
Workers Are Fleeing Big Cities for Small Ones, and Taking Their Jobs with Them - ericmay
https://www.wsj.com/articles/workers-are-fleeing-big-cities-for-small-onesand-taking-their-jobs-with-them-11567848600?mod=rsswn
======
harimau777
I'm not sure that it makes sense to group Boise with the other cities they
mention (Austin, Denver, Portland, Indianapolis, etc.). Boise has less than
half the population of Raleigh which I think is the next least populated of
the cities that they mention.

In addition, while this is much more subjective, most of those cities seem to
share a similar "cultural prestige"/influence as compared to other large
cities like Columbus, Jacksonville, etc.

It seems to me that a more accurate description is that people are moving from
the most expensive and culturally prestigious cities to slightly less
expensive and culturally prestigious cities. It doesn't sound to me like they
are moving to what people generally think of as "small cities".

~~~
ransom1538
Taxes. State income tax. This can be as high as 9.0% (CA or NY). That is
insane. If you make 100k, the state could take 9k a year. In some states that
will cover your _entire_ mortgage on a _house_. I love CA or NY, but FL, TX,
NV, etc have NO state income tax. ID is awesome, but 7% taxes is no go.

~~~
m0llusk
That isn't necessarily a robust analysis of cost trade offs. A good example of
how this can be inaccurate is Texas which has a reputation as a relatively low
tax state, but in order to fund its considerable road network levies extremely
high property taxes which in turn trigger higher rents than might be expected.
New Hampshire has a similar situation with low taxes being made up for with
high property taxes which pay the cost of rebuilding the roads which are
ripped up seasonally by frost heaves and geologic activity.

Ultimately people demand basic services which have to be paid for. Eliminating
one source of funding may reduce the overall burden but more likely simply
shifts funding.

~~~
rayiner
Extremely high relative to what? Houston’s property tax rate is half of San
Francisco’s, and a bit lower than where I am in suburban Maryland.

~~~
cylinder
No it's not? Property taxes on a home in the Houston area will range from 2.3%
to 3% of the appraised value per year. That includes improvements on land and
it's not prevented from rising every year with the value of the house.

------
curioussavage
I just moved out of SF and went remote. It’s pretty awesome. Living there was
fun but also stressful and inconvenient especially with kids.

I didn’t even lose my “walkability” you can find that in many places if you
choose the right neighborhood. In fact kind of improves if you factor in not
worrying about getting mugged or accosted by homeless crazies.

My large home in one of the top planned communities in the nation costs me
just under the shack I rented in the east bay.

~~~
aantix
Same here.

My wife and I lived in SF for close to five years. We wanted to have four kids
and well, that would have been a nightmare in the city.

So we moved back home to family in Lincoln, NE. We now have four kids, live in
a great school district and I've continued to consult with startups.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimjones2/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimjones2/)

P.S. First year of being completely remote was fantastic. Fifth year? Really
lonely..

~~~
Tempest1981
Is there some equivalent of a WeWork, where you can socialize with others? How
are the coffee shops?

~~~
Tempest1981
Baffled by the downvotes... why? Are there better social alternatives for the
long workdays?

------
king_magic
Single data point here, but I moved back to my hometown after leaving NYC
about 5 years ago, I work remotely, and I will never go back. Quality of life
massively better.

Always fun when recruiters reach out. Many simply can’t believe someone
wouldn’t want to move back to a bigger city in return for a much higher
paycheck (which I politely explain is effectively less money than I make now,
due to costs of living).

~~~
bluedino
HN yesterday: suburbs are evil! Drain on society! Move to the cities!

HN today: hey you guys know you can get 2700sq ft on 2 acres for half of what
your studio costs right?

~~~
fiblye
If you're living in a suburb and working remotely, it's a pretty good deal.
You're not burning gas to get to work and you get to enjoy some space.

I think the biggest evil of suburbs is the commute. I think part of the reason
there's no social activity in suburbs is because, honestly, who wants to do
anything after spending an hour in traffic after getting off your 8-5 job and
knowing you need to be out the door by 6:30 the next day?

~~~
im3w1l
> there's no social activity in suburbs

I find that hard to believe.

~~~
lwhalen
It's literally not zoned for it. Change the zoning laws to at least allow for
a local pub or coffee shop in the middle of a residential area, that would be
a positive step in the right direction IMHO.

~~~
freddie_mercury
I mean I kind of agree with your point about zoning but you realize that your
chosen examples make you look like a single, childless 20something and thus
somewhat out of touch with what a lot of people consider socializing?

