10 ms·

The Tulsa Remote Worker Experiment

101 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

finphil 7y ago
Good read!
vermooten 7y ago
I Tulsa. Shame I live in UK.
leggomylibro 7y ago
Smaller cities and towns are fantastic, both in terms of community and cost. Remote work incentives like this seem like a great way to draw people to less populated areas. Honestly, I think that a lot of folks who feel stressed and cramped in metro areas like SF, Seattle, NYC, etc. might really enjoy living in a small town. But a lot of states in the Midwest still present serious cultural barriers to many such people. Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent. Communities are usually less secular, with religion playing a huge part in peoples' social lives; sometimes it's almost a prerequisite to "joining the community". Pot can get you serious jail time. Raising well-adjusted kids can be harder because of how insular suburban areas are. And so on. It's not like that everywhere, and most people are kind and empathetic at heart, but definitely spend some time in an area before you consider taking a stipend to move there. Places like Central Washington, upstate New York, and Eastern Colorado are hidden gems, but having spent a bit of time in Tulsa and speaking as someone with a slight countercultural bent, you would have to pay me a lot more than $10k to move there.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  I wouldn't mind living in a smaller city (though honestly Tulsa ain't that small), but yes there's the cultural issues you bring up, and other problems as well. For example, the US has generally awful land use/transportation setups even in progressive major cities, and in smaller/less progressive ones, it goes from generally awful to extra terrible. Walking for transportation is unpleasant and near-useless, biking is uncomfortable and dangerous, and public transportation is sparse, slow, and unreliable. Housing options are usually either a single-family home in a super low density area that exacerbates the above, or an apartment in a very ugly large complex in a neighborhood with terrible schools. Obviously generalizing here, but that's what you see most of the time. To demonstrate that I'm not using these superlatives for no reason: I can't find stats for Tulsa, but Oklahoma City's combined mode share for commuters who use walking, biking, or public transit is a massive 2.2 percent, and Tulsa's is probably similar. I find that people are pretty rational when it comes to day to day transportation choices; if that few people are doing something other than driving, there's a very good reason for it. Right now I live in the outskirts of Munich in a backyard duplex (there's a 6-unit complex up front), a type of housing option that largely doesn't even exist in the states. Plenty of people around here drive, but there's also a few different grocery options within easy walking distance (and a ton within easy biking distance), public transit is fairly dense and reliable (extremely dense and reliable by US standards), all three of those things feel safe even with kids. And Munich isn't some weird outlier in Germany, the other cities I've visited have felt quite similar overall. I wish US cities could stop being such a dumpster fire when it comes to land use and transportation, but there's so much cultural momentum there.
  - tomdell 7y ago
    I would argue that smaller metros in America have a much more diverse housing stock than what you say here - while there are certainly plenty of houses in far-flung, low-density neighborhoods and ugly apartments in massive complexes, there are also typically more appealing urban neighborhoods in the main city (and often in the larger suburbs) with a good mix of businesses, community buildings, transit, small apartment buildings, townhouses and single-family homes all intermingling. Though these neighborhoods are often desirable as a result and it can take some waiting for an appropriate listing to go for sale, rentals are usually in high supply.
    - jpindar 7y ago
      In New England, what we call tripledeckers - three story buildings, usually with three or six apartments - are very common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house)
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        Yes, New England is the biggest exception there, especially streetcar suburbs.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Well, that's not what I've seen. Townhomes and smaller (non-hideous[1]) apartment complexes -- missing middle housing -- certainly exist, but they're fairly uncommon. They make up a very small percentage of what housing stock is available. [1] To explain what I mean by this, here in Germany it's very common to have smaller, say 8-12 unit apartment complexes that are not surrounded by a small sea of asphalt for parking; the parking is completely underground, so up front you have just maybe a small strip of greenery. And then they actually have a good-sized shared backyard, and the building itself doesn't look like it's trying its best to ape Soviet-era brutalist apartment blocks.
    - asdff 7y ago
      The urban core of most American cities are pretty hollowed out and artificial in my experience. It's changing slightly, but I encourage you to see some of these mid western cities that don't get much limelight yourself. Have a night out in Cleveland, Ohio, as I've done several times. All will seem pretty standard, you go to a bar on a street with four other similar bars, then you realize that these four bars are the only places with people in them in the entire downtown area. You leave the bars and walk a block and you can hear your footsteps and thoughts echo off of the empty blocks. You might be lucky to see another soul on foot. There is just a lack of life in a lot of American urban cores, and that's not a feeling but a fact backed with population data. Cleveland in the 1950s had nearly 900k people living in the city. Today it's a bit over 350k people living in the city, a large portion of it is literally hollow (or demolished and converted to surface parking lots) due to large swaths of the population moving to new suburban developments in the 1950s, and a lack of immigration back into the urban core. The overall metro population of Cleveland has been pretty stable, if declining, but the city itself only appears as a city from 9am to 5pm, and during the odd sports game, as a result. Restaurants and stores might only be open for weekday lunch because there isn't foot traffic otherwise. This isn't true in every city, however. For instance, Los Angeles experienced a similar white flight effect with the development of their surburban neighborhoods, however in the wake of this population shift, immigration continued to occur and the population continued to rise at double digit rates every decade. Now, the former neighborhood of the Los Angeles elite of the 1920s, Westlake, is a thriving community of central american immigrants and the densest part of the entire city. The same cannot be said about the Cleveland analog, millionaires row on Euclid Ave, which used to count Rockefeller and Carnegie among their storied residents.
