enough attitude that won't expect you to
| conform to the hegemony as much as many rural places. Many of the
| Western Mass towns even have municipal fiber. I think you'd find
| enough tech workers around.
|
| Honestly, it's hard to say whether a place would be a good fit
| for you since I know almost nothing about you. Are you white,
| male, straight, Christian, etc.? A lot of rural places can become
| easier if you tick those boxes. If you don't tick those boxes,
| then you might start wondering how you might be treated
| differently from living in the city.
|
| It's also hard to know what you mean by "rural" since the
| distinction between suburban and rural is hard in the US. In
| Europe, things drop off to farmland very quickly. In the US,
| things just sprawl with no clear distinction. Is Saratoga
| Springs, NY rural? It's certainly a bit far from things and might
| be the "pastoral" feeling you're looking for, but it still has
| stuff around. Likewise, there are plenty of locations with very
| few people that might be an hour from a city like Boston.
| Boxborough, MA is an hour from Boston while covered in forest.
| I'd think of it as "suburban", but it might the rural/pastoral
| feel you're looking for while still being within commutable
| distance to everything.
|
| Maybe you're looking for a place like Saratoga Springs or
| Ashville, NC or Burlington, VT or Charlottesville, VA. I think
| those places could be really nice. I would caution about moving
| to an area that is seeing a lot of population decline that has a
| big lack of opportunity.
| dkarp wrote:
| I appreciate your point about population decline as that isn't
| something I had considered at all.
|
| Maybe rural doesn't capture what I'm looking for, but I'm not
| sure of a better word and it does capture the feeling. I would
| like at least 4 acres and some privacy at the very least. Then
| the question becomes what I'd have to give up to get that. It
| definitely means giving up living in a big city, but maybe it
| doesn't mean giving up a small city/town.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| +1 suburban / rural areas are heavily subsidized by the federal
| + state governments. It isn't cheap to maintain that amount of
| roads / utilities and I could certainly foresee a future in
| which it becomes much more expensive to leave so far apart.
| julianlam wrote:
| It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for
| the winding down of city governance when population dwindles.
| It's probably just the human element. I don't mean to be
| promoting some sort of libertarian "self-governance is great!"
| philosophy, just thinking out loud.
|
| Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with
| each population milestone (due to new positions in local
| government, new departments, etc.). One would naturally expect
| that if the city population were to drop below a specific
| threshold, the appropriate departments would be wound down to
| curb expenditure. If there aren't enough people to economically
| support a parks department, then (sadly) let the parks go wild.
|
| Perhaps it's just hard to fire someone because an algorithm
| told you to do so. Real life is messy, after all.
| mdasen wrote:
| You can wind down certain things, but at what point are you
| winding down stuff that's more on the necessity side of
| things? The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that
| needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to
| be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road
| vehicle now." We're spending over $20B to increase rural
| broadband because people in rural areas don't want to be told
| "sorry, the population has dropped below a certain threshold
| so we're winding down the internet in your area to curb
| expenditure." (And before someone talks about Starlink,
| SpaceX is looking to get a lot of that money).
|
| I think it's also not just about the emotions of firing
| someone. It's really hard to manage a downward trend - and
| not from a touchy-feely standpoint. If you're an uncaring
| machine and people leave, you fire a proportional number of
| government employees. But that doesn't solve the situation.
| Every business in the area now has fewer customers. At some
| point, those businesses close reducing tax revenue further
| and increasing unemployment more. It's not just the city that
| feels the pinch of a dwindling tax base - that dwindling tax
| base means there's also a dwindling consumer base.
|
| An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties
| often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time.
| For example, you want to build a school so you borrow $X and
| you'll pay it back over the next 30 years. You need to
| rebuild some roads so you borrow and pay it back over the
| next 30 years. However, if your population is dwindling, that
| can leave the town holding debt it can't really pay anymore.
| If you built a school for 1,000 students and then the
| population dwindles by 30% over the next 20 years, you're
| stuck paying for way more school than you need with fewer
| people paying for it. Ok, layoff some teachers - but you have
| to lay off more then 30% of the teachers because you're
| paying for 100% of the school debt and maintenance costs. So
| you fire 40-50% of the teachers, class sizes go up, the
| people with the best options (the most educated with the best
| job opportunities and most money) leave your town eroding the
| richest part of your tax base and leaving lower income people
| on the hook for that debt while they escape it...which causes
| you to fire more teachers which causes more people to
| leave...
|
| I think it's not just that there's a messy human side to it,
| but that it's hard to manage decline. Ok, you wind down a
| department. What about the building? Maybe you can sell it,
| but probably at a loss since you have a declining purchasing
| base. As you wind down a parks department or library, the
| richest people are likely to leave. Now your algorithm
| requires more cuts.
|
| And the sad state of it is that it's often not a parks
| department. It can be things like roads or safe drinking
| water.
|
| There is also a messy human side of it as well, for sure, but
| it's just hard to manage decline. I can totally see the game:
| you cut the parks department and the rich people complain,
| sell their house for 15% below previous market value and
| leave, and your tax base dwindles more. You cut after-school
| programs and more rich people complain about the town and
| schools and leave - and your tax base dwindles more. You try
| to attract new residents to YouVille and cartoon characters
| say, "I want a town that invests in its schools," and
| "everyone I know is talking about leaving YouVille."
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| Hey we should talk! The county I live in has pretty good fiber
| with a population under 20k. I've been tossing around the idea of
| creating a curated list of properties for sale here. There isn't
| a tech community here yet but the property prices are cheap
| ($325k for a house and 40 acres, also has city water).
|
| What made you interested in rural communities? What would make
| you likely to move to one? It's quite a different way of life out
| here but I have no doubts that one could adjust.
| Kerrick wrote:
| I'm working on founding a nonprofit with the explicit aim being
| to foster exactly that, with coworking spaces being the central
| hub to collect and train techies (and other remote workers).
|
| Here's an excerpt from a draft of our organizational plan:
|
| > When Americans raised in a rural area want to enter knowledge
| work or start a business, they're usually stuck with two options:
| do something local, which caps their earning potential, or move
| to an urban metropolitan area, which exacerbates the problem of
| rural brain drain. [REDACTED] fosters and accelerates a recent
| third option: work remotely or start an internet-based business,
| opening up the earning potential formerly only available to those
| who chose to move to the big city, while keeping the people
| rooted in (and thus their earnings circulating through the
| economies of) their rural home.
|
| > While the first thought to unlock aforementioned internet-based
| earning potential for rural Americans might be universal
| broadband on the scale of the rural electrification of America in
| the mid 1900s, there are two specific advantages that focusing on
| coworking as a complimentary solution provides. First, coworking
| spaces can be built as a centralized service for all citizens of
| a county, like a university exchange or a courthouse, when
| broadband internet service is available in part of a rural county
| but not to most of the citizens at home. Second, coworking spaces
| continue to provide value and foster economic potential even once
| every rural home has broadband internet, as evidenced by their
| success and popularity in cities across the world.
| davidw wrote:
| Pre-pandemic, Bend, Oregon where I live was already a hot spot
| for remote work:
|
| https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/bend-is-u-s-capital-of...
|
| It's a city of 100K people though, so I don't think it's what I
| would call 'rural' if you live in town.
| maestroia wrote:
| If you're into medtech or healthcare, Rochester, MN. Rochester
| itself is around 80-100K, but in the middle of rural SE MN with
| several smaller communities around it.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I live in Breckenridge, CO. I'd love to make this more of a rural
| tech community. The harsh winters here make for great skiing and
| programming weather.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'd _love_ to live in Breckenridge. (One of my favorite things
| is feeding the trout in the dredge pond.) But... there 's no
| way I could afford to live there :-<
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I'm in DGO. It's a great place to do all the outdoor play.
|
| I like that there are better paying jobs able to be out here on
| the edge of the desert, but it's really hard to live in places
| where short-term rentals are combining with folks like me
| moving into the community. I will never be able to afford a
| place in town for sure.
| techsolomon wrote:
| Alaska Developers Alliance - https://www.akdevalliance.com/
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'd like to know, too.
|
| My guess: You need at least a town with a state college. (Do you
| consider Fort Collins, Colorado to be "rural"? It's about 110,000
| people. Decent tech scene there.)
| mminer237 wrote:
| This is basically Champaign-Urbana, Illinois too. You have the
| university, Wolfram Research, Volition, tech startups, etc.