I don't like to suburbs either but I'm currently visiting my brother who lives
in one. Their socializing is kids basketball & soccer games at the park (which
suburbs are zoned for), picnics at the local greenway (also zoned for), and
swimming in the community pool. All of which are walking distance.

Not to mention, you know, inviting people over to their house because it isn't
a tiny 400 square foot apartment. They make dinner for friends and watch
football on the porch.

~~~
vertex-four
OK, here's a question - you say "tiny apartment", but is that really all that
exists in the US? In the UK, there's a rather large amount of 2 and 3 bed
flats - the one I'm living in is nearly 800 square feet, not unreasonably
priced, and we can fit more people than we can reasonably organise to be
available at one time.

There's also three parks within 10 minutes' walk, more a short bus ride away,
and multiple shops and cafes surrounding us. And we're about 15 minutes by bus
from the city centre.

Just saying... the issues the US seems to have with cities seem to mostly be a
result of lack of caring about them, not inherent properties of cities.

~~~
jandrewrogers
Typical apartments in the US seem to be around 700-800 square feet, with one
or two bedrooms, so not "tiny". These may or may not be located in walkable
neighborhoods or with easy access to city center, it depends on the city. As
an anecdote in Seattle, which is better at this than most cities, I have a one
bedroom flat that is almost 1200 square feet and can walk to everything except
the airport, for which there is public transit. Not unreasonably priced,
though not inexpensive either. There are dozens of bars, restaurants, cafes,
etc within a few blocks as well as several shops of all types.

------
lawn
I live in Sweden and I did the same. Moved back to the community I came from
when we got our son. Got rid of the commute and we got a house that's 2x as
big for, I kid you not, 1/10th of the price.

In fact our expenses fell so much I could even start working 60%, and we had
about as much money left as before.

There are trade-offs. There are no restaurants except fast food, there is no
martial arts training I used to do, there are no boardgame clubs and it's much
harder to get friends. But if you can get through that economically it's a
ridiculously beneficial thing to do (given you can get a job of course).

~~~
lifeisstillgood
What about education and health ? I mean even moving out of the big city in UK
you are going to see very variable schooling and hospital coverage?

~~~
freyr
In the U.S., moving from the city to the suburbs is probably the best thing
you can do to ensure decent public schooling. For instance, a recent list of
top ranked public high schools from US News and World Report:

    
    
        Academic Magnet High School, South Carolina
        Maine School of Science and Mathematics
        BASIS Scottsdale, Arizona
        Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Virginia
        Central Magnet School, Tennessee
        Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, Georgia
        Haas Hall Academy, Arkansas
        International Academy of Macomb, Michigan
        Payton College Preparatory High School, Illinois
        Signature School, Indiana

~~~
madhadron
Be _very_ careful with that list. Those are specialized, highly competitive
schools. What puts them on that list as opposed to Oklahoma School of Science
and Math or North Carolina School of Science and Math is that the latter are
boarding schools that serve their whole state. These are schools that serve
the same role but only allow people in from their county (e.g., Alexandria
County for Thomas Jefferson).

Also, US News and World Report rankings are useless. They're a measure solely
of prestige and brand, not of any actual quality of education.

I'm not saying your wrong. I'm just saying that this data doesn't support your
point.

~~~
confidantlake
Unless things have changed, Thomas Jefferson lets in people in other counties
as well (ie fairfax county).

~~~
madhadron
They must have changed that since 2005 when I was dealing with their
graduates. It certainly wasn't open to me earlier on when I was a high
schooler elsewhere in Virginia.

------
oflannabhra
> She and her husband, who have two children, bought a house in the Boise area
> after renting in L.A. It is twice as big as their old place, but the monthly
> payments are half as much as their L.A. rent. There was also enough room for
> her mother to move in.

2x the space for 1/2 the price. Our remote-working future cannot come quick
enough.

~~~
Mobius01
It this price disparity will only last as far as the demand for these areas
stays low. As the demand from remote workers fleeing large cities grows, so
will the prices. See Austin for an illustration of rapid gentrification due to
migration.

~~~
maerF0x0
There is a lot of open space in the United States. Time to plan and build the
next Austin.

~~~
neverartful
Indeed, there is a lot of open space. When you look at why Austin has the
appeal for high tech industry, I think it largely was/is based on University
of Texas and their strong record in computer engineering. This caused
companies like IBM, Motorola, Samsung, etc. to locate there.