- thedance 7y ago
  "Serious cultural barriers" undersells it. They're out there in Tulsa right now trying to figure out how many black people are buried in unmarked mass graves resulting from the deadliest race riot in American history. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/03/tulsa-mass-graves-excavation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/03/tulsa-mass...
  - mrkurt 7y ago
    There’s a lot to dislike about Tulsa, but the entire country is culpable for those kinds of problems. The biggest cities in the US _still_ systemically oppress black people.
  - mythrwy 7y ago
    That was in 1921. The people who did that are long dead and so probably are their children. Should we skip California because Native Americans were killed in the 1880s?
    - thedance 7y ago
      There's a pretty big difference in the institutionalization of racism between the two states. At this very moment there are statues of Confederate soldiers on the grounds of government institutions. If you're black and you have to go to trial in Bryant County, you have to walk past a 12-foot-tall statue of "our gallant Confederate soldiers". That's state-sponsored terrorism against black Americans. By the way, Oklahoma was not even a belligerent in the American Civil War, because it did not exist until 1907. All of its institutional racism was simply imported.
- standardUser 7y ago
  I can't get over the cultural issues. Life's too short to spend my time around people who are devoutly religious or think Trump is great for America. Let alone the backwards attitudes on sexuality and gender. Maybe if I was married I could imagine it for a short time. But as a single guy I don't think I'd find the dating pool I'm looking for in a place like Tulsa. And I sure as hell would not raise children in that kind of community.
  - mwcampbell 7y ago
    We need to be able to live alongside and get along with people who think differently than us, or we'll just keep getting more polarized.
    - asdff 7y ago
      There's holding a different opinion based on reasoning and analysis, and holding a different opinion due to bigotry and hate. Putting the latter on the same pedestal as the former is what has polarized this country more than anything.
    - standardUser 7y ago
      I want to be polarized... away from people who believe in Sunday school stories over science or who reject people because of their gender, sexuality, race or nationality.
  - non-entity 7y ago
    You're being downvoted but I kinda agree with at least parts of your post. I live in a smaller city in the southeast (and have lived in similar such cities my whole life) with a little over 100k with around 500k in the metro and and probably a large number of people I see on Tinder are looking to find someone to marry. Mind you in in my early 20s.
- fossuser 7y ago
  I'd have a hard time moving back to a smaller city type place because of the negatives you describe, but also because I think it's like putting a handicap on development (not a great place to raise kids). I grew up in a nice suburb outside Buffalo in upstate New York and I had a pleasant childhood there, but it's a desert of ideas and a hard place to get exposure to smart people learning/doing things. Not impossible, but much harder. The bay area is on the other extreme end in terms of opportunity and being able to learn from people. I think you grow faster when you have more interaction with smart people, and in a place where there is a lot of growth there are a lot of opportunities for that. Though there are risks to any ideological bubble (and SF tends to have cultural issues that can lean similarly extreme to a small town) - that seems generally contained. There's still a lot more opportunity to learn from people building things here, and growing up here it'd be easier to learn more, faster. It's also nice not having to waste time on things like religious discussions, the bar of interesting is generally set higher because there's already pretty good consensus. When the base-line is more of a rational/scientific world view you can tackle more interesting problems (and conversation). Housing is extremely cheap where I grew up, but it's not worth the trade-off. Another benefit of being in an intellectual and economic hub is that there's a feedback loop that continues to attract more people all the time. This also means your kids are more likely to stick around (everyone I was friends with that went on to do interesting things left Buffalo). Though if local communities continue to refuse to build housing this may become less true over time.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    > Another benefit of being in an intellectual and economic hub is that there's a feedback loop that continues to attract more people all the time. I get what you mean, but hoo boy, as a bay area native, this most certainly has not happened there. Almost everyone I knew growing up that doesn't work in tech themselves now has long since left (as well as a fair number who do work in tech, like me). What you're saying is accurate, but if the area chooses to fight its own growth, like what the bay area has done, it makes it much harder for people to stick around.
    - fossuser 7y ago
- datashow 7y ago
  "Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent". "prevalent"? Like how? I think you are making up. Still exist? Definitely yes. Prevalent? No way. Unless you have a very different kind sense of "prevalent". Actually people in small towns in general are much nicer than big cities and usually they don't care about your skin color or whatever. And they in general appreciate "a slight countercultural bent", unless you have a different sense of "slight".
  - jkmcf 7y ago
    Sadly, "prevalent" represents a range degrees. From "universal" to "widespread" to "frequent" to "common". I'm not sure I would normally consider all of these to be reference the same word. My usual interpretation of prevalent would be common or frequent, and in this case I interpreted it as "it's still pretty common, but with less public downsides". The thing about small towns is the people are generally really nice to you, but not so much when referring to a group that includes you. One data point: a man who loved talking to people regardless of color or persuasion. But, he'd talk about a group of them with much negativity. Blame it all on FOX News? reference: Apple's integration with Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
  - stevula 7y ago
    Anecdotally, I witnessed a lot of racism in small town Oklahoma, including a black family being threatened to leave town. I saw no LGBT people who felt safe to be out.
