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Mormon Tycoon Wants to Build Mega-Utopia in Vermont

• cookiecaper 10y ago
  The link to Mormonism is incredibly tenuous here. It seems that Hall's plans look vaguely like a grid, and so did Joseph Smith's. That's about the limit of the connection.
  • wwweston 10y ago
    Well, that and "Utah-based foundation" and "all of the land was either adjacent or close to the birthplace and memorial of Joseph Smith" and it's based on "Plat of the City of Zion." Also, if you're a Mormon, you probably see some other very Mormon things come through in the description of Mr. Hall. The endeavor itself seems pretty characteristic not only of Mormonism but a whole variety of faith, social, and industrial experiments from the 19th century. California entrepreneurs aren't the first hackers/disrupters. :) And I think that's the point of the article, really. This isn't a "those crazy/weird Mormons" thing. This is an "Ambitious Guy is Ambitious" and "Humans Be Utopian-ing" thing. And also a reminder that San Francisco isn't the only place where people are resistant to having the character of the community they live in changed.
  • jonah 10y ago
    He's a Mormon and the idea is inspired by Smith's writings though. Seems like a fairly strong case of resurrecting and updating some of old plans just like if someone wanted to build a Greek city based on some old writings. (Not a Mormon and don't have any horses in this race, just find the push to distance these plans from Mormonism odd.)
    • cookiecaper 10y ago
      Joseph's plat was not a "plan". It was a record of something he thought he saw. It was specific to a time and a place. The inscription recited in the linked article to "spread this throughout the world" is made contingent upon it actually being reflective of the layout of Zion in the next clause, and was intended for a time when Zion is a real thing. I want to distance these plans from Mormonism simply because the project has no meaningful relationship to it. There is no problem whatsoever with Hall drawing inspiration from an old document drawn out by Joseph Smith et al, I take no umbrage with that. The issue is the attempt to pretend that it is some realization of Joseph's intent or visions, some significant step forward in the creation of the Zion of scripture (which, for the record, is mostly defined in the Bible). NewVistas is one man's plan for a city he thinks will work well. He may even believe the plan has some divine sanction over it, which is fine. I wish him luck in his attempts to lawfully build his ideal city. What I do not wish to see is the false association, the false significance, ascribed to this project, merely based on Hall's assertion that he drew inspiration from a document authored by Smith. It creates the false impression that Mormons will accept this as religiously significant, and they don't and won't, because it isn't.
      • jonah 10y ago
        The sense I'm getting from what you're saying is that this plan to create a "Zion" is like various Christian groups doing X or Y to hasten the Second Coming of Christ? Also, if you have a minute, I'd love to hear your understanding of what the real Zion will be. (Honest curiosity.)
        • mrchucklepants 10y ago
          A great place to look for a Mormon view on what Zion will be like, at least in principle, is a book called The Enoch Letters written by Neal Maxwell, a LDS apostle. It is written in the style of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It a quick read and I found it to be quite interesting.
        • slv77 10y ago
          Just throwing in some thoughts... Mormon eschatology is pretty thin but the core beliefs are that the people are of "one heart and one mind" and that "there are no poor among them". Specifically this mean that Zion can only be built from "within" and not by force of arms and an economic system not based on self interest but on "love thy neighbors as thyself". Early Mormon's made attempts in Kirtland Ohio and Far West Missiouri which mostly failed due to rampant speculation and broader economic panics. Some of the ideas were adopted in Nauvoo, Illinois and later is small communities in Utah by Brigham Young. Some of these experiments yielded later economic benefits because it allowed the Mormon's to divorce their economic system somewhat from gold (which was I short supply). While trades with non-Mormons would need to be settled with gold trade between Mormons could be settled with script that could be exchanged for goods at the "bishop's storehouse." Tradesmen and famers would sell items to the storehouse and get back script which they could then use to buy finsished good or services. This created a currency that was functionally backed by finished goods and commodities and was immune to speculation and banking system panics that were common at the time.