It takes decades to build out another such city from scratch. I'm not arguing
that it shouldn't be done, just that it doesn't happen quickly.

~~~
maerF0x0
IMO the hardest part is convincing people to be part of such a task because
they have self-reinforcing loops like workers go where jobs are, companies go
where talent is.

Maybe time for a Kickstarter for cities?

------
hoorayimhelping
When I lived in Raleigh/Durham back in 2011, I bumped into John Darnielle of
the Mountain Goats at a coffee shop. We chatted for a few minutes and he said
that he hears a lot of people say that Durham is the Brooklyn of the south,
but he doesn't buy it. He thinks (and I agreed) that it has its own charm, its
own vibe and its own identity, and that people are trying to make it into
something it's not.

That's to say, I think you're absolutely right - people want to move to these
places cause they perceive them as little Brooklyns or little Seattles. They
have the sensibilities and prestige of those places, but not the crowds or the
cost.

~~~
t34543
Durham is very nice but prices have skyrocketed since around 2015. Apartments
downtown went from 1500 to 3000 monthly, for example.

~~~
journalctl
This is happening in just about every decently-sized city. Demand has gone up,
but very little new housing stock is being built.

~~~
sliken
That and Berkshire Hathaway is buying up homes at an impressive rate and then
driving up the rental costs.

------
barrkel
IME people move out of big cities when they get into their late 20s / 30s,
when the joy of exploration of what a big city has to offer starts to wane
compared with the ease of living life in a comfy groove, when you know what
you want and it's available without putting up with everything else that a big
city pushes on you - high prices, high rents, crowds, long commutes.

I don't think this means that young people are going to stop coming to cities.

~~~
m463
Living in a big city is amazing if you are young and single (or maybe newly
married and still in the urban mindset).

There are enormous benefits to many young people, lots of things to do, all in
a small area.

But inevitably goals or expectations change (or the number of dependents
increases) and it's time to move to the suburbs or the country.

You WILL give up things moving to the country, but if you don't care about or
prioritize those things, it's ok.

Cities traditionally suck as far as housing/cost of living, crime and some
recreation.

But I think they might have access to better jobs, transportation/airports,
health care and nightlife/museums/venues/etc

And good weather might correlate to higher housing costs (think california
here)

------
devonkim
I took a pay cut to work remotely in Asheville, NC (about the most remote,
stable, infrastructure-enabled city I could find next to Chattanooga, TN) and
while the community was great and living costs were much cheaper, this kind of
plan was still wishful thinking because unless...

1\. you stay remote (read: can handle work != social structure)

2\. your spouse's employment situation is also accommodating

3\. your community doesn't decline due to the brain drain / job drain problem
of areas outside major metro centers

So you need to be resistant and resilient to the downsides of living away from
so many techies.

~~~
Xcelerate
Funny you mention Asheville and Chattanooga. I’m currently working at one of
the large tech companies in the Bay Area, but if I ever take a remote job,
those are the top two cities I would move to.

~~~
DataDisciple
I'm surprised more folks aren't moving to those areas. I can see them being
the next Boulder.

~~~
devonkim
I knew about the Denver area’s potential at the time but the high real estate
prices were a problem. Part of my objective was to get years ahead of a big
boom and save money before it got too bad, and I managed to do that fine in
Asheville. The region has a lot of the same issues as smaller towns in the US
without any industries to accelerate its growth besides craft beer and
tourism. The healthcare industry is entirely because of the massive retiree
population that are typically snowbirds that don’t contribute to state and
county taxes besides property taxes, so its everyday population is starved for
government resources relative to its size while it has the highest property
values in NC (well, it was until 2016 last I saw). So basically Buncombe
County was the lowest earning but most expensive part of NC to live in - this
is not a recipe for sustainable growth. I really liked the community and it
was a really good place to live if you could afford it. Chattanooga is much
better off in comparison although I’m curious about how it’s done at
attracting a sustained tech industry almost a decade after its investments.

~~~
Xcelerate
It sounds like you moved away from Asheville and stopped working remotely. Do
you still work in tech in the South?

~~~
devonkim
I was in Atlanta for a few years afterward (not my choice honestly) and wound
up back in a much better situation and same location than I started before my
move to Asheville. It was a humbling experience that I may not have gotten if
I had stayed in the DC region, which also was never my preference either.

------
davidw
Bend, Oregon is apparently the remote work capital of the US, according to
statistics compiled by one of the Oregon state economists who - it turns out -
works remotely from Bend rather than in Salem or Portland.

IDK... I've done remote work too, but I now have a job in an office and it
makes me happier to be around other people, and to be able to chat about stuff
in a higher bandwidth way.

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
I've experienced both remote work from another state in a house I owned and
working in the company office in Manhattan for extended periods. Working in
the office was massively better for my daily mood and mental health than
working at home all the time. Just little things like getting up to go get an
afternoon coffee with the people I work with.

