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I had no idea that retirement communities could grow to the size of cities. This place is amazing [1] [2]. Peter Thiel and Y Combinator talk about building citi

I had no idea that retirement communities could grow to the size of cities. This place is amazing [1] [2]. Peter Thiel and Y Combinator talk about building cities or planned communities, but it looks like it's already been done. And now they're adding fully autonomous vehicles. I think this is also the perfect place to test fully automated grocery stores, restaurants, and home automation. You could set up automatic payments for everything via facial recognition / GPS / bluetooth. I never considered that the "city of the future" would be a retirement community with lots of elderly people. I wonder if they have security cameras covering every street, similar to the UK. You could set up some facial tracking across all the cameras, and a centralized security system in every house, and it might become the safest city in the world. It could also make a great episode of Black Mirror. I work remotely on my laptop, and my wife and I have a lot of hobbies, including yoga, ballet, archery, art, music [3]. We're living in Chiang Mai, and many of the archery club members are retirees from the UK. So we're already interacting out with some older people, and don't have any qualms about it. All residents of The Villages must be over the age of 19, but 20% of the houses can be owned by younger people who live by themselves. Not saying we would want to live there, but it's not too hard to imagine. This would also be a great place to build home automation startups (or even city automation), just like Voyage is doing. For example, many of the residents might be able to afford robotic chefs [4]. The system could automatically order your groceries, and they'd be delivered by a self-driving Voyage car. Then another robot in your house could receive the delivery and store the food in your smart refrigerator. It also makes me realize that a blockchain might be unnecessary. You trust your neighbors, you trust the people who manage the community, and you trust the legal system, lawyers, judges, and prisons. So there's probably no need for a trustless payment network in a community like this. The Octopus card works fine in Hong Kong, and it's just integers in a database. Lots of people are working from home these days, so I think this might lead to more planned communities. The digital nomad lifestyle is great for a while, but it gets exhausting after a few years. Hopefully there will some communities that are geared towards younger people and people with families. I've also been following the High Street Cohousing Project [5] in New Zealand. Would be very interested to hear about other cohousing projects and planned communities. [1] https://www.thevillages.com https://www.thevillages.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida [3] https://www.thevillages.com/calendar/ https://www.thevillages.com/calendar/ [4] http://www.moley.com/ http://www.moley.com/ [5] http://highstreetcohousing.nz/ http://highstreetcohousing.nz/

greeneggs 9y ago
Perhaps a less obvious benefit is financial. No schools saves a lot of property tax.
- nicksergeant 9y ago
  The Wikipedia post seems to indicate that they are still zoned to school districts.
chrisco255 9y ago
I grew up 2 miles from The Villages and watched it blossom into the huge, beautiful community it is today. It was something amazing to see. I really think it's one of those untold business success stories that folks outside of that area are not too familiar with. Although it was a little awkward growing up in a town with so many senior citizens, it was really nice in some ways. The Villages brought amenities to our small town that we would have never had access to. However, I would argue The Villages is a lovely place to live and a fantastic place to retire, but it's not very suitable for tech startup. There is no technical talent there. Florida as a whole suffers from a lack of a great tech ecosystem (although there's a few big cos. here and there). Of the working age population, The Villages mostly consists of service and health workers. That being said, you might be able to find/attract some talent in Orlando or Gainesville. Still, it's nothing like what's in some of the major tech hubs around the U.S.

greeneggs 9y ago

Perhaps a less obvious benefit is financial. No schools saves a lot of property tax.

nicksergeant 9y ago
The Wikipedia post seems to indicate that they are still zoned to school districts.

chrisco255 9y ago

I grew up 2 miles from The Villages and watched it blossom into the huge, beautiful community it is today. It was something amazing to see. I really think it's one of those untold business success stories that folks outside of that area are not too familiar with. Although it was a little awkward growing up in a town with so many senior citizens, it was really nice in some ways. The Villages brought amenities to our small town that we would have never had access to. However, I would argue The Villages is a lovely place to live and a fantastic place to retire, but it's not very suitable for tech startup. There is no technical talent there. Florida as a whole suffers from a lack of a great tech ecosystem (although there's a few big cos. here and there). Of the working age population, The Villages mostly consists of service and health workers. That being said, you might be able to find/attract some talent in Orlando or Gainesville. Still, it's nothing like what's in some of the major tech hubs around the U.S.