Esmeralda: Where Techno-Optimism Meets Walkable Community Living
Blending Innovation, Lifelong Learning, and Human-Centered Design for a New Era of Town Living
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Have you ever wanted to escape from your city/town? To go somewhere new that maybe is a little safer, a little friendlier, with a little less traffic?
I know I have. Our cities can be great places to live and provide us with amazing career and social opportunities. But sometimes, especially as you begin a family, you just want a quiet, peaceful place that is familiar and welcoming that provides connections with interesting people for thought provoking conversations.
Enter Esmeralda, a new community founded just 90 minutes north of San Francisco.
I’ve spent some time studying urbanism and the movement to build new towns/cities from the ground up. Maybe you read one of our articles this year on it, such as Futuristic Visions (From the Cybertruck to Disney’s Urban Planning), “The Line” in the Sand - A New Type of City, What Do Tomorrow’s Cities Look Like Today? or 'Big Tech’s “Company Towns”
The future of cities and how we live and work has become more and more important as our country and world rapidly continues to urbanize.
As such the discovery of a concept like “Esmeralda” is something that piqued my interest. Esmeralda is built off the Chautauqua model, which is a place in upstate New York where people have come together for lectures, performances, and culture for more than 100 years. Founded as an “educational experiment in out of school, vacation learning” Chautauqua turned into a movement that spread across the country.
As a means up generating interest and founding this New Town, the Esmeralda community founding got started this past summer with the “popup village” called Edge Esmeralda. The month long gathering brought together leaders from health and longevity bio-hacking, crypto, artificial intelligence (AI), hard tech, and of course urbanism. An inspiration for the Edge Esmeralda is the recent (2023) month-long retreat named Zuzalu in 2023 hosted by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Edge Esmeralda received a good amount of press both locally and nationally.
Edge Esmeralda is a “conference-meets-festival (that) brought hundreds of international “techno-optimists”…with a shared goal of leveraging modern technology and ancient wisdom to save the world, or at least make it a better place to live.” - Simone Wilson of the Healdsburg (CA) Tribune
What a great way too build enthusiasm by inviting leading thinkers to discuss world changing ideas.
Since the month long “popup city” was held in August Esmeralda leadership, Devon Zuegel and her team, has identified land for their new community. They are now in the due diligence stage to confirm it is a place they want to build this new concept town. I’m excited to see what’s next for this and how things unfold.
Edge Esmeralda 2025 is happening and if you’re curious to participate check out this link for more info.
Since pop-up cities are fantastic, I’ll look to continue covering them as part of our urbanism theme. Let me know if you hear about any new ones that we should cover in a subsequent post. DM me with any details!
Cheers,
John
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This post is sponsored by Pugh Investment Partners a leader in family office real estate co-investments. To learn more reach out to us at contactus@pugh.investments or click this link to our website.
