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Show Notes:
Welcome to the Freedom Cities Podcast, a short-form series by the Charter Cities Institute & the Frontier Foundation. In each episode, we sit down with innovators, entrepreneurs & thought leaders to explore how Freedom Cities can drive innovation and economic growth.
In this episode of the Freedom Cities podcast, Mark Lutter speaks with Joshua Abbotoy, a lawyer-turned-developer building town and country charter communities in rural Tennessee and Kentucky. Josh shares his vision for creating thriving rural hubs where digital connectivity, manufacturing, and venture culture intersect. Learn how he’s attracting entrepreneurs, fostering innovation, and leveraging Bitcoin adoption to revitalize Appalachia.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Joshua is building town and country charter communities in rural areas.
- The project aims to connect rural lifestyles with the digital economy.
- They aspire to develop tens of thousands of acres in Appalachia.
- The community targets a diverse demographic, from young professionals to wealthy individuals.
- He believes in the demand for a rural lifestyle among Americans.
- Economic decentralization is key to revitalizing distressed regions.
- He sees potential for Bitcoin adoption in local businesses.
- Appalachia’s natural beauty and history present unique opportunities for growth.
Transcript
[INTRO]
Welcome to the Freedom Cities Podcast where we explore bold new ideas and city building and improving regulations in the United States.
[INTRO ENDS]
Joshua: My name is Joshua Abbatoy and I am working in undisclosed locations in rural Tennessee and Kentucky, doing what I’m calling town and country charter communities.
But these are communities that take advantage of how digital dynamics have allowed economic decentralization, new economic activity in areas that are historically rural, heavily rural and sleepy. And I’m opening them up to new markets, to people who are interested in leading rural lives while being fully connected to the 21st-century digital economy and bringing the amenities, the businesses, the communal spaces that people look for when they decide to make a move anywhere, but particularly when they’re looking to move to a rural area.
So, I operate on the shores of the Cumberland River, Tennessee, Kentucky.
Mark: Great. So can you give us a little bit more detail on that? Like what stage are you in? How much land are you targeting? How many people do you want to live there? What life are these kinds of recent college graduates or these people with kids? They want to settle down? Let’s get a little more into the weeds.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. So we currently have thousands of acres and ultimately aspire to get up to tens of thousands of acres. We’re operating in a very fractal way. So, it matches the geography of the region. But we’re creating what you might call rural clusters. So we’ll buy and develop farms, make them build-ready. In some cases, we build. We already have our first developments for sale. We’ve made a number of sales to date, and then we have some of our biggest forthcoming developments coming in the next couple of months.
I’m sitting in an office that is a shared work concept, and so some of the people who’ve bought out here, you know, opt to rent an office or a desk in this shared workplace. We envision doing many more of those actually as we bring people out. The demographics that we reach, they’re a wide range between sort of early-stage career folks all the way up to folks that have a decent degree of independent wealth from crypto or venture investing.
Mark: Great. And looking at 10, 20 years, let’s say you’re as successful as you hope to be. What does it look like then?
Joshua: Yeah, I hope in 10 or 20 years there’s a wide swath of Western Appalachia—so this is sort of Tennessee and Kentucky—that has thriving small towns, very interesting businesses, and very interesting people kind of running around in the country, enjoying everything that nature has to offer here, but also having the connections and clusters in a fractal manner throughout the region of very interesting business opportunities. I want to see a thriving venture culture. Similarly, we’re taking great strides towards crypto. So I hope to see, in a lot of these cases, we’re sitting at the seat that’s inviting businesses out here. And so, trying to drive Bitcoin adoption amongst the businesses to the extent we can is a big priority. And we think that we will have a number of spots within our broader project that are Bitcoin hubs or where there’s a critical mass of Bitcoin adoption.
Cool, great. And we recently met over Freedom Cities. So what got you excited about Freedom Cities?
Joshua: I think a lot of American cities are walking dinosaurs. They have this heavy structure that’s hard to just come up and change. And it was all born in the, you know, well, 19th century and then tacked on the 20th century. At this point, they have significant inertia. And of course, that’s with regulation, that’s with even just the physical shape of the city.
And I think that, in the 21st century, with the way that the economy is evolving, there is significant opportunity to build just great new cities. There’s the economic side, which is just that we need to kind of disrupt supply lines and proximity of different businesses. And then there’s sort of the culture and the human side, which is that people prioritize walkability and aesthetics. So many of our great American cities have old designs that are very locked in, that were very subject to the car or various other historical contingencies that may or may not be relevant.
At every Freedom City, I think that, nationally, it’s really important that as a nation we prove to ourselves we can build new cities again that people want to live in and want to do business in. And of course, that’s a great goal. But, you know, there’s a lot of parts of the country where that’s exceptionally difficult. And so, I think that having federal regulatory assistance and chopping through some of the red tape that surrounds people with big dreams for cities is massive. I think it’s really resonant with the overall mood of the country right now, which is people are feeling hopeful about the future, and they’re feeling like they want to try, they want to experiment, they want to build, they want to rapidly iterate.
Mark: Why Appalachia?
Joshua: Appalachia, I think, in some ways, is sort of like America’s first frontier, and it’s still our last frontier in a lot of ways. Appalachia has been a historically distressed region. Many parts of this region lost 30% of their population after World War II when the big factories opened in Ohio and Michigan. And it’s an area that has tremendous natural beauty and natural assets. Of course, people know about electricity and all the hydroelectric that we have out here. That’s all part of it. You know, it’s beautiful.
And I would say that historically, it’s a tough region to travel. And so, if you’ve got a job that requires you to be in a city or something like that, it’s been a tough region. But economic decentralization really opens that up. In Tennessee, we see it with X.AI data centers going into relatively small towns and bringing out a very interesting cross-section of, you know, white-collar workers down to blue-collar workers. And so as you start to have this possibility of meaningful economic activity and hubs emerging, then the geographic remoteness of Appalachia stops being a big impediment to economic growth. And so we’re seeing that now.
I think in 20 years, Appalachia, a lot of the small towns in this area, are going to look very different. They’re going to have a lot of life back. A lot of these towns are half vacant right now. And, you’ll see a lot of these old downtowns that are full of life and economic activity again. It’s an area that’s got good fundamentals. The people who live here already are wonderful people. And there’s an opportunity for this economic decentralization to sort of lift all the boats. And so I think that’s what we’re going to see out here. Hopefully, that’s certainly what we’re working toward.
Mark: Great, thanks so much for coming on the Freedom Cities Podcast.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely.
Mark: How can listeners find you or follow you and stay up to date?
Joshua: Yeah, mainly you can find me @BYZNESS on Twitter and then you can find our company at RidgeRunnerUSA.com.
Mark: Great. Thanks so much for coming on.
Joshua: Yeah, Thank you.
[OUTRO]
Mark: This is Mark Lutter and thanks for joining the Freedom Cities Podcast, if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe and stay tuned to more episodes.