  - thedance 7y ago
    I think you're going pretty easy on Oklahoma, perhaps just because you like it for other reasons. Oklahoma would put people in prison for consensual same-sex relations as recently as 2003. The law remans but the US Supreme Court struck it down. Ask yourself if a state with a statute against "detestable and abominable crimes against nature" has a prevalent anti-LGBT attitude or not. There are people alive today who survived a white-against-black race riot that killed hundreds in Tulsa. There are people alive today who were imprisoned and threatened with sterilization for being gay. There are followers of Islam alive today who needed police protection after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building instantly became an anti-muslim witch hunt. Oklahoma is objectively one of the most backwards places in America. It might be better than it was, due largely to federal preemption of their theocratic laws, but it's still incrediby intolerant.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  As you allude to there, a small city that is very LGBTQ friendly is Ithaca, NY, where I live. I recently read that a tourism survey here found that 20% of the visitors are in that classification, some four times the national average.
  - asdff 7y ago
    If it weren't for housing Ithaca College and Cornell, Ithaca would not be nearly so progressive and more akin to other upstate ny towns.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      Well, sure. If Ithaca wasn't what it is, it would be something else. :)
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    I grew up in Ithaca, and it's not like a lot of Update NY. It's got multiple colleges, including Cornell, a global-tier research University. Meanwhile the rest of upstate is a lot poorer. Great for a college student -- cheap housing and good local booze. Hanging out on the Ithaca Commons was great, and the gaming stores (like Magic Cards, D&D) were awesome.
- tic_tac 7y ago
  It's a bit of a tired trope that we always have to mention "racism, etc" when taking about things like small towns, as if it's an established fact when it's really more a prejudiced assumption about how people from small towns or certain parts of the country feel. If someone is an upstanding member of the community and fits in with cultural norms, they will usually get by fine regardless of skin color. Of course sometimes this is not the case, but it is no more so than in cities where people of different races often self segregate into distinct communities and there is often latent racial tension. For those who have had bad experiences in small towns or communities, it's dangerous to generalize personal experiences to vast regions or large groups. That just perpetuates bias and prejudice.
- fred_is_fred 7y ago
  Eastern Colorado? You mean the desolate prairie? I can't even imagine what city you are talking about. Other than cities like Greeley, civilization essentially ends at I-25.
- tomcam 7y ago
  > Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent. Prevalent? Citation needed.
Xcelerate 7y ago
I wonder if the trend toward remote work is temporary, or if it will continue long-term. The plot in that article shows that the percentage of remote workers employed full time seems to be increasing fairly quickly. If this is a real trend, my second question then is whether it will have an effect on the current migration away from rural communities toward cities. There are many beautiful places around the world that I think people would prefer to live in if they could work remotely. (Environmentally speaking though, I'm not sure it would be great to have huge numbers of people moving to all of the most beautiful spots on earth).
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  > (Environmentally speaking though, I'm not sure it would be great to have huge numbers of people moving to all of the most beautiful spots on earth). Nailed it. People often move to rural areas because they love nature, but ironically this is actually a terrible thing for nature. Not saying everyone has to live in skyscrapers, but denser urban living is definitely better for the environment, most of the time, due to both energy efficiency and reduced need for land.
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    If they can work remotely, people also move closer to family once they have kids, not everyone moves to Barcelona or Thailand.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment about people moving to rural areas because they love nature.
  - roel_v 7y ago
    "People often move to rural areas because they love nature, but ironically this is actually a terrible thing for nature." Oh this is one of my pet peeves. It's usually the people who claim to love nature the most who will go live right in the middle of it, thereby destroying it. It's like saying 'I love animals so much! Bring me another steak!' I eat meat, I'm not making a pro-vegetarian argument here - just pointing out the hypocrisy. If you really love nature (and not 'living in nature', which is different), you buy the smallest apartment in the city that will fit you (and your family where applicable).
Keverw 7y ago
hmm paying people sounds interesting way to combat the brain drain problem. Kinda shameful though tech seems to only be in a handful of tech hubs. Seems like if I had a startup going, I'd be more likely to be funded in Texas or California than where I'm originally from. Seems like a lot of areas have leaders that don't even care about startups or tech... or maybe just statistically they don't think they can attract tech maybe? Was watching a news segment about startups in Cleveland a while back and one of the big things is the lack of investors, so people are forced to leave their family and community to go elsewhere if they want to be successful. Not from Cleveland but it sounds like a similar story in a bunch of places. Then probably smart people feeling disconnected or lonely because of the lack of resources and startup/tech culture. The census I think is going to be a big blow for places like Ohio and other places, no wonder younger people are moving for better opportunities, and then when they are ready to start their own families, wonder if their kids and future kids will stick around? Sounds like then Cities are losing generations of people, so long term this is going to compound and hurt cities and states even more for their inaction. Plus I think weather plays a bit of a role too, not all just economics - but then again there's a lady I know from Texas who wants to move to Ohio because she likes the cold, while I rather like the warm so sounds like we rather just swap places haha... Plus people are anti-tech. Some people like their quiet small towns, and affordable houses. Tech money flows and then the rents and house prices go up. and then people stereotype tech people too. So sorta like a not