When I worked at home sometimes I wouldn't even leave the house for two or
three days at time.

~~~
davidw
I started going to the store every day just to have something to do to go out.
My wife was like "NO, we don't need anything!" until she kind of got why.

------
notus
The infrastructure in many big cities is so broken, daily existence is kind of
painful. I live in Austin which isn't really even that big of a city but the
infrastructure is so poor that commuting anywhere is very painful and there
are a lot of road rage incidents as a result. Unless you live downtown there
is no walkability and if you live downtown you need to work downtown. The
public transit system is laughable. We have a metro rail that doesn't run
after 6 and doesn't run on Sundays.

~~~
jseliger
Many voters, unfortunately, appear to prefer broken infrastructure:
[https://www.statesman.com/news/20180512/wear-austins-
light-r...](https://www.statesman.com/news/20180512/wear-austins-light-rail-
backers-ponder-thumbs-down-vote-in-nashville)

~~~
notus
Yeah there are a lot of NIMBY's here. They don't want to make the sacrifices
necessary to make the city better.

------
wasdfff
I dont think I could ever move back to the midwest. Spent a couple years in
columbus and that city gets old pretty fast. Either you pay 1.3k a month to
drink in a 4 story apartment complex with thin walls and a pool closed for 8
months of the year, or you live out in white bread suburban hell until you are
in hospice care. Not for me.

Where I’m at now is probably the most multicultural city in the americas. You
see signs in all kinds of languages on a daily bases. Neighborhoods actually
have striking character. There are interests I have here that I could never
pursue in any other city. There’s also the weed, the weather, the fact that
ambitious transit is actively being built, and, my god, the FOOD. My ashes
will be scattered across the santa monica mountains.

~~~
burntoutfire
> or live out in white bread suburban hell until you are in hospice care

Funny how 95% of world population would be ecstatic about moving there, yet
you describe it as hell.

~~~
patthebunny
Feels like a pretty drastic over estimation.

~~~
burntoutfire
US is one of the very few places in the world where most people live in their
own house, even if it's in "hellish" suburbs. Outside of US, even in first
world countries, most people live in flats. Also, majority of world population
live in flat out third world countries, and for them, moving to a "boring"
(safe, clean, reasonably well designed, consisting of polite/civilized people,
having working, high-quality infrastructure etc. etc.) US suburb would be a
huge improvement.

~~~
patthebunny
> Outside of US, even in first world countries, most people live in flats

That's where the overestimation comes in. You assume people are miserable and
would rather live in a ridiculous house and have to take a car to go do
anything.

------
leoc
I suppose one interesting question is if some of these cities that are highly
attractive to remote workers will gather up a large enough concentration of
them that they will start to get hired locally there. (Or perhaps this is even
happening already?) If I was in charge of economic development in one of those
areas I'd certainly want to look into what might encourage that
local→remote→local transition to take place.

~~~
nugget
I believe Austin has started to benefit from this trend.

------
waylandsmithers
Definitely happening here in Boston with people choosing to live in Portland,
ME and Providence, RI. Both great places to live with a much lower cost of
living. The commute is somewhat do-able from Providence. It's a great deal if
you can get the Boston salary and make the remote/semi-remote life work.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Yeah, Boston area housing prices will be the death NH/ME/RI. Considering how
culturally incompatible the Boston area is with NH and ME I feel really bad
for the people of those states who get to see their states turned into MA-
Lite.

~~~
throwaway0xb
Portland, ME is just far enough from Boston that it's not feasible to do any
regular commute unless you really, really want to live there.

~~~
jt2190
This is _very_ true. I commuted from Newburyport MA (20 minutes south of
Portsmouth NH) to Boston by bus for a few years. (My other option was MBTA
commuter rail, which was further from my house and ran into North Station,
which was farther from work.) The bus ride was routinely 1 hour 20 minutes, so
add another 20 to get to Portsmouth.

(Edit: I’ve also done the Providence, RI to Boston commute, by rail, which was
just over an hour typically.

Don’t forget that commuting works well when your job is near free
parking/train/bus. It gets pretty bad when you have to add another 20 minute
subway wait/ride in once in town...)

~~~
beowulfey
Damn dude how was it possible that the MBTA was further than driving all the
way up to Portsmouth? The Newburyport commuter rail station is dead center of
town. Was this before they opened the station up there?

~~~
jt2190
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The bus runs Portsmouth NH -> Newburyport, MA ->
South Station. (No drive to Portsmouth necessary.)

The train is on the Newburyport/Newbury town line, so not _quite_ the center
of town... but that’s a quibble. Parking for the train isn’t free either, and
tickets cost more than the bus. The busses run more frequently too (they’re
smaller, so it’s like breaking one big train into pieces.)

