One of my hobby is to study self-managed cities, from the positivist communes in South America in the 1800s to today. Many of those communities aren't online, so I've found that the best way to gather information is to visit one of those communities, make friends with locals, and follow the Ariadne threads of their subculture. ## List of communities - Auroville in Tamil Naidu - Ubunto - South African communities - Fair Field in Iowa - Anastasia in Russia. - Close to nature. Huge gardens, ~10k m2. Many generations in the same garden. Near Black Sea. They sold 60 gardens so far. - 12 Tribes in Australia - Harry Krishan in Australia ## Auroville [[Auroville private notes]] Auroville is a self-managed city in Tamil Naidu, with a long history of spirituality with some of India's most prominent mystics of the last century, and a counter-culture fueled by immigration following France's 1968 events. The notes below are parcellaire and not yet organized, but I'm sharing them given so little is available about Auroville's state management online. ## Is Auroville a functioning state? [Auroville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroville) is a magical place in many ways, where spirituality permeates all interactions, and where in a rather cliche way, grandparents, parents, and children danse together in local concerts. The city is proudly self-managed and has been so for more than 50 years, quite a feat for a population that reached 3,000 people. This led me to want to investigate whether Auroville is a sustainable model that can be replicated and scaled, leading me to interview several local government sources. The answer was somewhat disappointing, as you can read in the notes I've yet to clean, below. **The economy sucks** - Salaries capped at 20k rupees/mth = ~$240/mth - It costs $10k to $50k to get a private house, which goes back to the state if you leave town for 5y+. You can’t sell the house, the state gets it back. Most people go out of town for 3 to 6 months a year to get money, and come back to buy a house. - All the kids run away to make money. You can’t buy an iPhone with Auroville’s maintenance "salary". The only way to be able to be rich enough to buy a phone, put aside working outside of town, is to own a unit (aka business). Then you can expense your lifestyle (car, iphone, etc). - "The governments sucks, it takes 5y to build anything" **The government is broke** - Auroville dies without tourism - The Matrimandir parking number suggests 800k tourists visit every year, an order of magnitude higher than what the locals say. The number has been going up by 100k per year for the last 3-4 years. - Businesses hate the government, because - regulations change every 6 months. So it’s all power games, it’s about who you know in the government - since there is no private property, you can only launch a business for the state - you’ll never own any shares, your salary will never go up, you can never own land - getting a business permits take forever, from a year to 10 years. For example, the bakery took 5y to get a building permit for a bathroom on the land they were already operating since the 1980s. They finally built it circa 2020. - Government gets pissed of people make profits, so the businesses don’t show profits, and now the government’s broke. It would need $10M more per year in taxes. - As a result, most local now build their business outside of town - Turnover of INR 3,600M per year = ~$45M/year - 40% is from selling houses **Governance works through representative democracy** - All the power is vested in the Residents Assembly, aka all aurovillians above 18. They then delegate power down to committees. - Examples of working groups - Funds and Assessment Management Committee - someone from the committee said: “we may be called FAMC, but we don’t know where the assets are” - Walking Committee - handles visa, external affaires, etc - Town Development Committee - How do they pick people? - “the process changes every year”. The latest one is: they select people randomly. People who accept go on 2 weekends, first to train, 2nd to select a working group. - If you get 60 signatures, anyone can call a referundum. - There's are government tension between city people vs forest people, with an oscillation of power every 20 years. **Auroville's land** - There’s not cadastre, so a lot of people have been stealing land by moving the border post by a meter every year. - Auroville bought lands but stole the papers sometimes! And villagers sometimes created registry forgeries, it's a shitshow - Auroville chose to exclude neighboring villages, create animosity, and now will never be able to buy the land necessary for... the phase 1 of their development! They should have learned to instead ingest their neighbors or buy them out. Other source of information: Failed Utopia podcast by Anna Roberts. ### Auroville logistics 2023 - Jan-Feb is the only time where the weather is bearable - Need to live inside the city to be allowed in the Matrimandir. Prices are ~3x compared to living right outside. - Closest airport is Chennai. - The best eSim provider seems to be Airtel ([source](https://www.nperf.com/en/map/IN/1259425.Puducherry/1991549.Airtel-Mobile/download/?ll=12.002578638297358&lg=79.80950575321914&zoom=15)) - For gas, go to the large station in the North West of town. The sellers in the South East consistently try scamming foreigners. - A full-time helper is just ~$100/month! This explains why most physical labors are done by locals. - Paying: most places don’t take the card, only cash. The Auroville payment system is quite buggy and requires deep trust from people, but this might change as local devs are revamping it (in Elixir!) and building an interface with India's local payment system.