| downtown. You drive two miles south and it's just corn galore.
| brightball wrote:
| I don't know if it qualifies for your standard but Greenville, SC
| and its surrounding areas (Traveler's Rest, Simpsonville, Easley,
| Greer) have a blossoming tech community over the last 10 years.
| I'm one of the admins for our main tech Slack group and there's
| about 1,400 of us in there at last count.
|
| Beautiful downtown area around a waterfall, tons of biking, near
| mountains and 3 lakes.
|
| House prices are through the roof right now due to the influx of
| people though. Stories of bidding wars that used to be unheard of
| in this area.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZA252lotHM
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There's a small village (250 people) in rural New Mexico that
| until recently was home to both the 2nd programmer at Amazon and
| the main inventor of the Kindle. That was close to 1% of
| residents, but the kindle guy left :)
|
| More seriously, I'd say that I love doing "tech work" out here.
| Almost none of my neighbors know anything about what I do, and
| most of them don't want to know. Suits me fine. I'd rather talk
| about tech stuff online with people who know, and about
| everything else with my neighbors.
|
| I also like that my village is more of an artist community
| (famous, and not so famous) more than a tech community. Generally
| more interesting people for own personal tastes. Also, living
| around the corner from my cookbook idol (to the extent that I
| have cookbook idols) is both interesting and intimidating.
| rmason wrote:
| In Michigan there are software companies in small rural towns but
| no where I know about is there a concentration.
|
| I used to live in a small rural town West of Lansing when I
| worked as an agronomist in a past career. I left to do a SaaS
| startup and stayed local because this small town became a test
| site for cable Internet. Note this was a time when neither
| Lansing nor Grand Rapids had a broadband Internet option,
| everything was dial up or ISDN if you were lucky.
|
| My new office was across from city hall. I advocated to the city
| father's that they spend a fraction of the money promoting it's
| empty industrial park (every small town in Michigan has one) to
| lure software companies to town promoting it's then rare
| broadband Internet. They treated me as if I was advocating
| building a spaceport for aliens. In fact if they saw me coming
| they'd cross the street.
|
| I found out years later that quite by accident a startup had
| moved to the town specifically for the availability of broadband.
| Now they only have around 25 employees twenty years later but in
| a town of less than 3,000 I think that is still pretty good. But
| with a small amount of effort they could have had a dozen such
| companies ;<(.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Traverse City is becoming very techy. Over the course of the
| pandemic I have witnessed a lot of folks coming in from
| Chicago, etc, to work remotely, or to do tech work for one of
| the decent web/it/finance/insurance/medical companies here.
|
| P.S. we are hiring web dev and analytics/data engineer if you
| know anyone in the area!
| rmason wrote:
| Traverse City is amazing, but you already know that ;<).
| However I have problems dealing with winter in East Lansing
| so I can only imagine how bad it would be up there. You
| better like snowmobiling or skiing. But for seven months out
| of the year it's absolute perfection.
| coward123 wrote:
| I live in a town of 35,000 people, where the economies of several
| counties in each direction are based in agriculture. There are
| tech people here - and I expected there would be a lot more by
| now - but it is very slow growth. Internet service isn't bad,
| there is a small co-working space or two, but the bigger issue is
| one of demographics. We have a lot of retirees coming for
| sunshine and a perceived more affordable lifestyle, but younger
| people are slow to want to bring their families here even if they
| could be remote workers. There are a couple small tech firms
| (like under 10 employees), but none of the biggest issues is that
| there are really only two smallish employers who can offer any
| kind of competitive compensation. That risk - that you are
| reliant on remote work - keeps a lot of people from being willing
| to move here.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not to gatekeep the word rural, but: Problem with some of these
| replies is they're pointing out small cities, not rural areas.
| When I (and maybe OP) think "rural/pastoral" I am thinking
| villages with less than 500 people. A house on 2 or more acres
| where you can't see your neighbor is considered a small property.
| _That's_ rural. Not Asheville or Fort Collins. Those are just
| small cities.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Every time threads like this come up it humbles me to realize
| how many people have never actually seen, much less lived in, a
| rural setting. Yes this is gatekeeping, but it serves a purpose
| to set a realistic perspective. See below for folks who think
| 'rural' means a suburb of a major city.