------
segmondy
It's harder to get a remote job. There are more non remote jobs than remote.
So if you're looking for a job, you have a set of 3 choices, remote only, non
remote or both. Moving when you have a remote job is cool, but if things get
tough say in an economy downturn and you need a new job. You might find that
it's more difficult to get another remote job. If you moved to a location
without much jobs, you are going to put yourself in a difficult bind. If you
bought a house, tougher!

~~~
cheez
I solved this problem for myself years ago: make your own job. May not pay as
well for a bit, but every dollar is portable.

~~~
ge96
Out of curiosity what do you do? If you don't want to share that's fine, but I
also wish to do the same however have not found something to solve/make yet.

~~~
cheez
Literally the most boring thing you would ever think of which has tons of
competitors. I sell it to big companies who don't mind spending $1K/year on it
(h/t to Joel on software for this tip)

If you want to do it, then find some product that exists, that you like, copy
and tweak.

~~~
ge96
> h/t to Joel on software for this tip

Is that Joel Spolsky? Man I miss the SO podcast.

I can't think of what it is you do but thanks for your response. That's a good
tip about existing product(existing market).

~~~
cheez
Yes Joel spolsky. Go read his essays, classic stuff

------
ttul
Canadian datapoint here. I used to expend every cent living in whatever crappy
rental I could find in Vancouver. Moved to a tiny island community six years
ago and now work remote one of two days a week to cut the commute down.

I have deer walking in my yard and 20 square miles of untouched forest to hike
in directly where I live. Our internet provider recently upgraded service to
1Gbps, so video conferencing is snappy and glitch-free.

Many of my employees are making similar moves. One moved to a mountain town
about an hour outside of the city. Another moved to a seaside village.

This is clearly the future, brought to us by the vast improvements in remote
work infrastructure such as Slack and Zoom.

------
jt2190
> ... [W]orkers tend to spread out geographically during an economic cycle’s
> later stages, economists say, raising questions about how these cities will
> fare in a downturn. Workers are usually more confident—and employers more
> lenient—when the economy has been flourishing.

> In 2017, some 5.3% of adults in metro areas of between 500,000 and three
> million people worked from home, a rough proxy for remote workers. That was
> up from 3.7% a decade earlier...

It’ll be interesting to see whether these workers will be able to maintain
their “big city” salaries over time, and how they’ll fare in a economic
downturn (e.g. they’ll be far away from “most” jobs in their sector.)

~~~
tspike
I work mostly remotely from a small town outside a mid size city that has a
satellite office for a company based in a big city. I get the big city salary
for now, but I'm operating on the assumption that the gravy train will stop at
some point. I'm OK with that tradeoff.

------
non-entity
As someone who lives in a small city (120k city pop ~800k metro pop) I'm still
looking to move to larger one for an number of reasons. Most of probably due
to my specific niche issues and likely arent important at all (for example
early 20s, I cant drive, lowering my quality of life, etc.)

But one big one is networking. I've been told by people trying to get into
larger tech companies that the only way to get in as an experienced
professional is referrals. Living in a larger tech hub opens up so much more
potential for networking and career growth that I just cant get here.

------
Zenst
This is a good thing, whilst centralisation of workforce has it's upsides, it
has in many places exceeded that balance with many negative impacts. Whilst
these are small steps, for those removed from the overheads of a delayed
saturated comute and associated impacts upon health. Equally, one less
commuter, helps reduce that saturation and crowing with associated delays,
might even be that per person we are only talking a nanosecond level of scale.
But when you have many of these small reductions in saturation, and those
gains project across a larger scale. You end up with slightly better air
quality, slightly less health impacts, slightly less delays.

Hopefully this is a trend that tractions as many roles can be shifted in this
way and improve quality of life overall.

On the flip-side, will we see large corporation office space shifted into the
virtual World? Will signs start appearing in offices "Will the last one to
relocate, please not turn off this server". Maybe.

But the ability to use up an area and then move on, expand and repeat the
process has been one trait humans share with many biological organisms. Is
this just nature at play thru adaption to the environment,on some level - I'd
say yes.

~~~
ajmurmann
What's the environmental impact of this? Won't this use up way more land and
be in general much less efficient?

~~~
Zenst
For many instances - no as you are just removing that long commute. Many
places have high priced area's that people commute to from a great distance.
In those cases you are removing the commute. For those moving into the
countryside, unless your building new houses - your not using up more land.
Just shifting and also removing the need for new housing in dense area's, so
protecting green spaces were they are more needed.

