Creating a low cost of living EA hub + co-living/co-working space for people trying to effectively change the world for the better seems, to me and many people I've spoken to, like a potentially unusually high value project. This is something I'm personally very interested in (though I've been prioritizing other projects recently), with the plan which seems most promising to me being buying and converting a hotel (with people who want more independant living space renting nearby). Simply picking a location as a schelling point is also an option, but having a place for new arrivals to easily get involved and a founding group moving together to focus on setting up a specific location seems likely to increase the chance of hitting critical mass.
I've created a spreadsheet of countries which have been suggested at some point or seem like they have potential from a glance, and would like to open up information gathering to other interested EAs, so we can to help narrow down the large list and start looking at a few specific locations. Helping out with this is something which anyone can do in a spare few minutes (or suggest to people who want a flexibly sized EA task), pick a box to fill in, check Nomadlist, Teleport, or google relevant things, read, add summary+useful links.
Additionally, Geordie and I created a survey to gauge interest and learn what people want from a new hub. I'd love some feedback on the survey itself (especially from people who've done surveys before and know the kinds of things that we'll probably wish we asked) before we try and widely publiscize it.
Suggestions for names and other countries which are worth investigating are also welcome.
Assorted links for background:
Slack (send me your email for an invite)
I've been thinking of writing an article on the EA Forum for a couple months now, something of a companion article to this one, about cities which have the potential to become EA hubs. This is a different angle of attack than the thinking which has been poured into EA hubs which have are explicitly researched for their low cost-of-living potential. There are a few cities around the world which have the potential to become EA hubs in the same way Oxford or SF are, even if they're not as advantageous as ones in countries with drastically lower living costs. Still, though, it can't be anything but useful to be at least be aware of these options. Other things being equal, as an ecosystem, if EA could or would benefit from a greater diversity of hubs to set roots in, it's good to be aware of that.
AFAICT, the extant, bona fide EA hubs are:
Other potential EA hubs include:
I imagine there are a few more which would qualify. Let me explain what I mean by 'qualify'. Ideally, what I would do is determine what are the common factors between SF, Oxford, Basel, and Melbourne. These would be factors that would, if not directly precipitate the generation of an EA hub, be highly correlated with its rise. Then, I would figure out which other cities share those factors, and speculate/encourage those cities to develop other common factors, such that their potential to become an EA hub is more robust. Such factors include:
The biggest problem here is that whatever it is in the culture of hip cities which draw socially conscientious millenials, that lends themselves to becoming EA hubs, also draws enough people that it makes them very expensive. London is the most expensive city in England, and I'm guessing for a university town, Oxford isn't too cheap either. SF is the most expensive city in the U.S. I hear Melbourne is one of the most expensive cities in Australia. Vancouver is the most expensive city in Canada. Maybe only second to New York, Boston is one of the costliest cities to live in on the American east coast. I know little of Basel, but based on the above, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's expensive to live in.
I think i know what's going on. EA hubs tend to be cities full of people open-minded to experimenting with cutting-edge innovation. Effective altruism is just the mindset of 'cutting-edge thinking' applied to philanthropy and do-gooding. To get a city with cutting-edge innovation and risk-neutral young people, though, comes with high costs of living. This isn't exactly a scientific theory of how EA hubs rise and fall, but I think the relationships here are pretty clear-cut.
The curse of founding a new EA hub is that the places, the local cultures, in which one would ideally want to seed an EA hub are also the most expensive ones. If an exodus of EAs moved to a new city in the developing world, bereft of the 'startup culture' mindset, we might have to build that culture from the ground up, all by ourselves. That seems like it would have high fixed costs, and be very hard to do.
Here are a few data sources for finding cities with a culture or sub-culture that has EA-potential: