I participated in their forums for a few months several years ago, but I quit bothering because they are not particularly incremental. As one of their references, Jon Fisher's The Last Frontiers on Earth, points out, one of the things pioneers have always had to deal with is leaving behind some of the comforts of home. They seem to think they are going to start out with all the comforts of a city, or at least an "edge city" suburb; it's not going to happen, they'll just keep on daydreaming.

I honestly don't know how representative the forums are, I've mostly helped out a bit with the conferences and interact with current and former board members in person fairly frequently. My sense is that the desire to have as many comforts as possible is to attract a varied initial core. From the very beginning the aims were to get the people who are super into, and then build-up. But if you don't have sufficient social infrastructure you're going to end up only with the hardcore who don't serve as a useful seed for a growing system.

I think they're trying to skip the true frontiersmen, those folks are already living aboard their boats. They're trying to enable the homesteaders that come after them, and from whom settlements grow and expand.