Can You Buy A City? 

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Consider the following: if all of us that appreciate walkable cities pitched in we could buy land and incorporate a city and build safe bike lanes

“In the way to his castle…” I like how you just casually reference a man owning a castle and don’t elaborate

Larry Ellison actually owns one of the Hawaiian Islands - Lanai. Edit: “only” 98% of the island

Don't let Amazon or Disney see this video.

if you do buy a city I imagine it one of the most walkable and a pinnacle of urban design

You should take a look at the history of Columbia, MD and Jim Rouse. He designed and built Columbia a unincorporated city of over 100,000 people and run for years by the Rouse company and massive HOA, probably the closest thing over ever seen to a real life sim city.

Bruce Willis and Demi Moore put in together buying up one building at a time repairing the town in which Bruce grew up in, end result was that they owned nearly the entire town.

Warning! that guy Brent and his ghost town are very misleading, he is an investment banker who bought the mining town together with a bunch of rich investment guys. He runs around pretending to be off the grid and a "do it yourself man" but in reality it doesn't look like he's doing much.

"Just because you own a lot of land doesn't mean you control the government." Rosemont, Illinois has entered the chat.

There are a number of villages in the UK that are still owned by a family such as Clovelly in Devon, which is a beautiful fishing village, (which was beautified by Christine Hamlyn in the late 1800s, before then it was mpre akin to a slum). As a hold over from times when almost all villages and some towns would be owned by nobility, church and Knights.

Let's become developers together. Start a money pool!

THANK YOU! I have been wondering about that ever since I first watched the show.

Great video 🎉 now PLEASE do a video on Benicia CA. My city is on the edge of a negative budget and is at a point where changing perspective on development is paramount to the cities success. So many suburbs in the US face this challenge but many go bankrupt or in debt. Please cover this topic as it’s important for people to understand how fast everything can go downhill when the can is kicked down the road. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

I feel like a natural follow up to a video like this is intentional communities and founding your own city. I know you touched on it, but exploring how a person or group might go about it could be an interesting subject.

In France there are a lot of functional hamlets for sale. In most cases the owner has to manage the town himself (and pay for electricity poles and cables, water pipes, maintain roads)

Have a Wonderful New Year's !//thanks

Time for Canada to purchase Detroit. We can probably manage $7 billion.

My dream in life is to start an urbanist development co-op then with that co-op buy a small town and make it the headquarters, make it walkable, bikeable, build good public transit, make it affordable make it beautiful, connect it to bigger cities with good intercity transit, etc.

How about buying a big chunk of vacant land and then building roads, utilities, housing, amenities, etc. Start renting it out to people and you own every square inch of land in the area and can control almost everything. Probably a good idea to write up a contract that tenants can sign so the powers are agreed to by everyone.

Quick note on Massachusetts, that's the required population to incorporate as a city. That's a specific government structure where you don't have an open town meeting but rather elected representatives that run the town government. Towns have open meetings where every resident can vote and the smallest town is Gosnold with a population of 70. I've simplified the difference a bit, smaller towns can use a representative form of government and municipalities that exceed the threshold to become a city can maintain the town meeting form of governance.

"Totally-Not-a-City-Beautiful," California.

There were a couple of ghost towns for sale in British Columbia. One was the town of Kitsault, on the coast at the far end of a fjord. 300 homes, a mall, hospital, curling rink, school, pub, store, etc. Used to be a mining town, till molybdenum collapsed.

There is this prince in the Netherlands that owns an absurd amount of property in the capital city, Amsterdam. It is wild to me that even in 2024 these things are still possible

Can you make a video about the new city proposed in Solano County? Massive acres of farms bought up to build a futuristic new city?

You should do a video on special districts. It's an interesting concept of home rule, and California has a few. There are some unincorporated communities that have formed special districts to obtain their own police forces and lay taxes.

awesome video!

