perfidy

Devin's Hackertopia idea has got me thinking.

I think the biggest problem would be critical mass. If you don't get a sufficiency of smart, interesting people to move there; smart, interesting people won't move there. How do you bootstrap the process? Rather than planning a large community - start with the village and grow up from there.

If one could purchase a 160 acre plot in the adjacent to the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't cost that much. For example, this place:

Is located in Monroe County, WV, near I-64 and I-81, near the Virginia border. It costs $350k. Not an unreasonable sum, all things considered. A moderate amount of effort could produce a roughed out town square, a home, and the first building of the Hackiversity. Build a nice stone structure, fully wired, and set it up as a hacker space, and you might be able to get it started. Over time, the founders could sell plots out of the original 160 acres - reserving some for the university and some for the public square - to finance public works and to purchase nearby land for expansion.

New residents could buy into the municipal corporation, or not; buy land, or rent. Those who bought shares would have a hand in the governance as shareholders, and would share in the profits, if any.

If the university made a name for itself, the city could grow pretty rapidly.