      • bjt 10y ago
        There's more than one kind of mormon. There are the skeptical types like you and me, and there are the doomsday-prepping Julie Rowe followers, and more. There is certainly a subgroup of mormons that would see religious significance in him using Joseph's plat of Zion document for the layout. If he were doing this in Independence MO, then you'd really have something.
  • pontifier 10y ago
    I went to novatek before he sold it, and was given a presentation on this project. It didn't seem complete, and there were many things that just didn't make sense. When other people I talked to explained that it was an effort to build a religeous utopia some of the stranger things made a little more sense, but still many of the choices he is making seem arbitrary and odd. There was the main meeting building with movable floors and walls that were justified by the ability to use it as a chapel, and a gym, and that it could also be sectioned off into individual meeting rooms. The underground monorail system with individual autonomous cars is supposed to be the main transportation... No cars allowed. The size of the living quarters is very small. It's supposed to be all mixed use, with one main boulevard that all the shops are on. Living space would all be on level 2, and gardens on the top floor. Lots of farm area right out back, but communal. It's odd, but if he's got the money to try it, more power to him.
• elliotec 10y ago
  I'm from Salt Lake City and a former Mormon. I want to emphasize former because I'm in no way affiliated with the church and have a bit of lifelong bitterness toward it (used to be much worse, mostly over it now) and while I think a lot of things about Mormonism are completely stupid, they sure know how to build cities and be settlers and pioneers. I think that mentality has passed through generations and it's really exciting to see this kind of advanced utopian dream come to life, even if it pisses off neighbors and if it ultimately fails. I'm obsessed with cities and I would love to see this turn into the vision that Joseph smith had in mind, even if all his other visions are laughable loads of whatever.
  • cookiecaper 10y ago
    There is no connection to actual Mormonism here. If there was, Hall would certainly not be encountering serious opposition in Provo, of all places. Hall's practices are immediately suspect because he's advertising his affiliation with the Mormon Church as a major part of this endeavor. It's extremely common for scammers to try to exploit religious people by falsely claiming some sort of sanction or approval from religious bodies. I also wish Hall luck in building a sustainable, walkable, high-end development, and in reading other articles about his clashes with neighbors in Provo I was even kind of rooting for him, but I'm really put off by the insinuation that either the Mormon Church or Mormon doctrine has anything to do with it.
    • jonah 10y ago
      How can there be no connection. The guy is mormon, the inspiration is directly from Smith's writings, etc. I don't know anything about the writings, but from the article, it seems Smith was fairly clear in wanting to do something like this. Of course, yes this is an entrepreneur wanting to do a grandiose thing, but to say there's no connection is silly. (I'm not a Mormon, and have no horse in this race.)
      • cookiecaper 10y ago
        Because in Mormon (and Christian) eschatology, Zion, the New Jerusalem, is a real thing. It's not just one man's experiment to build a utopia. Zion is swamped in religious significance. It can't be built without specific forms of divine help, and it's not Zion without specific markers, like divinely-authorized temples. Smith's early drawings are good as far as they go, but they are non-canonical. They are of only historical interest to the Church. It is fine that Hall has drawn inspiration from them, but it is not fine to imply that there is any connection between Zion the Mormon Concept and Hall's NewVistas project. A copy of an old drawing isn't the distinctive characteristic of Zion. The distinctive characteristic is that a group of people within a specific geographic region are so completely realizing their religious precepts that divine beings make a home there. Joseph Smith's teachings re: Zion are meaningless outside of that context, and invoking Zion in any other way is sacrilege (doubly so when it's to promote a commercial endeavor).
• DiabloD3 10y ago
  Even though I'm not a Mormon, I kind of wish him luck. The plan is crazy, but I want to see what happens when its implemented.