in my backyard thing too. Not everyone wants tech I guess, so maybe it's easier to just move elsewhere than trying to turn your own community into the vision you have. Then people don't trust tech, I used Apple Pay at like one of the only places that take it and the lady commented on it about not trusting it. Then I was listening to a podcast segment and I guess some college in Michigan installed Apple Pay to pay for things and found sales went up, I mentioned that I thought that was cool and someone said they wouldn't trust their credit card with a vending machine... When I think it's, in fact, more secure than an actual credit card, but then again even the basic idea of public-private key cryptography goes over people's heads. I kinda feel like if I grew up and lived in a better area for tech, I'd probably be more successful personally, meetups and networking with other like-minded people I think would help. Plus I kinda feel like I have trust problems, people online I was going to work on projects with me but some people are so flakey or just disappears instead of staying committed. Like wanted to do something media related years ago, and the person just disappeared on me. Then was doing another project where someone was going to focus on sales, and agreed to give them a % of the company but can't seem to get ahold of him(But I know now that's what vesting is for). So seems like a recurring theme I always get flaky people. So I feel like real in person could be a benefit too in that regard. It seems more real too, and plus people try to read emotions and stuff in between the lines - but even then there are stories of people working offline and it not working out too... So I guess that's why it's important to get the right structure, and contracts and stuff in place. Focusing on the tech part for my own project first on my own but hoping to take Startup School and pick up on things before I involve others just because I don't want to get burned. But personally I think I rather just bootstrap and own 100%, and then pay contractors or employees when profitable to work on features I don't want to personally do, so less conflicts and not slowing down making decisions, could consult people for advice but I'd have the final say.
smelendez 7y ago
Tulsa should be on more people's radar as a vacation destination. It's a fascinating city with good museums, galleries (including contemporary Native American art) and parks, a welcoming population and very interesting architecture (art deco downtown and Oral Roberts University's gonzo Christian version of midcentury modernism). There's a strong local music and bar scene and good vintage shopping, and some great barbecue, kind of an Austin alternative.
- texasbigdata 7y ago
  Having been a few times.... This is a wild exaggeration.
  - hoten 7y ago
    Which internet stranger am I to believe?
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      The one that actually lived there.
      - iso947 7y ago
        Surely the opinions of visitors are more important when looking to visit somewhere. I wouldn’t ask tourists what it’s like to live in NY, but I wouldn’t ask someone from Queens of its worth visiting.
        DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Some people are perpetual tourists who go to museums and the like while living someplace for a few years. Such people tend to have more familiarity with touristy stuff than either one-time visitors or regular/typical residents.
  - smelendez 7y ago
walshemj 7y ago
the quote "With its vaulted ceilings, rows of elbow-to-elbow workbenches" Would make me run away screaming.
ummonk 7y ago
As an atheist Indian-American who spent some of his childhood in Oklahoma, there is no way I’d move to Tulsa. Despite being rather socially conservative, I just would not fit in in Tulsa as well as in a liberal cosmopolitan place. And then you add in a lack of intellectual stimulation and it is even more dreary.
dang 7y ago
A related thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553
carleverett 7y ago
Nice! I'm in Tulsa Remote and am quoted a few times in this - I'm the one who "applied after seeing a post about the program on Hacker News" so things are really coming full circle right now. I think an underrated grievance of people living in big cities is that feeling that you are a completely insignificant part of a community and culture that are so much bigger than you. It's something smaller cities can offer that big cities can't, and it's also something that Tulsa Remote has done really well by connecting participants with people in the city that have influence. The people who are happiest and most likely to stay are definitely the ones taking advantage of this - like Obum from the first paragraph (an amazing human, by the way). Things like lower cost of living, traffic, and cheap housing get talked about a lot as reasons to move out of NY/SF/LA/etc, but are kind of just byproducts of the fact that more people want to live in these places because they have a lot more to offer in other ways. But this idea that you can move to a smaller city with momentum and become a meaningful part of that community is super compelling for someone with that mindset. I think (and hope) the rise of remote work will keep pushing motivated people to move to smaller cities, like Tulsa, and wind up giving everyone a lot more options for interesting places to live.
okdudeok 7y ago
Just for the people who are denigrating Tulsa and how it may be a backwards place for kids' schools. I graduated from a public high school in Tulsa. In our graduating class, we had students accepted to Harvard, to MIT, Yale, Penn, Michigan, and Duke. In the graduating class after mine, we had 3 accepted to Stanford. This was just one public school district, although definitely one of the best in the city. I am not sure that there are that many cities with public schools that can boast such placement. George Kaiser (the gazillionaire who started the foundation that pays for this program) is a very active Harvard alum in addition to being an impressive philanthropist.
- mercutio2 7y ago
  People aren’t worried about schools in culturally conservative areas because they think it’ll make it hard for kids to get into selective private colleges; they’re worried about raising their children in areas with a high density of bigots, lest the bigotry rub off on their children. The paradox of tolerance partially explains this (frequently invalid) bit of discrimination. But if getting a leg up on selective admissions IS one of your goals, taking your bright teenager to live in a conservative rural or semi-rural area is actually a great way to avail yourself of the many regional quotas these colleges use. But it’s also frequently a way to make your teenagers really hate you for moving them to such a place...
  - mushysyntax 7y ago
    plenty of liberal bigotry and anti-science nonsense my friend. Both sides.