| [deleted]
| dkarp wrote:
| The difficulty for me is that I've been to very rural areas,
| I've stayed in rural areas and I've had friends/family in
| rural areas. And I do mean actually rural areas away from
| towns and cities.
|
| I've never lived there though and it is hard to get a feel
| for what would actually bother you until you've spent a
| significant amount of time there.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I live in a blue collar neighborhood in Cincinnati where a
| lot of the people dream of one day living in a rural setting.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm curious why HN is continually so confused by the word
| "rural", certain subjects almost always fall apart on this
| website because of folks confusion over the word.
| majinuub wrote:
| I'm thinking that its because many HN users live in or close
| to medium to large sized cities. So they have no perspective
| when it comes to a place that's truly rural. They just see
| that some small city has no high rises or large companies and
| just assume "that must be a rural town."
| mgarfias wrote:
| Its because most here have never really been rural. Rural is
| a place to drive past or fly over on to something
| interesting.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| It's confusing because the Census Bureau's definition quite
| doesn't capture the essence or totality of what makes an area
| "rural". It only operates on numbers and self-reported
| designations, neither of which encapsulate what OP would
| expect.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I'd agree with this, and through it would suggest having a tech
| community, or indeed any interest based community would be
| unlikely with that few people.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| I hit on some of those where I live. 2 or
| more acres: Yes can't see your neighbor: No
| Less than 500 people: No, just about double that at 1k
|
| I consider where I live pretty rural. In my town there isn't a
| lot of "tech" people that I know of but 15 min away there is a
| small "city" with about 15k population that has an active co-
| working space that is all tech people (its like 20ish person
| group).
|
| Even in the "city" that is 15 min away, there is never any real
| traffic, not like what you get in a major city. I never worry
| about hitting traffic, I can come and go to the co-working
| space at will without ever a thought of "I better leave before
| rush hour hits".
| rayiner wrote:
| > I would like to live a more pastoral life, but anecdotally I've
| heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in
| a city.
|
| You don't even have to get that far out of the city to get away
| from city people. I'm just an hour from DC, in a part of Maryland
| where there are still quite a few farms within a 5 minute drive,
| and it's like night and day compared to the city. And I even have
| fiber internet! Strongly recommend it.
| binarysolo wrote:
| Short answer: depending on your definition of rural, yes, there
| are def pockets of tech folks in rural areas.
|
| These rural areas with tech folks tend to be outer suburbs of
| cities and/or niche touristy/outdoor places -- basically work-
| remote tech folks who live at an area to enjoy the other aspects
| the land can offer.
|
| I run a remote-first business around Lake Tahoe in Nevada and
| there's def large pockets of CA tech expatriates here settling
| down here, but this area isn't exactly rural, it's a big tourist
| town. As you go east you end up in the desert and it gets pretty
| rural, and there's def a tech segment out there though it's
| highly correlated with a communal/art scene courtesy of Burning
| Man (art hippies that happen to tech).
| prettyStandard wrote:
| After reading the comments about rural vs suburb you'll probably
| find it in a suburb/smaller cities.
|
| https://www.ruralsourcing.com/development-centers/
| prettyStandard wrote:
| I've had a few friends work there, and interviewed as few
| times. It's pretty meh.
|
| One time they gave me an offer for exactly what I told them I
| was already making. I would not go there unless I had to.
| rel2thr wrote:
| Getting a bit pricey now but lots of tech workers in the small
| towns 1-2 hours from Austin . Like Bastrop , liberty hill ,
| Lockhart , etc
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I started my career as a programmer out in Fredericksburg.
|
| I think that it was good to be able to be able to get into
| Austin/ SA for meetings and then live in the sticks. I'm in
| Western CO now... there are a lot of tech workers in the small
| town where I live.
| hax0rbana wrote:
| Co-founder of Hax0rbana here. I now live in a metro area of about
| 120K. Prior to that, I lived in the DC area and LA before that. I
| mention this for 2 reasons: 1. I don't know if you consider my
| situstion to be rural. The town is surrounded by cornfields, but
| I'll leave that to you to decide. 2. It's clear some people
| answering are clearly city folks. That's fine, but they only know
| the stereotypes about rural folks being uneducated, straight,
| poor, etc.