• jonah 10y ago
  Maybe he should apply to YC New Cities. ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11987032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11987032
• Alex3917 10y ago
  The irony is that Vermont is already basically its own utopian community, where the culture is that development never gets approved unless it's being done by a resident of the state. Oh and you're not considered a resident unless you've been there at least generations. If Hall moves there now, maybe they'll let his great grandkids start building it. (If they can get the ski mountains to sell them any water rights, which isn't likely.)
  • morgante 10y ago
    That's a gross distortion. The state is very far from being a utopia, and new development does get routinely approved (though it can be controversial). We do tend to oppose giant chains or people trying to push systems onto the state.
    • Alex3917 10y ago
      Utopia just means 'non-existent place.' Which I feel like fairly describes the state, given that they only survive by giving out tons of speeding tickets to non-residents and jacking up their property taxes.
      • morgante 10y ago
        I don't really feel like defending my state on Hacker News, but I would like a citation for the notion that we survive by giving out tons of speeding tickets. At the very least, income tax is a much bigger contributor than speeding tickets.
• arxpoetica 10y ago
  This man is my uncle. FYI, I have NO affiliation with the project, but I have watched it with rapt attention since I have connections to both the Mormon community and “Uncle David,” as well as very close Vermont friends, so I definitely see both sides of the coin. Again, ZERO affiliation other than relation, but happy to answer any questions from an unofficial role. ;)
  • themodelplumber 10y ago
    That's really cool. Do you know of any sources for his inspiration other than JS? And any standout memories of your uncle you can share? He seems like a really intelligent guy. It'd be neat if some scaled-down version of this could be tested without creating so many waves.
    • arxpoetica 10y ago
      He's definitely bright. My Dad and he worked together for many years, though not on this project. When I asked my Dad about it he said, “no comment.” Ha. I confess I don't know other sources of inspiration, though I'm certain he's very familiar with other engineering efforts of similar kind. The reporting in this article is pretty sound; he's drawing much of his inspiration from an abstract document.
      • mrchucklepants 10y ago
        I'm guessing I share an office with your brother then.
        • arxpoetica 10y ago
          Sounds likely.
  • douche 10y ago
    Completely off-topic random question: how closely related are Mormon families, generally? With similarly insular populations (Mormons seem to tend to marry other Mormons), that have families that are larger than normal, it seems like family ties would proliferate and you'd end up with communities that are rather closely knit through webs of marriage.
• themodelplumber 10y ago
  As a Mormon myself, I've never heard of this guy or his plans. I've heard of lots of "niche" Mormons with crazy ideas though, so I read on for entertainment purposes. I was pretty surprised by the quality of thought going into the project. This guy probably has a lot in common with the HN crowd so I can see why the article was submitted. He's a type of visionary/intuitive/big-picture thinker, someone who is concerned about the quality of systems, sustainability, things like that. The end of the article outlines the problem nicely though; there's a real conundrum--do we trust the guy who seems to know what he's doing and addresses the exact problems we complain about, or do we trust our fears that something always seems to go wrong?
  • mc32 10y ago
    It reminds me a bit of the Daybreak[1] privately built master planned community in Utah build by a mining company. Not sure how well it's coming along, but seems like they wanted everything to be walkable and pleasant. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community)
    • themodelplumber 10y ago
      That's pretty cool, didn't know about it. Thanks. I thought it was interesting that their sales went up in a down housing market. That seems like a pretty clear mark of quality.
      • daveguy 10y ago
        > Nearly 1 in every 5 homes sold in Salt Lake County were in Daybreak. Or a clear mark that new residents to Salt Lake County affiliated with the church were strongly encouraged to move there. Given the ties I expect that is much more likely than some indication of quality.
        • sounds 10y ago
          Please cite a source?
• keeganjw 10y ago
  As someone who lives not to far from here can I say, this is nuts. Mega-city and Vermont are opposites. It just seems crazy that someone with tons of money and nothing to spend it on can just walk in and try to build a city in the middle of nowhere and where everybody there besides him wants it that way.