101 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

finphil 7y ago

Good read!

vermooten 7y ago

I Tulsa. Shame I live in UK.

leggomylibro 7y ago

Smaller cities and towns are fantastic, both in terms of community and cost. Remote work incentives like this seem like a great way to draw people to less populated areas. Honestly, I think that a lot of folks who feel stressed and cramped in metro areas like SF, Seattle, NYC, etc. might really enjoy living in a small town. But a lot of states in the Midwest still present serious cultural barriers to many such people. Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent. Communities are usually less secular, with religion playing a huge part in peoples' social lives; sometimes it's almost a prerequisite to "joining the community". Pot can get you serious jail time. Raising well-adjusted kids can be harder because of how insular suburban areas are. And so on. It's not like that everywhere, and most people are kind and empathetic at heart, but definitely spend some time in an area before you consider taking a stipend to move there. Places like Central Washington, upstate New York, and Eastern Colorado are hidden gems, but having spent a bit of time in Tulsa and speaking as someone with a slight countercultural bent, you would have to pay me a lot more than $10k to move there.

TulliusCicero 7y ago
I wouldn't mind living in a smaller city (though honestly Tulsa ain't that small), but yes there's the cultural issues you bring up, and other problems as well. For example, the US has generally awful land use/transportation setups even in progressive major cities, and in smaller/less progressive ones, it goes from generally awful to extra terrible. Walking for transportation is unpleasant and near-useless, biking is uncomfortable and dangerous, and public transportation is sparse, slow, and unreliable. Housing options are usually either a single-family home in a super low density area that exacerbates the above, or an apartment in a very ugly large complex in a neighborhood with terrible schools. Obviously generalizing here, but that's what you see most of the time. To demonstrate that I'm not using these superlatives for no reason: I can't find stats for Tulsa, but Oklahoma City's combined mode share for commuters who use walking, biking, or public transit is a massive 2.2 percent, and Tulsa's is probably similar. I find that people are pretty rational when it comes to day to day transportation choices; if that few people are doing something other than driving, there's a very good reason for it. Right now I live in the outskirts of Munich in a backyard duplex (there's a 6-unit complex up front), a type of housing option that largely doesn't even exist in the states. Plenty of people around here drive, but there's also a few different grocery options within easy walking distance (and a ton within easy biking distance), public transit is fairly dense and reliable (extremely dense and reliable by US standards), all three of those things feel safe even with kids. And Munich isn't some weird outlier in Germany, the other cities I've visited have felt quite similar overall. I wish US cities could stop being such a dumpster fire when it comes to land use and transportation, but there's so much cultural momentum there.
- tomdell 7y ago
  I would argue that smaller metros in America have a much more diverse housing stock than what you say here - while there are certainly plenty of houses in far-flung, low-density neighborhoods and ugly apartments in massive complexes, there are also typically more appealing urban neighborhoods in the main city (and often in the larger suburbs) with a good mix of businesses, community buildings, transit, small apartment buildings, townhouses and single-family homes all intermingling. Though these neighborhoods are often desirable as a result and it can take some waiting for an appropriate listing to go for sale, rentals are usually in high supply.
  - jpindar 7y ago
    In New England, what we call tripledeckers - three story buildings, usually with three or six apartments - are very common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-decker_(house)
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Yes, New England is the biggest exception there, especially streetcar suburbs.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Well, that's not what I've seen. Townhomes and smaller (non-hideous[1]) apartment complexes -- missing middle housing -- certainly exist, but they're fairly uncommon. They make up a very small percentage of what housing stock is available. [1] To explain what I mean by this, here in Germany it's very common to have smaller, say 8-12 unit apartment complexes that are not surrounded by a small sea of asphalt for parking; the parking is completely underground, so up front you have just maybe a small strip of greenery. And then they actually have a good-sized shared backyard, and the building itself doesn't look like it's trying its best to ape Soviet-era brutalist apartment blocks.
  - asdff 7y ago
    The urban core of most American cities are pretty hollowed out and artificial in my experience. It's changing slightly, but I encourage you to see some of these mid western cities that don't get much limelight yourself. Have a night out in Cleveland, Ohio, as I've done several times. All will seem pretty standard, you go to a bar on a street with four other similar bars, then you realize that these four bars are the only places with people in them in the entire downtown area. You leave the bars and walk a block and you can hear your footsteps and thoughts echo off of the empty blocks. You might be lucky to see another soul on foot. There is just a lack of life in a lot of American urban cores, and that's not a feeling but a fact backed with population data. Cleveland in the 1950s had nearly 900k people living in the city. Today it's a bit over 350k people living in the city, a large portion of it is literally hollow (or demolished and converted to surface parking lots) due to large swaths of the population moving to new suburban developments in the 1950s, and a lack of immigration back into the urban core. The overall metro population of Cleveland has been pretty stable, if declining, but the city itself only appears as a city from 9am to 5pm, and during the odd sports game, as a result. Restaurants and stores might only be open for weekday lunch because there isn't foot traffic otherwise. This isn't true in every city, however. For instance, Los Angeles experienced a similar white flight effect with the development of their surburban neighborhoods, however in the wake of this population shift, immigration continued to occur and the population continued to rise at double digit rates every decade. Now, the former neighborhood of the Los Angeles elite of the 1920s, Westlake, is a thriving community of central american immigrants and the densest part of the entire city. The same cannot be said about the Cleveland analog, millionaires row on Euclid Ave, which used to count Rockefeller and Carnegie among their storied residents.
thedance 7y ago
"Serious cultural barriers" undersells it. They're out there in Tulsa right now trying to figure out how many black people are buried in unmarked mass graves resulting from the deadliest race riot in American history. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/03/tulsa-mass-graves-excavation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/03/tulsa-mass...
- mrkurt 7y ago
  There’s a lot to dislike about Tulsa, but the entire country is culpable for those kinds of problems. The biggest cities in the US _still_ systemically oppress black people.
- mythrwy 7y ago
  That was in 1921. The people who did that are long dead and so probably are their children. Should we skip California because Native Americans were killed in the 1880s?
  - thedance 7y ago
    There's a pretty big difference in the institutionalization of racism between the two states. At this very moment there are statues of Confederate soldiers on the grounds of government institutions. If you're black and you have to go to trial in Bryant County, you have to walk past a 12-foot-tall statue of "our gallant Confederate soldiers". That's state-sponsored terrorism against black Americans. By the way, Oklahoma was not even a belligerent in the American Civil War, because it did not exist until 1907. All of its institutional racism was simply imported.