TOPIC REQUEST: annexing. What is it? Are there strategies to prevent it? I recommend that you plan just for fun to buy a town/village, and then build it up into a great town. Another project worth investing in is building medium sized buildings in a university town, where you can find a good pool of renters. Design in the medium sized buildings with commercial on the ground floor. I suggest that the 2nd floor be office space, including medical clinics, lawyer offices, and other private needs. The 3rd floor should be customizable throughout the life of the building. The 4th & 5th floors should be great apartments.

I thought you'd mention Bryce Canyon City (Ruby's Inn), Utah which incorporated under a loophole that was closed behind it.

That New York is worth just 1.3 trillion dollars really puts in perspective that billionaires are richer than any person should ever be.

Would love to come visit when you´re buying Harmony! Blessings

I would love for you to make a video on ghost towns! I live in one in Tasmania that was bought for around a million dollars and repopulated. In Tasmania there have been a few of these ghost towns sold, they used to be worker villages during the construction of hydro-electric power stations.

Hi, could you make an episode about how to design cities in desert countries? I have been living in Abu Dhabi for almost three years now and there are some unique challenges. At the same time, car centricism seems to to universal. Your videos mainly focus on cities in temperate climate zones, but since cities are everywhere, maybe you can make a video in how to make a city in hot dry climates nice for people. Not just for cars, like here.

I love this, can you do one for owning a country?

Nevada considered allowing companies to be given powers similar to a county government if they bought large pieces of land and met investment targets. It was called "Innovation Zones." It was very unpopular with the livestock, feral hotses and the few people that live in the wide empty land.

The Detroit at $7B number got me a little. I am curious how much of that $7B in property is controlled by Dan Gilbert, and the Ford and Illitch families.

Cool video concept - and well done. how did we not talk about Disney World and Columbia Md?

For my state of North Dakota it’s 500 residents for something to become a city.

Surprised you didn’t discuss the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District / Reedy Creek Improvement District, and the idea of company towns in general.

I thought this was a real investment video. The thumbnail is really good! Glad to see Ghost Town Living mentioned!

It does bring up what a city is. Around the world, different things make a city, a town, or a village. I come from Cornwall, and for years, people have been trying to determine whether Truro is a city; I think for the last few years, they have said it is.

Can you do a video on Irvine and the Irvine company / Donald Bren. Very interesting development story. Man just basically built / planned a town of 300k over like 50 years.

I was waiting for you to tie in the recent story of Solano into this video: buy the land, build it yourself. Still similar outcome as others with cities but control of it is more important than ownership. Tax & fee power = $$$$$. Heck, if you can install a speed trap for your one block because the rest of the road is 40+, you might be able to pay it & live there for free, with speed cameras of course-don’t need to mix with those passing through😉

Mark Cuban bought an incorporated city in Texas called Mustang. It's basically just some rural land that used to have a mobile home park and a night club/liquor store, but I think most of the buildings/trailers are gone now and no one lives there anymore.

Kim Basinger used to own Braselton, GA

You touched on incorporation minimums in the video, and it reminded me of a question I've had for a while: should there be incorporation _maximums_ as well? At what point, if any, might a place be populated enough and dense enough that local governance becomes a necessity rather than a suggestion? And what would the justifications for that decision be?

89% of the population of Coober Pedy, South Australia voted against incorporation but the state forced them to incorporate anyway so they could tax them.

The town of Otis, Oregon comes up for sale like clockwork every eight years or so.

Yes, Hearst Castle and the Central Coast!

I've been to Campo; it was a Japanese internment camp in WW2. As I remember the main building where families were crammed together still existed and I believe it was then (1980s) being used as a Bible Camp. Nothing else there really.

I was wondering if you might touch on the planned city in Solano County, California. A bunch of local land was brought there.

Haven't you heard about the tech bros who want to build a Silicon Valley 2.0 from scratch in northern California? What could possibly go wrong? Up here near the top of the state the unincorporated town of Bridgeville put itself up for sale a few years ago; sadly they didn't get any takers; it's a beautiful area on the banks of the Van Duzen River.