  • stephengillie 10y ago
    Could you provide specific details?
    • bydo 10y ago
      The largest city in Vermont has a population of 40k. If this development succeeds in attracting a population of 20k, it will be the second largest.
    • keeganjw 10y ago
      The issue for me isn't him being Mormon or if he wanted to build a little community at a religious site. For me, the issue is that he bought up a community to impose his vision and his will on everyone there. No one there asked for this. It'd be upsetting if anyone of any background tried this same thing. He's not working with the community. He's trying to demolish it to build his own. That's incredibly selfish and arrogant. He tries to justify it saying it will be sustainable and a model for the future. But he is in no way working with the community. I think his ideas are admirable but he's going about it all the wrong way. He should have looked for a community wanting change and worked with them to make it better. It should be a collaborative process with compromise, not imperialistic.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  • Osiris 10y ago
    Mega-city? It's a city of 20,000 people in a very small area (1 mile square?). 20,000 people is more like a town than a city and certainly not a "mega" city.
• douche 10y ago
  This seems like an insane thing to do in that part of Vermont. TFA doesn't have a map anywhere in it, but this is on the eastern edge of Vermont, near Hanover, NH, and Queechee, VT, except slightly north and farther away from those islands of quasi-civilization. I went to school near there, and spent almost a month building trail on the AT right around this area one summer. It's a backwards, old-timey redneck New England farming community, that reminds me far too much of my home in the Sandy River valley of Maine (aka I would love to live there and be a subsistence farmer...)
• probinso 10y ago
  I'm really disappointed this is not a new video game
  • arxpoetica 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure New Vistas is really just a new place to play Pokemon Go.
• morgante 10y ago
  This turned out to be a lot more serious and interesting than I expected. From the headline, Hall sounded like a Mormon nutcase. But his plans are actually a lot more realistic than you'd expect: a planned development of 20,000 people is not crazy. He's also putting real effort into the engineering required to fulfill the density of his vision. It also sounds like he's trying to make the venture sustainable and appears to have found some success in revenue through licensing or more traditional development projects. He's probably crazy to be trying it in Vermont though. He'll have to import voters before he can get anything approved. Maybe he just needs to listen to his PR people more. Downplay the Mormon angle, talk more about environmental efficiency, and pitch the communistic aspects—he might just get more sympathy.
  • T0T0R0 10y ago
    Meanwhile, why are people placing a harsh light on Mormons? Go ahead and change the word Mormon to something else, and notice how repugnant everything becomes.
    • cloudjacker 10y ago
      tried chickenshit, laughing ass off
    • morgante 10y ago
      I tend to not be a fan of ideologues or zealots, no matter their persuasion. If a Jewish entrepreneur were basing their real estate development plans on Talmudic scholarship, I would be similarly skeptical.
    • rbanffy 10y ago
      It's not the word "Mormon" (although South Park comes to mind) but the concept of founding communities designed according to religious ideology and the implicit idea that anyone of a different religion (or of no religion) would not be welcome.
      • ythl 10y ago
• jaytaylor 10y ago
  Quote from TFA: One Vista Biz, called Medic, is developing a water-efficient toilet that also measures blood pressure, weight, and overall health by using sensors and sampling what passes through it. Hall hopes insurance companies will eventually cover the costs of installing such toilets at companies to track worker health. This seems like a blatant invasion/abuse of privacy. Not to mention requiring people to give up their net worth and surrender all IP to live at the place.
  • morgante 10y ago
    I don't think people who go into these kinds of "communities" really have much desire for privacy. He's basically planning a commune.
    • chrisra 10y ago
      Not sure what's implied by commune, but it seems like he welcomes people of other faiths in the community, even in leadership positions.
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• mrchucklepants 10y ago
  David Hall has been my boss for the past 10 years. I have worked a little on some of these projects over the years but I work for the oil & gas part of the company that was sold to Schlumberger. David has lots of ideas, many I have helped him kill quickly. Some are great though and have lead to major innovations in diamond technology, oil & gas drilling, and a growing number of other fields.