But any swing one way or another can shift that balance. You can look at the
extreme of people all shifting to the countryside that the countryside itself
becomes a town, a city.... But things tends to balance out.

After all, in many area's we are seeing the demise of high street shopping, is
that a good or bad thing. But I'm sure many do not want to live in stacked up
boxes so small as so they are barely affordable and all other activities
reduced to door delivery. Though in many area's, that is kinda what people
have already.

Then the whole aspect of the population not getting any smaller and such
shifts will be more than offset by population expansion.

~~~
fzeroracer
You aren't really removing the commute. You're replacing the work commute with
the grocery/social life/needs etc commute. Which is also far less efficient on
a community-level because those smaller towns and suburbs have to be strongly
subsidized in order to maintain infrastructure that far fewer people use. Not
to mention that by working remote you're also starving those small towns of
business growth opportunities by having it be centralized in another state,
which means paying for new infrastructure is much harder especially given how
tax-averse Americans tend to be.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Citation? My small town is not subsidized by anybody, far as I know.

~~~
fzeroracer
Where does the funding for new infrastructure come from? Hospitals? Public
services such as police or firefighters? Libraries, if your town has any? Or
how about schools?

This money comes from the federal government, gets distributed down to the
state level which then gets distributed out to the various cities and
localities depending on need [1]. A lot of these towns are given grants or
loans from the USDA in order to fund various improvements [2].

[1] [https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/gov-state-
budgets-f...](https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/gov-state-budgets-
federal-funding-2015-2018-trump.html)

[2] [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/7/1/my-journey-
from...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/7/1/my-journey-from-free-
market-ideologue-to-strong-towns-advocate)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We build our own in Iowa. Not sure how that works elsewhere. We build our
excellent secondary road system (access to every section in Iowa for
agricultural purposes). We build our hospitals. Our library was a local bond
issue.

And our schools! A new bond issue every few years for schools for a growing
population.

And lets forget the myth that 'federal funding' is free, or come from
somewhere else. It comes from us.

~~~
fzeroracer
Federal funding mostly comes from the states with the highest economic
activity. Unless you're disputing that states with higher number of
individuals and economic activity doesn't correlate with more taxes paid to
the federal government.

And on the iowa website itself [1] I can see the grants and federal funding
used by the state government. My point being that if the more rural cities
were required to pay for everything themselves, they would not be able to.

[1] [https://iowadot.gov/transit/funding-programs-and-
application...](https://iowadot.gov/transit/funding-programs-and-
applications/funding-programs)

------
gniv
There is another dynamic at play, not mentioned in the article: the smaller
cities are actively trying to become better places to live. Here's a nice
writeup: [https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-land-is-your-
land](https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-land-is-your-land)

Quoting from that blog post:

"“Cool,” which is to say, a certain type of bourgeois, with a certain
aesthetic that unites it with larger cities while still maintaining a feeling
of quaintness. In Tulsa, for example, there’s a gorgeous new book store, an
ever-expanding number of breweries, co-working spaces in rehabbed brick
buildings, coffee shops in rehabbed brick buildings, airy restaurants with
farm-to-table menus in rehabbed brick buildings. There’s a walkable downtown,
a First Friday art walk to get people there, a cultural tourist site (the
Woody Guthrie Museum) and public (in this case, actually private) outdoor
space (The Gathering Place)."

------
Mc91
I am on one of those arrow paths from New York City to the upper south.

Sort of. They fly me in from NYC during the week for four days, then fly me
back for the weekends.

I didn't really make a decision to move, I was looking for work in NYC, but
was given a good job offer which said I'd be paid a NYC type salary, and have
expensed flights, hotels, car rentals and meal etc. per diems. I haven't
exactly moved, I rent in NYC and stay at a hotel down there. I don't plan on
staying down here permanently - if and when I start looking for another job it
will be in NYC.

I think some of what is observed is kind of illusory. Because what is really
happening here? On a very broad level - am I from NYC saying I want to become
more of an upper south kind of guy? Or is this upper south Fortune 100 company
saying it wants to become more of an NYC-type company, and bringing me and
others down there to accomplish that? From everything I have seen, more of the
latter. Northern Virginia has already pretty much been swallowed into the
Boston to DC megalopolis, and it's possible that Richmond, Virginia Beach,
Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and Charlotte are next. Or if companies are
desperate enough for IT etc. talent, they might start offices in NYC, SF etc.
looking for it. Our company already has a west coast advanced IT office, as
well as some offshored stuff to India.

New York means not needing to own a car, because it has a massive public
transit system (which has been a little shaky for the past five years though).
It means 4AM last call. It means having technical meetups and conferences, and
universities like Columbia and NYU with impressive CS professors and students.
It means lots of job opportunities with good salaries. You can even avoid the
city and live a suburban existence if you want.

All anybody talks about are the slim pickings in the local job market down
there. You don't have that problem in San Francisco or New York.

------
xenocyon
The article doesn't touch on carbon impact, which I can intuitively think of
as going in either direction. On the one hand, it's obvious that replacing a
car commute with remote work is directly advantageous on a one-to-one basis.
On the other hand, it's also possible that many households will actually see
an overall increase in car and air miles (to say nothing of systemic
scalabilities from serving infrastructure/goods/services to dense vs sparse
populations) - so whether the trend is overall positive or negative is not
obvious to me.

------
ahnick
Tulsa has an incentive program just for this, made possible by GKFF.
[https://tulsaremote.com/](https://tulsaremote.com/)

------
artur_makly
Austin..cheaper? update : just a bit.

[https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/los-
ang...](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/los-
angeles/austin/breakdown)

------
sudosteph
Yep, I saw this play out first-hand. My company hired a good group of people
in the Seattle office for a job that was essentially remote. After a few
years, the office shrank from about 6 people, to 2 as people decided to just
move to CoL cities. Example destinations: Tampa, Santa Fe, Spokane, and
Raleigh (in my case).

Nobody regrets their move yet to my knowledge. I'm definitely very happy to be
saving money, and my standard of living is better. My urban lifestyle hasn't
changed much (still only drive 2-3x a month for trips to cities, beaches or
mountains) and I'm from NC, so culture stuff like the food and friendly people
are a positive as well.

------
tempsy
I live in SF, which many would consider a big city, but I’ve come to realize
that I actually do enjoy living in a big city, it’s just that in the US in
particular big city living means a big cost of living premium.

There’s dozens of big metropolitan cities outside the US that have better
public transportation systems, lower rents, lower food costs, etc. that the
analogous big city in the US, namely SF, LA, and NYC. I’m beginning to realize
that the best way to continue living in a big city but lower my monthly
expenses would be to move abroad.

------
seibelj
If I were at a small startup as an engineering manager and the CEO told me to
outsource to save money, I would try very hard to convince him to outsource
within the country. Employees are cheaper while the timezone and skill set
remain high. It obviously is nowhere near as cheap as Vietnam or India, but so
much better even with 1/4 as many devs.

That outsourcing conversation I had at every single startup I worked for, and
I greatly hope the trend to remote work continues.