|
| Urbana, IL has a University of Illinois campus. In other words,
| it's a college town. To give you an idea of the culture, churches
| have pride flags painted on their signs and hang black lives
| matter banners. The main event at annual engineering open house
| is robo brawl, a scaled down version of battle bots. We have art
| scattered around town, made by local artists. The Independent
| Media Center has things ranging from a Makerspace, to a bicycle
| repair community, to books to prisoners. If you show up wanting
| to learn something, people will be happy to share what they know.
|
| For amemities, we have gigabit fiber run by a regional company.
| If you want Comcast, they're here to. We have one of the best
| public transit systems in the country.
|
| This doesn't describe all rural areas/smaller towns.
|
| When we were selecting a city to start our hacker co-housing
| project, we factored in many things: cost of living, having smart
| people around, weather, taxes, civil rights, and of course the
| town's culture (with bigotry being the primary concern).
|
| I think the main takeaway is to choose the location carefully.
| Not all rural areas are alike, just like not all big cities are
| alike. Think about the things that matter to you, and measure
| potential destinations based on those criteria. If it's critical
| that you have a goth club or something like that, you'll probably
| end up in a bigger city.
| khaled_ismaeel wrote:
| Innopolis, Russia, is such a community. It's a small city built
| around a university and tech complex. The population is around
| 3,000 or something and the nature is exquisite.
| stevenking86 wrote:
| Asheville NC seems to be turning into a "work remote" tech hub. I
| moved here during the pandemic and have met many tech workers
| just walking around my neighborhood. Technically it's a city
| (looks like ~90k population), but coming from NYC it certainly
| feels like nature to me. There are streams and mountains and back
| yards.
| solumos wrote:
| you should go check out Epic Systems in Verona, WI
| severine wrote:
| Have you heard about CORI or the Rural Innovation Network
| communities?
|
| _The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
| organization partnering with rural leaders across the country to
| build digital economies that support scalable entrepreneurship
| and lead to more tech jobs in rural America._
|
| https://ruralinnovation.us/community-impact/rural-innovation...
|
| https://ruralinnovation.us/
|
| Not affiliated, just found it prompted by your question, looks
| very interesting!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Uk Oxford and Cambridge are bona fide tech hubs, and towns of
| ~150k people but in either you can totally live in a village with
| a 20-30 min bike commute.
|
| We're talking cows in pastures and dark skies. Hell, I know
| someone who helped raised some cattle on a common in return for a
| share of the meat... while actually within Oxford City
| boundaries.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| I live on rural property about an hour from SF. My neighbors
| aren't techies, but they really aren't that different. Lots of
| older/retired people, plenty of maker-type people. Out here
| there's space to have shops, tractors, and physically large
| projects. I can't discuss programming with my neighbors but
| welding, electronics, gardening, and construction are fun topics.
|
| I still see many of my Bay Area friends; weekend parties at my
| place are way more fun than parties in their tiny city
| houses/apartments. And we still keep in touch remotely.
|
| Not every rural area is the same; I also lived for a year in
| eastern Kentucky and the people are indeed a bit different there.
| But I still made friends, and I'm not a major extrovert or
| anything.
| dogman144 wrote:
| This is an area I'm looking to move to, from Santa Rosa up to
| Ukiah but way east Bay looks interesting.
|
| What is the fire risk like? I'm comfortable with everything
| else via Starlink, remote job that'll stay remote, and similar.
| njoubert wrote:
| Wow! Which direction from SF??
| AnishLaddha wrote:
| probably north, marin county is beautiful.
| ISL wrote:
| Here's everywhere reachable within about an hour's drive from
| SF.
|
| https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lng=-122.41991&0-tt=60&0.
| ..
| mgarfias wrote:
| Yes, we are very different. I live just outside a small town
| (800people). We are definitely not a "tech" community, but we
| have a fiber network thats getting upgraded to 10Gbps sometime
| this summer.
|
| I'm about 3mi outside of town on 5 acres of trees, and I care
| barely see my neighbor. Its pretty quiet except for the
| occasional truck driving up the hill. Oh, and the neighbors (or
| me) occasionally shooting at something.
|
| I highly recommend it, if you can deal with the lack of people
| and the generally conservative lifestyles/beliefs. If you're a
| libertarian, just leave me alone, type, it works just fine.
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