  • noobermin 10y ago
    He sounds like an idea-man, someone similar to a lot of people here on HN.
    • j2bax 10y ago
      Not sure if this is meant in a positive way or negative way... If negative, I'd say, an idea-man with the funds to see his ideas through to completion isn't your typical Hey I have an idea, want to build it for me for rev share type of guy that is typically lambasted around here...
      • noobermin 10y ago
        I actually meant it positive, but you're right, he's not just a big-thinker, he actually has the ability to bring his ideas into fruition.
  • neurotech1 10y ago
    Sounds like (Google) X: come up with new, off the wall, solutions and then kill them by figuring out why they'd fail. https://www.ted.com/talks/astro_teller_the_unexpected_benefit_of_celebrating_failure?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/astro_teller_the_unexpected_benefi...
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    So here's a free idea: When you are serving people cake do you wad it up in a ball and throw it at them?
• trcollinson 10y ago
  As a very active member of the LDS (Mormon) faith (former Missionary, active weekly attender, holder of a volunteer calling, etc), as a person who lives in Utah, and as someone with business and investment experience, I'll give a few thoughts. You can take them for what they are worth knowing my background. First of all, in my area, people who talk like Mr. Hall generally scare the daylights out of us. I work with some rather wealthy Mormon investors (Peterson's, Sorenson's, Marriott's, Romney's) in a technical capacity and I have never run into Mr. Hall. But I have met plenty of people who believe they are resurrecting some idea from Joseph Smith. They generally use these sorts of ideological fallacies to attempt to extract investment money from well meaning but less than experienced middle class Mormon "investors" (read: retirees with 401k's and pensions). It's sad but in Utah one of the best places to find a crook or a fraud is in your church congregation. Second, there was a time early in church history when Mormon's had a really hard time finding a safe place to live. There are a few reasons for this (in the world according to me, again take it with a grain of salt). In the early days of the church, Mormon's would ALL move together. Look at Nauvoo, IL, as a good example. It started out as a single road village that was in essentially the swamp lands along the Mississippi River and in no time grew to tens of thousands of people who all thought very similar to one another, and more importantly controlled politics together. That had to be scary for the residents of villages, counties, and states that we would move into. So people fought back against the Mormons. Of course there were also some horrible massacres against Mormons [1] [2]. Nevertheless, moving together, planning communities, and sustaining ourselves was a big deal at the time. Now, things have changed. The church actively teaches that you are to build up the church community where you are. You are to participate in local and national politics according to your own conscious and education. We should not all gather in one spot but help in our communities bother civicly and religiously. I have not heard a Church leader in public or private in my lifetime even hint at the idea of moving together to a planned community or "Utopia". One final note. Mormon's (myself included) are generally very conservative. There is no doubt about that. With that, one of the things that really stuck out in the article was this idea that anyone moving to this community would give up all they had for the greater good in some communist style ownership and profit sharing scheme. That is nearly laughable. Many of the more wealthy church members I know are generous and knowledgable philanthropists but they are not going to suddenly wake up and say "A ha! A scroll from Joseph Smith which says we should make planned communities and turn over all of our wealth to said community!" [3] Mormon's are conservative and often unapologetic capitalists. This is either someones delusion or someones horrible scam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun%27s_Mill_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun%27s_Mill_massacre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44 [3] Yes there is some historical precedence for a communistic Mormon idea called the United Order, aka the United Order of Enoch, which is honestly where some of Mr. Hall's ideas came from. There are some within the Church who believes we will at some point live in this way. The idea is well outside of the scope of my comment here and suffice it to say, the United Order cannot be overseen by some random guy who read a document in a library.
• NKCSS 10y ago
  I found it odd that several brands were mentioned where it adds nothing to the story; feels like product placement in soap opera's. e.g. Moleskin and Toyota; anyone know if they are actually getting paid for putting in those brand names?