~~~
throwaway0xb
On top of that if your startup has any meaningful operations or customer
service headcount, you will save so much money outside of SF/LA/NYC -- not
just because of wages, but because of rent, as well.

------
tompoole
We've been seeing this for several years now. VBOs (Virtual Business Owners)
are seeing their effective spending power double by moving to places with
lower taxes and cheaper housing - that is REAL! - [https://vbonation.com/vbo-
lifestyles/move-to-rural-america/](https://vbonation.com/vbo-lifestyles/move-
to-rural-america/)

------
amoitnga
I'm moving from New York to San Diego. Going to work remotely. There is a risk
involved, sure. But after 11 years in NY I think it's worth a shot.

~~~
cylinder
It's San Diego, not San Juan. I'm sure you will be fine.

~~~
soroushjp
Hahaha my thoughts exactly when I read this.

------
agumonkey
Once again I cannot help but to see this waving pattern.

    
    
        rural -> urban -> ~rural
    
        decentralized -> centralized -> decentralized
    

It's an odd phenomenon when elements aggregates into a pole to accelerate
until that pole is saturated and overwhelmed, improved elements now go away,
until the next cycle.

------
VeryHacker
Living in Berlin for almost a decade, bought a house here and love to live
here because costs of living is far less than compared to my original city
(50k people, even the house market is expensive over there).

No car needed, plenty of services for family and kids. My original city
doesn't offer them at all and you need to own a car if you want to go
somewhere.

------
ilaksh
I had been working remotely for a startup and since funding is very limited so
is my pay for now. Moved across the border from San Diego to Tijuana. My cost
of living is less than half of what it was even though I live at the beach now
instead of a low income neighborhood in San Diego.

------
peter303
Many of these second tier tech cities have a full tech ecosystem: nationally
ranked tech schools, lots of startups, venture capital, tech accelerators,
startup weeks, etc. I have live in both Palo Alto and Denver over a decade
each. Denvers biggest tech shortcoming is a lack big VCs.

------
sys_64738
The problem with moving to little cities is the downturn and losing your job.
Where is your next job?