Could you make or point to videos of companies building cities from the ground up and how they get that done?

There's an interesting example in upstate New York that I was wondering if this video would address: Kiryas Joel. This is a village that was incorporated based on land purchased by a group of Hasidim and populated by their followers, and I had heard of it described as a "private town", although it appears that legally speaking that is not accurate. It's got a population of 30,000+, which is pretty significant.

I've heard that Bruce Willis once tried to buy all of Hailey Idaho.

What about the 3x3 Super Block design where Pedestrians and motorists can coexist like in Barcelona Spain? It deserves its own video

@citybeautiful The closest situation that this topic brings to mind is the Bryce Canyon City outside the national park. The city is essentially owned by one family though a loophole that has been closed.

I laughed at "I'll take one Pittsburgh, please." As my neighborhood in that fair city is currently being torn up to install new utilities, I might advise the buyer to keep the receipt. But I digress. : ) There is a small suburb west of the city, though, called Pennsbury Village. It's very tiny -- the whole place was originally developed as a townhouse community, then incorporated as a borough, separating it from whatever township it had been part of before. Since the entire community consists of one residential development, I suppose it could be an example of Level 4 in action.

Hmm... Boca Chica, Texas, might have something to say about this... 😅

Would be great to include examples like the purchase of Buford WY by Vietnamese business men, and Hollywood celebrities with Kim Basinger in GA, Bruce Willis in ID, Johnny Depp in France, etc.

In my opinion, the construction of a floating city-state-society outside territorial waters and existing jurisdictions is an interesting idea. Although with a high probability, people will bring with them all the defects of existing societies.

What if you buy both properties and debts of a city and then privatized public services? If you become the creditor of the city and know it can't pay off debt, like Detroit at it's lowest, can you then stipulate how the city is run as a mean to collect the debts? You don't need to have it paid off since having the debt paid off would mean you have no reason to stipulate any control.

The family that owns Ruby's Inn managed to incorporate Bryce Canyon City and maintain power.

New Morgan in Pennsylvania is an example of creating a new town. The owner wanted to earn money dealing with trash and didn’t want to deal with nimbys, so he created a new town with 10 residents.

an old friend of mines family owns many towns and cities in Canada the land was given to their ancestors through a royal land grant from England hundreds of years ago, there are thousands of people who descend from that original family who receive money from it

I want to live in a town planned by you!!!

Need to make it sustainable. A construction or land development company can do this along with a transport company to build public transport and mixed use neighbourhoods. Then, as development continues, sell individual properties for homes, businesses, schools, and so on. Don't know if it can be economically sustainable though. Maybe only governments can do that. It also helps population to spread out more and keeps property prices affordable.

My town of 45k was bought for 500 million dollars in 2006. The guy bought the downtown and 1200 homes. It's now a way better town with a pretty cool college campus and research center.

From Bob Marely song about Sheriff sometimes mayor is not boss of city :)

One thing I've been curious about, could a ghost town be adapted for a livable tiny home community?

The big ❓ can change zone law and add more

I suppose you could do what Disney did if someone's zoning policy let you? (But I'm guessing trying to do things your own way inside the territory of any city is not going to be possible most times, and so at least within some city the only remaining option is to just to work out some way of efficiently cranking out what you can sell there, easily. Or not bother with that and just invest in something else.) Personally, I'd err on the don't bother, and look for something more appealing side. Could you build what's effectively a city as a "gated community" on non-urban land? Don't incorporate; just build a de facto city. There's something a bit like that in the Johannesburg region in South Africa - although it's just a slighty fancier version of Earth-anywhere, so presumably had to align with all the standard preconceptions to be "legislatively viable". I forget what its name is. Nice enough for what it is, but not something I'm going to invest any of my billions in. Maybe rather put it into something like a Ferrari demolition derby, given the lack of choices? Maybe it would be better to build drug rehab centres out in the countryside? I think you're allowed to do that. Make them ultra-luxury, and see if money actually can buy happiness after all. Give all residents the use of a Ferrari while there. That might give them something other than drugs to live for. Or have a fake money casino that spits out huge clouds of fake money most times someone spins a roulette wheel. And have a strip club where the strippers are all grandmothers who've had major surgery (so that they can also be happy feeling rich and becoming qualified to be politicians on the real rich payroll.) It's a corner. No way out, so all the crazy ideas arrive.

what about company towns? don't companies own them?

