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What makes a node?
If you're scouting a location, this is the checklist. It covers the country, the city, the land, and the life on campus. None of it is exotic. A good node is simply a place where hundreds of people from everywhere can arrive easily, live well, and build things.
The big picture
What a node actually is.
- ✓500 people living, working and learning on one campus, with room to grow to 2,000.
- ✓Walkable by design. Home, gym, office and dinner within a few minutes on foot.
- ✓International by default. Residents from 70+ countries, so everything below serves foreigners first.
- ✓Built to last. A place people stay for months or years, not a pop-up event.
The country
Can people get in, stay legally, and do business?
- ✓Easy entry. Visa-free entry or simple e-visas for most nationalities. If half the residents need embassy appointments, the node fails before it starts.
- ✓Ways to stay. Digital nomad visas, startup visas, or long-term permits with painless renewals. A 30-day tourist stamp is not enough for people moving their lives.
- ✓Boring politics. Stable government, predictable rules, and contracts that hold up in court.
- ✓A welcome mat. A state and a local community that actually want the project there. This is the one that sinks locations that look perfect on paper.
- ✓Easy business. Fast company registration, modern banking, international payments, real IP protection.
- ✓Clean dealings. Low corruption and reliable property rights, for the campus and for every startup born on it.
Getting there
The campus should feel close to the rest of the world.
- ✓Airport within 45 minutes. An international one, not a regional strip.
- ✓Direct or one-stop flights to the big hubs: Singapore, Dubai, London, Bengaluru, Tokyo, Hong Kong, San Francisco.
The city
A node plugs into a living city. It does not bootstrap one from nothing.
- ✓A real startup scene. Founders, investors, meetups and hackathons already happening.
- ✓Universities nearby. A pipeline of engineers and researchers within commuting range.
- ✓Warmth toward foreigners. A place where newcomers make local friends, not just other expats.
- ✓Affordable long-term living. Comfortable on a builder's budget, not just a banker's.
- ✓Safe streets. Walking home at midnight should be unremarkable.
- ✓Safe for women, specifically. Not the city's average safety: whether women can live, commute, run and go out alone as freely as everyone else. A city where half the community must plan around fear fails, whatever else it offers.
- ✓Good hospitals. Quality care within 20 minutes, for emergencies and everyday health.
The land
Enough room to build for 500 and grow to 2,000.
- ✓25 acres minimum. 40 to 60 is ideal. A future flagship wants 100+.
- ✓Buildable ground. Flat terrain, stable soil, low flood risk.
- ✓Connected. Good road access and fiber internet available at the site.
- ✓Expandable. Adjacent land or a master plan that leaves room to grow.
Living on campus
Around 280 homes for 500 residents, in a deliberate mix.
- ✓Mostly studios and one-bedrooms, because most residents come alone.
- ✓Shared apartments for people who want roommates and a lower rent.
- ✓Family apartments, so joining doesn't mean leaving your family behind.
- ✓Guest suites for visitors, speakers and family passing through.
Learning and building
The reason people come.
- ✓A 500-seat auditorium plus lecture halls and seminar rooms for talks and courses.
- ✓24/7 library and coworking. Some people's best hours start at midnight.
- ✓AI and GPU labs, a makerspace, and workshop classrooms for hands-on work.
- ✓Podcast and recording studios for people who build audiences, not just products.
- ✓Startup offices and meeting rooms, phone booths, a demo hall, an investor lounge.
- ✓Practical support. Legal and accounting help on hand for incorporating and hiring.
Staying healthy
Health is built into the day, not bolted on.
- ✓A serious gym, pool, running track and cycling paths.
- ✓Yoga and meditation spaces for the quieter side of training.
- ✓Sauna, cold plunge and recovery center.
- ✓Courts and a sports hall for games that make strangers into friends.
Food and the everyday
Nobody should waste an hour a day figuring out lunch.
- ✓A central cafeteria with healthy meal plans as the default.
- ✓Vegetarian, vegan and halal kitchens, because 70 countries eat 70 ways.
- ✓A café, a bakery, a convenience store for everything in between.
- ✓A community dining hall, because shared tables are where the community actually forms.
Infrastructure that never blinks
Remote workers forgive almost anything except bad internet.
- ✓Two fiber providers on a 10 Gbps backbone, plus backup internet.
- ✓Backup generators, with solar preferred for the daily load.
- ✓Campus-wide Wi-Fi and 5G that work in every room and on every lawn.
- ✓Round-the-clock operations. Security, a medical clinic, maintenance, housekeeping, and a community team that knows your name.
- ✓Built sustainably. Rainwater harvesting, recycling, EV charging, green building standards.
Distances that matter
Maximum travel times from the front gate.
| International airport | 45 min |
| Technology park | 20 min |
| Major hospital | 20 min |
| University | 20 min |
| City center | 30 min |
| Beach or nature | 30 min |
The test
Scores aside, a location passes when a resident can honestly say:
- ✓I flew in from the other side of the world without visa panic.
- ✓I can stay for months or years, legally and simply.
- ✓I live comfortably on a budget that lets me take risks.
- ✓My internet never blinks.
- ✓I'm healthier here than I was at home.
- ✓As a woman, I move through this city at night the same way I do by day.
- ✓I collaborate with exceptional people every day.
- ✓I could start a company here next week.
Curious how these become numbers? The Method page explains the scoring.
Method
What is this?
NS Node Atlas scores world cities as candidate sites for the next Network School node: a 500-resident international co-living and co-working campus, designed to grow to 2,000.
Type any city. An AI analyst scores it against a fixed rubric and ranks it on the leaderboard.
How scoring works
- 17 weighted criteria. Immigration counts most at 12%. Climate counts least at 1%.
- Scores run 0 to 10, judged against written anchors: plain descriptions of what a 2, a 5 and an 8 look like. Anchors keep scores comparable across cities.
- One index out of 100. Strong ≥ 72 · Viable 58–71 · Marginal < 58
Cities, not countries. Culture, cost and safety vary hugely inside one country. Kochi and Delhi NCR are different worlds for a foreign resident. Every entry here is a specific city.
Three criteria were added to the original rubric: Local Goodwill & Political Risk (does the host community actually want the project), Cultural Warmth & International Openness (can foreigners build a real life there, not just reside), and Women's Safety, weighted above general safety, because a city where half the community can't move freely fails regardless of its other scores.
The AI analyst
Analysis runs on Claude with the full rubric in its instructions. It returns a score and a one-line reason for every criterion.
Nothing lands automatically. You review each assessment, can drag any score, and only then save. Treat AI scores as a well-read first opinion, not ground truth.
Same city, many names
Bangalore and Bengaluru. Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City. The atlas keeps one entry per place and remembers its other names, so analyzing a city under a local or former name updates the existing entry instead of duplicating it. If a save would collide with an existing entry, you are asked first.
Weights
Your data
Seeded scores are editorial baselines from early 2026. Your changes stay in this browser and are never shared with other visitors. Export any city as a Markdown report, or the whole atlas as JSON, from its page.