standardUser 7y ago
I can't get over the cultural issues. Life's too short to spend my time around people who are devoutly religious or think Trump is great for America. Let alone the backwards attitudes on sexuality and gender. Maybe if I was married I could imagine it for a short time. But as a single guy I don't think I'd find the dating pool I'm looking for in a place like Tulsa. And I sure as hell would not raise children in that kind of community.
- mwcampbell 7y ago
  We need to be able to live alongside and get along with people who think differently than us, or we'll just keep getting more polarized.
  - asdff 7y ago
    There's holding a different opinion based on reasoning and analysis, and holding a different opinion due to bigotry and hate. Putting the latter on the same pedestal as the former is what has polarized this country more than anything.
  - standardUser 7y ago
    I want to be polarized... away from people who believe in Sunday school stories over science or who reject people because of their gender, sexuality, race or nationality.
- non-entity 7y ago
  You're being downvoted but I kinda agree with at least parts of your post. I live in a smaller city in the southeast (and have lived in similar such cities my whole life) with a little over 100k with around 500k in the metro and and probably a large number of people I see on Tinder are looking to find someone to marry. Mind you in in my early 20s.
fossuser 7y ago
I'd have a hard time moving back to a smaller city type place because of the negatives you describe, but also because I think it's like putting a handicap on development (not a great place to raise kids). I grew up in a nice suburb outside Buffalo in upstate New York and I had a pleasant childhood there, but it's a desert of ideas and a hard place to get exposure to smart people learning/doing things. Not impossible, but much harder. The bay area is on the other extreme end in terms of opportunity and being able to learn from people. I think you grow faster when you have more interaction with smart people, and in a place where there is a lot of growth there are a lot of opportunities for that. Though there are risks to any ideological bubble (and SF tends to have cultural issues that can lean similarly extreme to a small town) - that seems generally contained. There's still a lot more opportunity to learn from people building things here, and growing up here it'd be easier to learn more, faster. It's also nice not having to waste time on things like religious discussions, the bar of interesting is generally set higher because there's already pretty good consensus. When the base-line is more of a rational/scientific world view you can tackle more interesting problems (and conversation). Housing is extremely cheap where I grew up, but it's not worth the trade-off. Another benefit of being in an intellectual and economic hub is that there's a feedback loop that continues to attract more people all the time. This also means your kids are more likely to stick around (everyone I was friends with that went on to do interesting things left Buffalo). Though if local communities continue to refuse to build housing this may become less true over time.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  > Another benefit of being in an intellectual and economic hub is that there's a feedback loop that continues to attract more people all the time. I get what you mean, but hoo boy, as a bay area native, this most certainly has not happened there. Almost everyone I knew growing up that doesn't work in tech themselves now has long since left (as well as a fair number who do work in tech, like me). What you're saying is accurate, but if the area chooses to fight its own growth, like what the bay area has done, it makes it much harder for people to stick around.
  - fossuser 7y ago
datashow 7y ago
"Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent". "prevalent"? Like how? I think you are making up. Still exist? Definitely yes. Prevalent? No way. Unless you have a very different kind sense of "prevalent". Actually people in small towns in general are much nicer than big cities and usually they don't care about your skin color or whatever. And they in general appreciate "a slight countercultural bent", unless you have a different sense of "slight".
- jkmcf 7y ago
  Sadly, "prevalent" represents a range degrees. From "universal" to "widespread" to "frequent" to "common". I'm not sure I would normally consider all of these to be reference the same word. My usual interpretation of prevalent would be common or frequent, and in this case I interpreted it as "it's still pretty common, but with less public downsides". The thing about small towns is the people are generally really nice to you, but not so much when referring to a group that includes you. One data point: a man who loved talking to people regardless of color or persuasion. But, he'd talk about a group of them with much negativity. Blame it all on FOX News? reference: Apple's integration with Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
- stevula 7y ago
  Anecdotally, I witnessed a lot of racism in small town Oklahoma, including a black family being threatened to leave town. I saw no LGBT people who felt safe to be out.
- thedance 7y ago
  I think you're going pretty easy on Oklahoma, perhaps just because you like it for other reasons. Oklahoma would put people in prison for consensual same-sex relations as recently as 2003. The law remans but the US Supreme Court struck it down. Ask yourself if a state with a statute against "detestable and abominable crimes against nature" has a prevalent anti-LGBT attitude or not. There are people alive today who survived a white-against-black race riot that killed hundreds in Tulsa. There are people alive today who were imprisoned and threatened with sterilization for being gay. There are followers of Islam alive today who needed police protection after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building instantly became an anti-muslim witch hunt. Oklahoma is objectively one of the most backwards places in America. It might be better than it was, due largely to federal preemption of their theocratic laws, but it's still incrediby intolerant.
pfdietz 7y ago
As you allude to there, a small city that is very LGBTQ friendly is Ithaca, NY, where I live. I recently read that a tourism survey here found that 20% of the visitors are in that classification, some four times the national average.
- asdff 7y ago
  If it weren't for housing Ithaca College and Cornell, Ithaca would not be nearly so progressive and more akin to other upstate ny towns.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Well, sure. If Ithaca wasn't what it is, it would be something else. :)
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  I grew up in Ithaca, and it's not like a lot of Update NY. It's got multiple colleges, including Cornell, a global-tier research University. Meanwhile the rest of upstate is a lot poorer. Great for a college student -- cheap housing and good local booze. Hanging out on the Ithaca Commons was great, and the gaming stores (like Magic Cards, D&D) were awesome.
tic_tac 7y ago
It's a bit of a tired trope that we always have to mention "racism, etc" when taking about things like small towns, as if it's an established fact when it's really more a prejudiced assumption about how people from small towns or certain parts of the country feel. If someone is an upstanding member of the community and fits in with cultural norms, they will usually get by fine regardless of skin color. Of course sometimes this is not the case, but it is no more so than in cities where people of different races often self segregate into distinct communities and there is often latent racial tension. For those who have had bad experiences in small towns or communities, it's dangerous to generalize personal experiences to vast regions or large groups. That just perpetuates bias and prejudice.
fred_is_fred 7y ago
Eastern Colorado? You mean the desolate prairie? I can't even imagine what city you are talking about. Other than cities like Greeley, civilization essentially ends at I-25.
tomcam 7y ago
> Racism and bigotry against LGBT folks is less common than it once was, but it's still prevalent. Prevalent? Citation needed.