------
sylens
I'm all for spreading the workforce out and encouraging more remote work. It
makes no sense to subject so many people to LA, SF, and NYC commutes every day
when the job can be done just as well from home or another office location in
a suburb or satellite campus somewhere.

~~~
wasdfff
The difference is in those places you have a lot more options to pivot to a
new job. If the suburban office closes there are no jobs for you in the area
and you’d have to relocate. Some people like remote work, but personally I
don’t. I get a lot more done being able to run into people face to face and
quickly hash through something in the hallway or at a desk or over lunch.

And you can live close to work in those cities. I live and work in LA and
commute on public transport for 20 mins one way. The rents may be high in LA,
but even minumum wage is nearly $14 now, and rents are pretty even across many
parts of town barring some obvious exceptions.

------
scurvy
Does hiring a remote worker trigger nexus if you don't otherwise have a
"presence" there? I'm sure you'll need to register with the secretary of state
there to pay payroll taxes.

------
pfdietz
Remote work not only allows workers to be in small cities, it allows employers
to be in small cities (or outside the cities).

------
einpoklum
Rich consultants / independent service providers working remotely move from
one place to another. Yawn.

------
DataDisciple
Didn't read the article because, paywall. But Austin, Denver, Portland have
all had significant price increases. RiNo in Denver is really cool but homes
are $700k+. It's a big discount from LA, but I wouldn't call it life-changing,
especially when you consider what you give up.

Art, culture, and diversity of people are what make a city so interesting to
me. In LA, we have so many friends who are working on interesting projects and
are very intelligent. Every time we discuss moving to a smaller town, we are
concerned that we might have difficulty finding social circles that fit us.
The average American and I just don't have a ton in common. I know that sounds
super snobby, but people are different. I'm not saying one is right or wrong.

I always think about what will be the next tier of cities where remote work
and satellite offices will be popular? To me, Asheville, Greenville, and to a
lesser extent Chattanooga will be popular locations. CoL and an urban core are
requirements, but also access to nature, transplants and local universities
seem to help. A good airport is also big, as we love to travel.

------
shawnkalin
What websites are best for finding good remote jobs? What are the most useful
tools and apps?

------
thatfrenchguy
This article lacks numbers.

------
shawnkalin
What are the best websites for finding remote jobs? What tools are best?

------
fjabre
Does this mean smaller cities are getting bluer?

~~~
Fjolsvith
If its a family that is moving, it likely is making them redder.

~~~
ahnick
Why do you say that?

~~~
Fjolsvith
Families leaving are typically seeking a better place to raise children.

~~~
fjabre
And recent grads a place that is affordable. All my friends from Los Angeles
have moved to Texas and Florida (some are families) and they are all
progressive like most in Californian major cities. So they will make those
states more blue. Which goes against what youre saying.

I fail to see why families from big cities would be red. Most in big cities
are progressive, even families. I havent seen data that would suggest
otherwise

------
ajross
I'll just say this and take my downvotes[1]: It's impossible to read a piece
like this in the modern world, about two white middle class families leaving
large, coastal multiethnic metropolises for suburban homes in (what a quick
google tells me is) the sixth whitest state in the union, without a racial
lens.

These workers "fleeing" big cities simply don't seem likely to be a uniformly
sampled demographic, and for the article not to at least nod to that seems
like pretty questionable journalism.

But maybe that's just a step too woke.

[1] Edit: heh, two minutes before the first accusation of racism. Pretty much
what I expected.

~~~
masonic

       the sixth whitest state 
    

You conflate the ethnic makeup of the _city_ they flee with that of their
destination _state_.

In contrast, New York _state_ as a whole is predominantly white, while I would
guess that Boise is the most diverse city in Idaho.

~~~
ajross
You're right. I should have looked it up. Here:

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_percentage_of_white_population)

Boise is in fact the THIRD whitest city in the whole country .

~~~
masonic
You're misinterpreting your source.

Putting aside the qualifiers that the dataset[0] is specific to cities _with
population above 100K_ and that it's a decade old, the counts _include
Hispanics and whites together_ , which is obvious from Laredo, Corpus Christi,
and El Paso all being in the top 8.

In other words, _using your source_ , Boise is all of 1.3 percentage points
whiter than _Laredo, Texas_.

[0] [https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-
facts/c...](https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-
facts/cities/rank/white-population-percentage)

------
buboard
Hey look, there is a solution to the housing crisis that the tech community
didn't even think of

~~~
lclarkmichalek
The article attributes some of the shift to remote work, which would seem to
be related to tech?

~~~
buboard
Yet big tech is not investing in remote work, but into new factory housing or
co-suffering spaces.