I’ve just downloaded Ground news.

"You don't want any one person to have video game power..." Um, no. You absolutely do. Thats like, literally half the reason to even do it.

They used to have company towns which was basically a sim city

Hello from Hughes County 👋

Buy that town! buy that town! Where can I buy my share?

The majority of the "town" of Campo is owned by the county but much of the rest has one owner. Most of the property is former barracks buildings converted into a little over 20 apartments. It also houses the post office, VFW, church, hardware/ranch supply store, and a few other mostly empty buildings. I've been told in the 90s the owner found out her husband had a girlfriend, so she got rid of him and the property. Sold for only $2,000,000.

In my country you cannot buy a town, not even a ghost town. You may buy all the *buildings*, private gardens, etc., in a town, but streets (and such) will always be public access places, you cannot just fence them off and impede access to the general public. (Public streets may in some occasions become private, but that is usually as a result of a land swap: a public entity acquires private land for some public usage - e.g. a new road - and compensates its previous owners by giving back some hitherto public land - e.g. and old and now unnecessary road.) Something different is, for example, abandoned "mining towns" (in fact, "miners' neighbourhoods" in mining complexes). However big they might have been in their heyday, they were never real towns. Their streets were never public space, so you can buy those. But in any case, your so-called "mining town" will always be under the jurisdiction of an actual town (a municipality, a public entity). There are no "unincorporated communities" in my country. In fact, there is no unincorporated territory: every single m2 of territory is incorporated in some municipality, even uninhabited islands where you cannot go because they are a full nature reserve (e.g. Ilhas Selvagens - population: thousands of Calonectris borealis - are part of the municipality of Funchal - 300 km away).

if you owned 100% or you know close of an incorporated city would you be able to effect the zoning?

2:35 To those interested, Maggie Mae Fish did a nice essay on the controversies regarding Ghost Town Living

What if all the residents jointly bought their own town? Could the people create their own local style of government, like create a council as a method of governance?

In Ohio, an incorporated area can/does petition the state for city status once their population reaches 5,000. Villages like New Carlisle, Clayton near Dayton, and Canal Winchester and Pickerington, near Columbus are such examples.

What about buying a town and turning it into a resort town?

How about Larry Ellison and Lanai Island, which has a city called Lanai City? (Technically the government is out there)

I know this is off topic but it the city thing at the beginning actually a game. If so what’s it called?

what about Irvine CA?

In Fairhope, Alabama, I believe you don't own your land but you technically rent it for 99 years (and then can rent it again for another 99). I don't remember all of the details from my 5th grade field trip.

I’m surprised you didn’t discuss company towns like Pullman, IL, or Fordlândia. Particularly relevant given Musk’s proposal for Snailbrook, TX.

How does this work with company towns?

What about Greenland?

Bryce Canyon City in Utah is run by a single family.

Feels like the figure for Detroit is off considering that that the Gordie Howe bridge is almost $7 Billion. That doesn't even include things like a $3 Billion Medical Center, $1.5 Billion campus, and a $1.5 Billion skyscraper that is suppose to be done this year.

Is there a video about electric wires

what's up with the pokemon Pidove at 7:17?

I wish we could bring back small towns. With small towns we have small businesses and depending on the size people will know each other and look after each other.

What if it is like a company town. You own the company, all the residents are living in the company dormitory. This seems a little bit closer to owning a town.

See Vernon, CA and City of Industry, CA only allow employees to reside in your city and then dare your employees to not vote for you.

But, can I establish a residential and commercial compound in a remote area and control it like Disney does with its own?