Xcelerate 7y ago

I wonder if the trend toward remote work is temporary, or if it will continue long-term. The plot in that article shows that the percentage of remote workers employed full time seems to be increasing fairly quickly. If this is a real trend, my second question then is whether it will have an effect on the current migration away from rural communities toward cities. There are many beautiful places around the world that I think people would prefer to live in if they could work remotely. (Environmentally speaking though, I'm not sure it would be great to have huge numbers of people moving to all of the most beautiful spots on earth).

TulliusCicero 7y ago
> (Environmentally speaking though, I'm not sure it would be great to have huge numbers of people moving to all of the most beautiful spots on earth). Nailed it. People often move to rural areas because they love nature, but ironically this is actually a terrible thing for nature. Not saying everyone has to live in skyscrapers, but denser urban living is definitely better for the environment, most of the time, due to both energy efficiency and reduced need for land.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  If they can work remotely, people also move closer to family once they have kids, not everyone moves to Barcelona or Thailand.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment about people moving to rural areas because they love nature.
- roel_v 7y ago
  "People often move to rural areas because they love nature, but ironically this is actually a terrible thing for nature." Oh this is one of my pet peeves. It's usually the people who claim to love nature the most who will go live right in the middle of it, thereby destroying it. It's like saying 'I love animals so much! Bring me another steak!' I eat meat, I'm not making a pro-vegetarian argument here - just pointing out the hypocrisy. If you really love nature (and not 'living in nature', which is different), you buy the smallest apartment in the city that will fit you (and your family where applicable).

