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Ask HN: Why can’t big cities buy up small towns?

10 points by b0ner_t0ner ↗ HN
If big corporations can buy up smaller companies, then why can’t big cities buy up small towns?

Countless dying small towns in the US have had their population numbers decline over the years with many young people and families moving to bigger cities. You see so many “Help Wanted” signs at different restaurants and shops with nobody fill these positions. Similarly, other small towns in the US South get hit by massive floods, tornadoes and hurricanes year after year and yet, they still rebuild in the same place.

So why don’t big cities like New York City buy up some of these small towns, help move the people, give them priority (affordable / subsidized) housing, help them find jobs and invite them to integrate with a larger community?

Wouldn’t it be a positive for everyone involved? Some of the changes:

  • People earning minimum wage in a small town with no future now have much bigger and better opportunities and choices in a big city
  • Small town folks who get moved to a big cities will be exposed to a much larger culture (some may not have even seen or talked to black people or Asians in person); not to mention all the different foods they’d get exposed to
  • The small towns are demolished and are turned back into what they were 100+ years ago fixing the environment: forests, swamps or land given back to the Aboriginals
  • No more re-building homes in these tornado / flooded / hurricane damaged small towns year after year; it’s not wise and it’s just a waste of time, money and resources

24 comments

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phillipseamore
People live in small towns, because they want to live in small towns.
b0ner_t0ner
Fair point, understand that some babies never want to leave their cribs.
slillibri
Wow, this is an incredibly rude and dismissive reply. To respond in the most charitable way, we need small towns to provide goods and services to rural areas. We need these rural areas because that is where the farms are. Regardless of whether they are local or corporate farms, we need people to work there to provide food to the urban centers. This is why some people want to live in small cities, and why we need small towns.
disneygibson
About the last thing people in small towns want are arrogant city folks coming in, kicking them out, and moving them to a nightmarish megacity. It might come as a surprise to denizens of coastal cities, but no one in a small town looks at NYC or SF and thinks it’s a successful, nice place to live.

If you want to help small towns, push for more remote work. There is absolutely zero reason why millions need to be crammed in a single geographic location when we all work online anyway.

I’m honestly not sure if this post is satire.

GDC7
> but no one in a small town looks at NYC or SF and thinks it’s a successful, nice place to live

Cities are like poker tables, whereas countries are like a casino. Sitting at the highest poker table in the casino means nothing, to make it worthwhile you have to actually win and thrive at it, otherwise you'd be miserable, losing each and every hand.

If the US is a casino, then NYC , LA, SF, Chicago are the big tables. But each and every player has a goal to win as much money as they can with the least effort...and in order to do that sitting at the biggest tables might not be the best strategy after all. In fact it could be the worse strategy of all.

> There is absolutely zero reason why millions need to be crammed in a single geographic location when we all work online anyway.

If you think the level of your game is up with the pros and you want to sit at the big tables then you might as well go physically there to take advantage of all the positive effects of playing 24/7/365.

Same reason why people want to go to Vegas , Atlantic City and Macao to play poker instead of simply playing online.

Volundr
> If you think the level of your game is up with the pros and you want to sit at the big tables then you might as well go physically there to take advantage of all the positive effects of playing 24/7/365.

Uhhh what? Ignoring that there is more to life than making as much money as possible, I'm currently working remotely for a company based in one of these areas and doing quite well, so I guess I can "play with the pros", but what possible advantage do I get by giving up my $1k/month mortgage and no commute to go pay twice that for a studio apartment and a traffic jam?

GDC7
> play with the pros

The thing is that when you live in a big city you never stop playing, once you are done competing in the work setting you actually start competing in the social setting.

WHile working remotely for a company based out of NYC/LA/SF you are at those poker tables, but only during the time you work, so that makes it an 8/5/210 vs. a 24/7/365.

You miss out on the serendepity and the social part which is equally as important and can give you the biggest breaks.

Volundr
I honestly do not understand what your getting at here. I think your suggesting my career is diminished because... I don't spend every waking minute with my co-workers or others in my profession? I wouldn't do that if I lived in NYC/LA/SFC either, I have no desire to be on 24/7/365, especially for the vague benefit of "serendipity".

If your career only advances because you went to the bar with your co-workers your workplace is broken. And I bet I'll find a far better start up partner at a hackathon or a conference (or just at work) than the local pub.

GDC7
Competition is not solely about the working environment.

Competition also happens in the social environment both during working hours with co-workers but most importantly once you clock out.

Once you clock out the competition moves to other venues: the bar, the club, the parking lot, the gym, the shooting range...

Each of those venues is embedded in the big city.

If you frequent certain places in NYC/LA and you know how to carry yourself and are socially competent, sooner rather than later you'd be offered a role in some independent film.

Also Poker games, big sport events which double as networking opportuinities, tennis clubs, yacht clubs....

Volundr
I powerlift in my spare time. I have a group of friends who do so, we both compete and encourage each other. I fail to see how this is somehow better because we're doing it in LA. As for the idea that the shooting range is "embedded" in the big city like it's something I can't get in the rural US... just weird.

As for getting offered roles, I haven't had any issues. Oddly their generally based on my work skill-set and my professional network built up over a career of doing good work and delivering results while empowering my reports to do the same, not being "socially competent" at the tennis club.

[dead] Jotra7
The last thing people in cities want are Dunning-Kruger addled rural yokels coming in with their racism, sexism, and ignorance.
seanmcdirmid
> but no one in a small town looks at NYC or SF and thinks it’s a successful, nice place to live.

The kids do, which is why these places suffer from massive brain/youth drain. The kids are bored in the small towns and see their future in a more exciting big city. Sometimes they are disillusioned and come back, often they don’t.

sgt
Cities don't actually have that much disposable money. Also - cities deprioritize the poor and struggling.

