
The Tulsa Remote Worker Experiment - vo2maxer
https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/02/tulsa-incentives-work-remotely-coworking/604873/
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leggomylibro
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
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.

~~~
tjr225
> biking is uncomfortable and dangerous

I live in a college town in Michigan and work for a company in San Francisco.

I don't find biking to be uncomfortable here whatsoever. In fact there are
maybe a half dozen to a dozen coffee shops I can work from that are around two
miles away from my house and I bike to them all the time- even in the winter
if the roads aren't icy.

~~~
TulliusCicero
There are definitely confident cyclists who profess to be comfortable in some
areas of the US. Ask them if they'd be comfortable with a relative who's 8 or
80 biking around independently in the same area and they usually become a lot
less confident. Then look at what the actual data shows: how many people bike
there? The numbers are nearly always dismal: even supposed cycling champion
Portland has half Munich's numbers, and Munich isn't even trying very hard.
Portland is quarter-assing things _at best_ , and it goes rapidly downhill
from there.

Or if you want something more concrete to work with: how many mile lanes of
protected bike lanes or off-street bike paths are there in your town? How does
that compare to the number of mile lanes for sidewalks or general vehicle
lanes? What percentage of controlled intersections use a protected design? How
wide are the roads? What's the speed limit, and how fast do people actually
drive? How common are pedestrian islands? How sharp are the curb corners? How
many of the painted bike lanes in the door zone? How common are walk/bike cut-
throughs? What percentage of intersection lights have a marker for bikes?

Most cyclists who talk about how comfortable they are in the US don't realize
just how bad it is there. Yes, you can still often get by; I certainly
managed, in the bay area, and Seattle, and Utah, and even Alabama. But it was
still total garbage compared to the places that take biking seriously (which
is exactly why so few people do it in the states).

We live in an area that is, by most Americans' standards, fairly dense, and
yet we started having our son bike to school a mile away, by himself, when he
was 7, and he started biking alongside us to a kindergarten 2 miles away when
he was 5. He's 8 now, and he sometimes bikes himself to a friend's house, or a
park, or a grocery store or bakery for an errand. That kind of thing is almost
unheard of in the US these days.

~~~
tjr225
I realize how bad it is here, but I'm not really sure what you're suggesting?
Throw up my hands and give up? Move to the Netherlands???

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carleverett
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.

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Xcelerate
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
> (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.

~~~
belorn
> denser urban living is definitely better for the environment, most of the
> time,

"Most of the time" is likely the key phrase in that statement. I would say it
depend on where and how. Living "in nature" enables partial self
sustainability, and far from all land is currently used efficiently. Low yield
farm land is perfectly fine for raising a few chicken and supplementing other
commonly food product with self grown items, and that reduces strain on high
yield farm land.

As an example, here in Sweden the urbanization has been identified as a direct
cause for lower biodiversity by land being overgrown with mono culture spruce
forests. The previous small open plots and fields inside forests allowed for a
more diverse environment for animals like birds and insects.

People moving to more rural areas would not top my list of terrible things for
nature, or at least not around here. I do however agree that if everyone went
to live in rural areas we would run out of unused low yield land, so there is
definitely a balance to be made.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> As an example, here in Sweden the urbanization has been identified as a
> direct cause for lower biodiversity by land being overgrown with mono
> culture spruce forests.

Sorry, I don't see how those things are connected. People moving from rural
areas to urban ones caused forests to be dominated by a single species of
tree? What?

~~~
belorn
Some sources in Swedish: [https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/igenvaxning-
gifter-hot](https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/igenvaxning-gifter-hot) and
[https://www2.jordbruksverket.se/webdav/files/SJV/trycksaker/...](https://www2.jordbruksverket.se/webdav/files/SJV/trycksaker/Pdf_ovrigt/ovr3_29.pdf)

Biodiversity depend on diversity in environment, and as I understand it, more
so in colder climate zones. In the last 100 years the decrease in farm land,
grazing areas, and gardens is the primary cause why about 1 300 species is
marked as endangered here in Sweden.

When small plot of open land in the middle of spruce forest (European spruce)
get overgrown here in Sweden, the result is first a stage of small and thick
bushes until later the trees reclaim the once open area. Spruce is the
dominating tree in the southern part of Sweden.

If you are asking why spruce is so dominating you would have to ask a
botanist, but I would suspect the temperature, the soil and access to water as
being the usual suspects for why one type of tree can dominate an area.

I should make it clear that what I describing is the situation in Sweden. Rain
forests are unlikely to have the same need for diversity throigh multiple
small biomes in the same area. The US is pretty large area so I can't really
say if any of its area suffers similar to Sweden, but I would suspect that
Canada do.

The above linked sources (and references research in those) also point that
diversity in how farming is done is also a key part of the decrease
biodiversity. High yield farming of the same plant year in and year out is
directly harmful to diversity. To enable this kind of farming people adds
pesticides and fertilizer, both which links to a decrease in bio diversity
through multiple factors. The redirection of water to more concentrated areas
also pile on the problems for biodiversity. The more uniform and concentrated
the farming become, and the more spill over of pesticides and fertilizer, the
more damage we do to nature. Those aspects is true not only for Sweden but
globally.

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ummonk
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.

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smelendez
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
Having been a few times.... This is a wild exaggeration.

~~~
hoten
Which internet stranger am I to believe?

~~~
DoreenMichele
The one that actually lived there.

~~~
iso947
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
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.

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walshemj
the quote "With its vaulted ceilings, rows of elbow-to-elbow workbenches"

Would make me run away screaming.

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dang
A related thread from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553)

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okdudeok
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
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...

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Keverw
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.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Network/agglomeration effects are a natural thing for many industries,
especially creative/information workers. And while remote tools are improving,
it's still hard to beat on-site collaboration for coordinating teams.

If Google or Amazon or whoever could get enough skilled people to move to
random other cities, they would, because that would obviously save them a lot
of money, both in salaries and office rent. The fact that, for the most part,
they stubbornly stick to pricey tech hubs is itself quite telling.

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finphil
Good read!

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vermooten
I Tulsa. Shame I live in UK.