  • Numberwang 10y ago
    I'm sitting here drinking an ice cold 7up and have no.idea.
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
      I'd drink Dasani if I were you.
  • petetnt 10y ago
    It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad. I think it is just a writing device for tying the story to the real world and building character. Bloomberg does that quite often, "oh it's the type of person who drives a Toyota".
  • sdfgsdfgsdfg 10y ago
    That's exactly what I thought. Mentioning those products was useless and they gave way too much about details about that. It felt like the same product placement of the movies.
  • nickledave 10y ago
    Knowing that someone uses Moleskine notebooks adds nothing to the story? To me, it says a lot. Writers are taught to be specific, in part because it keeps a story interesting and makes it more vivid. I'd attribute the details to that over paid product placement. But then again I'm not an "idea man" who ignores inconvenient details when they can't be reconciled with my amazing vision based on something a lunatic scribbled on an 18th century cocktail napkin
    • NKCSS 10y ago
• sandworm101 10y ago
  >>> Rooftop farms will make use of advanced techniques drawn from marijuana cultivation, and box-shaped greenhouses will improve yields and prevent the spread of disease and insects. So many of these grand plans do not appreciate the manpower necessary to harvest crops. If you want to do everything by hand, in tiny batches without the advantages of large mechanized devices, 90+% of the people are going to be engaged primarily in cultivation. That might have been fine 200+ years ago, but not today. The problem with implementation is not one of planning, but of wants and needs. Does everyone here, or at least 90% of you, want to be a farmer? Growing your own tomatoes on the balcony is fine when you are a 20-somthing kid. Try growing enough for you, your partner, three kids, gran and grandpa, the dog ... suddenly those big greenhouses and giant JohnDeer harvesters are looking a little less evil.
• hubert123 10y ago
  The words "horrified" and "terrified" are thrown around too much these days.
• porker 10y ago
  As non-US, non-Mormon, I thought Utah was their favourite state. Never realised Joseph Smith was from Vermont. So what's their connection with Utah?
  • Osiris 10y ago
    Mormons were persecuted and kept moving west to avoid persecution. As their new settlements became cities, people would get nervous again and push them out. Eventually, they simply packed up and moved west until they were outside of the Unites States (Utah was not a state at the time). Utah became a state only after Mormons agreed to stop practicing polygamy. For more info, look up Mormon Pioneers.
  • sswaner 10y ago
    But some end up really wanting to live anywhere but there.
  • jessaustin 10y ago
    Utah was a literal hell on earth: desert, rocks, salt lakes, extremely remote. Think Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Few Americans wanted it, so when the Mormons pushed their wheelbarrows (no shit!) there, they found no one disgusted enough with nontraditional Mormon family structures to run them off as previous communities had. The Mormons weren't super thrilled with Utah either, but through years of hard work they made it somewhat livable.
    • ythl 10y ago
      Without the mormons, Utah would likely be identical to Wyoming - barren and empty with no major airports, but perhaps an interstate or 2 to get you through as quickly as possible.
      • jessaustin 10y ago
        Wyoming has trees, though.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• aetch 10y ago
  I was disappointed when this was not about a new game called "Mormon Tycoon".
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• coldcode 10y ago
  Most Utopian visions eventually lead to Dystopian reality. The French Revolution is nice historical lesson in how seemingly good ideas can lead to the opposite.
  • Practicality 10y ago
    Probably has something to do with the fact that not everyone agrees on what utopia looks like.
  • splouk 10y ago
    What do you think of the American Revolution?
    • hnal943 10y ago
      I was just listening to the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast. In the most recent episode they point out that the American Revolution was different precisely because it wasn't a make-a-society-from-whole-cloth revolution like most, but a return to the ancient rights they had previously enjoyed as British citizens. In the French revolution, they changed everything including the calendar. The hubris involved in that kind of revolution rarely works out.
      • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
        Hall is an engineer. So why is he trying several new ideas at once? Is it hubris or just civil engineering?
• OrthoMetaPara 10y ago
  This was tried 200 years ago, and it fizzled (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana)
  • adanatturack 10y ago
    This has been tried throughout most of human history (and often succeeded, by reasonable measures of success.) See http://www.ic.org/ http://www.ic.org/ and http://www.communalstudies.org/ http://www.communalstudies.org/
• huherto 10y ago
  > Hall hired Ellis Mills Public Affairs, and kept buying land. Is this the modern white collar equivalent of paying for protection ?
• rfreytag 10y ago
  > "...each plat should house 15,000 to 20,000 people within one square mile..." 15,000 to 20,000 people per square mile means 43.11 to 37.34 sq-feet/person. That is below the dimensions of most tiny houses. EDIT: please correct me in a comment if I am mistaken. 5280'/mile square mile is 5280' x 5280' = 27,878,400 sq' 27,878,400 sq' / 20,000 persons = 1,393.92 sq'/person Yup - you are right. I was off by ~2 orders of magnitude. I took the square root one more time for no reason. I ended up calculating the length of the walls of the (multistory?) box you get to live in - 37.34' to 43.11'. Thanks.
  • Retric 10y ago
    Not sure where you get that. Seems off a square mile is 640 acres an acre is 43560sf. So 640 * 43560 / 20,000 = ~1400 sf of land per person. Multi story buildings would increase it, and area not part of buildings would decrease it. But, overall it's not that crazy.
  • brudgers 10y ago
    20k people per square mile is about 28% of the density of Manhattan [72k per square mile].
• zekevermillion 10y ago
  This seems like a control fantasy. Convince a bunch of rootless and naively optimistic folks to live in your planned community, where every aspect of their lives -- personal and economic -- is supervised, and they live in tiny boxes. Oh sure, residents are free to leave anytime, but will have to fight to extract their assets and may be shunned by their erstwhile friends, family, and colleagues.
  • herge 10y ago
    Sounds like a startup!
• cpdean 10y ago
  I clicked on this hoping that it was a game about organizing a religion. I am thoroughly disappointed.
• Taylor_OD 10y ago
  I grew up in Vermont. Friends that still live there have been telling me about this. The biggest potential problem is that he will be able to take over the town and outvote those who have lived there for years. Like many places in Vermont there is likely only one road that runs through the town and many are worried there will be issue once this man owns all the land around it. But there is quite a few other established cults in Vermont. I assume it will end happening and not being that big of a deal. Vermonters MO is to leave people alone and let them do what they want.
• acd 10y ago
  Sustainable cities sounds like the future. Low carbon emissions and no cars in the city center so the air is fresh. Humans benefit from living among trees. The value of trees can be seen of property prices in New York where central park is highly valued. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-is-a-tree-worth http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-is-a-tree-worth
• forkandwait 10y ago
  My start up idea: Take all the social aspects of Mormonism, delete the theology (magic underwear), make gender roles symmetric, and allow gay people as long as they otherwise follow the rules. Then charge a membership fee, maybe keeping it under 10% of your income in order to remain competitive. Perhaps there can be an Uber-style app... I think Mormonism/ LDS is possibly the most innovative social experiments in the USA in the last 200 years, even when stood up against such gems as the Land Grant Colleges, public schooling, public health, etc. You just have to see past the mystical bullshit (as you always must if you want to understand what is powerful in a religious movement).
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
  > already had more than 150 engineers working on technology That's not always a good thing. It's funny people are impressed by facts like these.
• clavalle 10y ago
  I hope he doesn't have a repeat of the The Mormon War of 1838 where Mormons tried to massively settle areas and then take over the government of the area and mold that government according to their own values with little consideration of the current residents. There are things that are highly concerning: 'A plat, says Hall, will be subject to state and regional laws, but will also be overseen by a board and heirachries of leaders with, it appears, strong Mormon Family values.' 'Families and individuals who wish to join must invest their net worth...' 'Those who start Vista Bizzes will be given startup funds by thte community but must surrender their IP rights. They also must agree to put nearly all their profits back into the community in exchance for what Hall calls "dividends" -- payouts from overall wealth earned by the plat businesses.' I don't say this lightly, but how is this not a plan for building a Communist cult with an explicit plan to centralize power of the plats, presumably to Hall himself?
  • googletazer 10y ago
    It sounds more like an Israeli kibutz, not a bad model for people who voluntarily go for it.
    • Asooka 10y ago
      Unfortunately people who are born into it don't get a choice.
      • glibgil 10y ago
        could be said about literally anything
    • clavalle 10y ago
      I don't see many of those in the US. Doesn't it help that they are set up under a government built on Jewish law?
  • handedness 10y ago
    > I don't say this lightly, but how is this not a plan for building a Communist cult with an explicit plan to centralize power of the plats, presumably to Hall himself? From the paragraph you quoted: > But everyone is also free to leave and take their companies with them, if dissatisfied. "Competition and the freedom to walk is crucial," he says.
• ansible 10y ago
  I have my doubts about the social structure proposed, though that is interesting too. However, the actual physical layout is pretty neat. Though I prefer that there be some provisions for existing vehicles rather than rely on pod technology that hasn't been developed / deployed yet. But I would definitely want to have any motor vehicles relegated be considered secondary users and their use kept at least a little inconvenient. Rather than with current urban planning, where vehicles are the primary user, and pedestrians are an afterthought. I would love to live in a walkable community.
• logfromblammo 10y ago
  That map drawn by Joseph Smith looks awfully similar to a 5280x5280 .PNG I made a while ago, minus the 6-lane expressway and the 5-lane arterial roads. Based on that thought experiment, my opinion is that there is no way this guy is ever going to get a town of 20000 people in one square mile of Vermont and still sustain a modernized economy. In my image, I tessellated a square mile into 9600 rectangles, each 88'x33'. 928 of those rectangles became 50'-wide arterial roads flanked by 8'-wide sidewalks. 320 of those rectangles became a 176'-wide expressway corridor with 8 double-crossover overpass interchanges to the arterial roads. (These road areas would also have utility conduits underneath the road surface.) The remaining 8352 lots have an identical access easement for 18'-wide streets, 20' on each side for perpendicular parking, and another 4' on each side for sidewalks. I assumed 60% of building lots would be residential buildings, with average occupancy of 4 people per residential lot, for a maximum of 20045 residents, with a total of 15776 on-street parking spaces, and 223 of the 640 acres left over for parks, commercial buildings, and government buildings. The image ignores potential geographical obstructions, so the only way you could get all 29 local access streets, all 8 arterial roads, and the expressway to go through is to build on flat, featureless land, as one might find somewhere between Wichita, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis. In Vermont, there's no way. And if you are intending to build a city in America without reserving at least 1.8 parking spaces per household, you're going to have problems. Some of the non-residential lots would have to be dedicated parking lots or garages, because the non-residential buildings need more than 1.8 parking spaces per unit cell. About a third of your permanent "residents" are going to be cars, and half of your money-importing commercial visitors will be cars. If you plan your whole city around temples, rather than truck routes, sewers, and optical fiber backbones, you're doing it wrong.
  • milesokeefe 10y ago
    >That map drawn by Joseph Smith looks awfully similar to a 5280x5280 .PNG I made a while ago Do you mind uploading it? >without reserving at least 1.8 parking spaces per household, you're going to have problems For those curious, SF has 805,235 households / 441,541 public parking spots = ~0.548. Both numbers as of 2010.
• shiftoutbox 10y ago
  Hall sounded like a Mormon nutcase. ....ahh how we describe accute mercury poisoning.