Keverw 7y ago

hmm paying people sounds interesting way to combat the brain drain problem. Kinda shameful though tech seems to only be in a handful of tech hubs. Seems like if I had a startup going, I'd be more likely to be funded in Texas or California than where I'm originally from. Seems like a lot of areas have leaders that don't even care about startups or tech... or maybe just statistically they don't think they can attract tech maybe? Was watching a news segment about startups in Cleveland a while back and one of the big things is the lack of investors, so people are forced to leave their family and community to go elsewhere if they want to be successful. Not from Cleveland but it sounds like a similar story in a bunch of places. Then probably smart people feeling disconnected or lonely because of the lack of resources and startup/tech culture. The census I think is going to be a big blow for places like Ohio and other places, no wonder younger people are moving for better opportunities, and then when they are ready to start their own families, wonder if their kids and future kids will stick around? Sounds like then Cities are losing generations of people, so long term this is going to compound and hurt cities and states even more for their inaction. Plus I think weather plays a bit of a role too, not all just economics - but then again there's a lady I know from Texas who wants to move to Ohio because she likes the cold, while I rather like the warm so sounds like we rather just swap places haha... Plus people are anti-tech. Some people like their quiet small towns, and affordable houses. Tech money flows and then the rents and house prices go up. and then people stereotype tech people too. So sorta like a not in my backyard thing too. Not everyone wants tech I guess, so maybe it's easier to just move elsewhere than trying to turn your own community into the vision you have. Then people don't trust tech, I used Apple Pay at like one of the only places that take it and the lady commented on it about not trusting it. Then I was listening to a podcast segment and I guess some college in Michigan installed Apple Pay to pay for things and found sales went up, I mentioned that I thought that was cool and someone said they wouldn't trust their credit card with a vending machine... When I think it's, in fact, more secure than an actual credit card, but then again even the basic idea of public-private key cryptography goes over people's heads. I kinda feel like if I grew up and lived in a better area for tech, I'd probably be more successful personally, meetups and networking with other like-minded people I think would help. Plus I kinda feel like I have trust problems, people online I was going to work on projects with me but some people are so flakey or just disappears instead of staying committed. Like wanted to do something media related years ago, and the person just disappeared on me. Then was doing another project where someone was going to focus on sales, and agreed to give them a % of the company but can't seem to get ahold of him(But I know now that's what vesting is for). So seems like a recurring theme I always get flaky people. So I feel like real in person could be a benefit too in that regard. It seems more real too, and plus people try to read emotions and stuff in between the lines - but even then there are stories of people working offline and it not working out too... So I guess that's why it's important to get the right structure, and contracts and stuff in place. Focusing on the tech part for my own project first on my own but hoping to take Startup School and pick up on things before I involve others just because I don't want to get burned. But personally I think I rather just bootstrap and own 100%, and then pay contractors or employees when profitable to work on features I don't want to personally do, so less conflicts and not slowing down making decisions, could consult people for advice but I'd have the final say.

smelendez 7y ago

Tulsa should be on more people's radar as a vacation destination. It's a fascinating city with good museums, galleries (including contemporary Native American art) and parks, a welcoming population and very interesting architecture (art deco downtown and Oral Roberts University's gonzo Christian version of midcentury modernism). There's a strong local music and bar scene and good vintage shopping, and some great barbecue, kind of an Austin alternative.

texasbigdata 7y ago
Having been a few times.... This is a wild exaggeration.
- hoten 7y ago
  Which internet stranger am I to believe?
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    The one that actually lived there.
    - iso947 7y ago
      Surely the opinions of visitors are more important when looking to visit somewhere. I wouldn’t ask tourists what it’s like to live in NY, but I wouldn’t ask someone from Queens of its worth visiting.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Some people are perpetual tourists who go to museums and the like while living someplace for a few years. Such people tend to have more familiarity with touristy stuff than either one-time visitors or regular/typical residents.
- smelendez 7y ago

walshemj 7y ago

the quote "With its vaulted ceilings, rows of elbow-to-elbow workbenches" Would make me run away screaming.

ummonk 7y ago

As an atheist Indian-American who spent some of his childhood in Oklahoma, there is no way I’d move to Tulsa. Despite being rather socially conservative, I just would not fit in in Tulsa as well as in a liberal cosmopolitan place. And then you add in a lack of intellectual stimulation and it is even more dreary.

dang 7y ago

A related thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553

carleverett 7y ago

Nice! I'm in Tulsa Remote and am quoted a few times in this - I'm the one who "applied after seeing a post about the program on Hacker News" so things are really coming full circle right now. I think an underrated grievance of people living in big cities is that feeling that you are a completely insignificant part of a community and culture that are so much bigger than you. It's something smaller cities can offer that big cities can't, and it's also something that Tulsa Remote has done really well by connecting participants with people in the city that have influence. The people who are happiest and most likely to stay are definitely the ones taking advantage of this - like Obum from the first paragraph (an amazing human, by the way). Things like lower cost of living, traffic, and cheap housing get talked about a lot as reasons to move out of NY/SF/LA/etc, but are kind of just byproducts of the fact that more people want to live in these places because they have a lot more to offer in other ways. But this idea that you can move to a smaller city with momentum and become a meaningful part of that community is super compelling for someone with that mindset. I think (and hope) the rise of remote work will keep pushing motivated people to move to smaller cities, like Tulsa, and wind up giving everyone a lot more options for interesting places to live.

okdudeok 7y ago

Just for the people who are denigrating Tulsa and how it may be a backwards place for kids' schools. I graduated from a public high school in Tulsa. In our graduating class, we had students accepted to Harvard, to MIT, Yale, Penn, Michigan, and Duke. In the graduating class after mine, we had 3 accepted to Stanford. This was just one public school district, although definitely one of the best in the city. I am not sure that there are that many cities with public schools that can boast such placement. George Kaiser (the gazillionaire who started the foundation that pays for this program) is a very active Harvard alum in addition to being an impressive philanthropist.

mercutio2 7y ago
People aren’t worried about schools in culturally conservative areas because they think it’ll make it hard for kids to get into selective private colleges; they’re worried about raising their children in areas with a high density of bigots, lest the bigotry rub off on their children. The paradox of tolerance partially explains this (frequently invalid) bit of discrimination. But if getting a leg up on selective admissions IS one of your goals, taking your bright teenager to live in a conservative rural or semi-rural area is actually a great way to avail yourself of the many regional quotas these colleges use. But it’s also frequently a way to make your teenagers really hate you for moving them to such a place...
- mushysyntax 7y ago
  plenty of liberal bigotry and anti-science nonsense my friend. Both sides.