Aside from the humaniarian aspect, does it really make much sense spending millions on trying to rescue meth and fentanyl addicts? I doubt most tax payers would agree.

willio58
Over the long term tax payers would probably save money if there were no drug addicts on the street. Less taxes to pay for healthcare when they get sick, prison sentences when they get punished for an illness, and you don’t have to pay for the foster system for each child they have.
JaimeThompson
How many people are considered a small town? Honestly I have no idea.
asdfasgasdgasdg
Because this wouldn't benefit voters in big cities. As a general rule, political units don't do things that are totally disconnected from the wellbeing of the people who control the leadership. That doesn't mean cities always behave optimally in the interest of their constituents, but you won't see too much in the way of making arbitrary investments that are completely disconnected and actually against the interests of city dwellers.
shmatt
In the U.S, big cities are dealing with a huge housing crisis. There aren't enough residential units for all its residents. You would have to fix that crisis (neighborhoods and politicians banning high rises, etc.) before that could be done

What would actually make sense, if you want to continue your idea. Is for cities to buy said towns, take over the zoning, build 1000 x 50 floor buildings and export people from the big cities to the towns. This would be more similar to what happened in China in the last decade or so

Cities are busting at the seams, we need people to leave, not come in

PeterisP
The simple thing is that towns (as the "organizational unit", not the individual plots of land, which are mostly owned by many private individuals/companies) aren't some property that have an owner which can sell them, the municipalities/counties/whatever are determined by the state constitution and government. Municipalities can be merged (or split) in various ways depending on the state, but it's a political decision, not a free market.

Also, there's no option for people to "get moved" - you can offer incentives for them to move, but they have the right to stay on their property and to vote for people who promise to maintain their local infrastructure instead of transferring them somewhere else.

Furthermore, in the specific example situation you describe, there's a significant expense to NYCity (essentially, buying up lots of valuable land and abandoning it) and no clear benefit for the citizens of NY City, which their government is supposed to represent. Why would people of NYC support spending their taxes on subsidies to some other town's people and explicitly giving housing priority to "others" over the current voters of NYC? The incentives don't seem to be aligned there.

b0ner_t0ner
> Why would people of NYC support spending their taxes on subsidies to some other town's people and explicitly giving housing priority to "others" over the current voters of NYC?

If you see people’s homes get destroyed year after year, wouldn’t it be of service to help these climate-crisis refugees move to safer cities rather than waste the tax money to help them rebuild their home only to get destroyed again next year?

PeterisP
I don't see how that's related - the tax coffers of NYC (which is not the same as e.g. federal budget) are currently not being used to help rebuild the flooded houses in smaller cities; and it would not make sense for NYC to start using the NYC's infrastructure money for fixing problems of other municipalities.
recursivedoubts
That's as ridiculous as asking "Why can't big people buy small people?" or "Why can't big countries buy small countries?"

Wait...

mcphage
“Why does Ross, the largest friend, simply not eat up the other friends?”
dragonwriter
> If big corporations can buy up smaller companies, then why can’t big cities buy up small towns?

Because cities aren't property, so there is nothing to buy. In the US, they can merge, if the citizens of each agree to terms that are permissible in law and the relevant outside regulators are satisfied (e.g., currently in California, the county Local Agency Formation Commission, if the two are in the same county; if they are in neighboring counties, the county and state governments become involved.) It even happens sometimes.

But, mostly, people don't want to dilute their vote in local government; so they are more likely to for some kind of Joint Powers Authority for shared purposes than to merge, unless one existing local government is completely nonviable.

> So why don’t big cities like New York City buy up some of these small towns, help move the people, give them priority (affordable / subsidized) housing, help them find jobs and invite them to integrate with a larger community?

Big cities don't have unlimited budgets, and have enough problems supporting their own indigent populations. Why, even if there weren't any administrative barriers, would they literally pay their money to get a giant additional set of problems, and put a whole new indigent population ahead of local citizens in need, and drive up local costs with demand pressure, making the local poor even worse off?

> Wouldn’t it be a positive for everyone involved?

No.

> People earning minimum wage in a small town with no future now have much bigger and better opportunities and choices in a big city

Well, they'd be unemployed in a vig city competing in a market with a influx of unemployment new locals as well as all the people already competing for local jobs, in a much more expensive to live place. This is...not an improvement.

> Small town folks who get moved to a big cities will be exposed to a much larger culture

Well, they'll be physically proximate to it in the shelters for which they are given priority. But I’m not sure big city shelter residents are typically exposed to much culture, and given the expenses of the big city, getting out of shelters may be difficult.

> The small towns are demolished and are turned back into what they were 100+ years ago fixing the environment: forests, swamps or land given back to the Aboriginals

So, if the big city buyout is good for everyone, we are going to exclude the indigenous population because fuck them, right?

But, sure, if this is a method for Land Back, indigenous people might be the one winners from it.

> No more re-building homes in these tornado / flooded / hurricane damaged small towns

A number of big cities are sites of recurrent natural disasters which require regular repair and revuildingt. It’s not like therr are no population centers in hurricane / tornado / earthquake / flooding areas.

I’ll notice that you don't even suggest any benefits for the big city residents that are supposed to pay for the buyouts and then pay again by being deprioritized for local services in your “good for everyone” scenario.

[dead] HuwytNashi080
Unbelievable that someone considers big city life objectively superior (hint: on the odd occasion we need to go there, we get in and out as quickly as possible, while you consider an escape to the country a relaxing treat); that someone from a concrete jungle would lecture country people on fixing the environment; that the "culture" of cities is something appealing rather than repulsive... Just unbelievable.

I would sooner die than live within an hour of a large modern Western city. Yet more evidence the 'people' there have no soul.