Open research · October 2026
Shared Ground
How do villages make a network work?
Village networks are starting to appear. Nobody has found the business model yet. I'm collecting problems from the people who run them, so we can work it out together.
Why this is worth working out
People need very different things from the place they live, and they have a handful of countries to choose from. Thousands of small places — maybe millions — could fit that range far better.
People already talk this way: “that country rejected me”, “that one is getting religious, I don’t want to be there”. Soon the same conversation will be about which village.
Some people live in these places for their values. Others because it is the only place they can raise their kids — migrants, refugees and stateless people, many of them very capable, who have nowhere obvious to go.
To make new countries, we first need strong communities. One village on its own is fragile. Villages that hold each other up are not — but nobody has yet found the business model that makes that work.
The money is already moving
A special economic zone is an area where a country sets different rules — lower taxes, faster permits, simpler rules on land and hiring. Countries keep making more of them, and new-country projects are now built on the same idea.
From 79 in 1975 to about 5,400 in 2018, with 500 more announced.
| Year | Zones |
|---|---|
| 1975 | 79 |
| 1986 | 176 |
| 1995 | 500 |
| 1997 | 845 |
| 2002 | 3000 |
| 2006 | 3500 |
| 2008 | 4300 |
| 2018 | 5400 |
| Announced | 500+ |
Source: UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2019, chapter IV. Early years are ILO estimates and definitions vary.
$100M+
invested in Próspera, a new-country project on a Honduran island, by its own count in 2023. Its legal status is now being fought over in court — this is all still early. Source
How a zone works, and why it matters for villages
- 01
A country sets aside an area
Usually by law, often to bring in investment or jobs.
- 02
The area gets its own rules
Tax, customs, permits, land and hiring can all work differently.
- 03
Building gets faster
Businesses and residents arrive sooner because there is less in the way.
One village is too small to ask a country for terms like these. A group of villages that already works together might not be. That is one more reason the business model between villages matters: it could give them the weight to negotiate.
Things people are trying
Plenty of examples, plenty still to try. This list gets updated as I hear back from villages. Each one runs into one of four struggles first — and every village feels all four at once.
Being compared
“Will my people leave for a better place?”
- Shared packages
- Membership
Splitting the money
“Who gets paid, and is it fair?”
- A stake that moves with you
- A shared fund
Trusting strangers
“Can I rely on a village I don’t run?”
- Cross-village residency
- Shared booking software
Who decides
“If outsiders put money in, is it still ours?”
- Shared equity
Each one in detail
Shared packages
Seen strugglingOne offer that bundles stays at several villages.
Each village wants something different — company set-ups, visitors, someone to run the café for three years — so one package fits nobody well.
Membership
Being triedOne subscription that lets people move between places.
At least one subscription for people moving between locations is being designed.
Cross-village residency
Not tried yetYou host their people, they host yours.
Shared equity
Seen workingResidents and businesses earn a stake in the village by contributing to it.
Inside one village, a group of small businesses now cover their costs this way. Between villages, nobody has tried it yet.
Shared booking software
Being triedVillages use the same platform instead of each building their own.
One village chose to plug into another village’s booking platform instead of building its own, partly to join its network.
A stake that moves with you
Not tried yetIf a resident moves to another village, the money they put in follows them.
Written up in detail in one village’s white paper. Not running anywhere yet.
A shared fund
Being triedOne village raises money and invests some of it in other villages that already work.
Planned by one village as the next step after its current round.
What hasn't worked, so far
Including some of our own attempts. None of this is final — if you have seen one of these work, I want to hear about it.
- Referral links
- Listing villages side by side
They moved people, so villages competed
Sending people from one place to another turns villages into rivals. The strongest places never sign up.
What could move between villages without making them rivals?
- A group arriving with its own plan
- Building what nobody asked for
The plan came from outside
Plans written for somebody else’s land don’t survive contact with the place, or with what residents actually need.
How does a network start from what each village is asking for?
- Selling land with no business on it
- One funder at the centre
Nothing underneath held the value
With no working business, or only one person paying, the project lasts until the money runs out.
What does a village need running before it can carry others?
The stories behind each one
Referral links
We held an affiliate link for one of the best-known villages for years. Nobody ever used it.
Listing villages side by side
Put villages next to each other and people compare them. One operator put it plainly: “Why would I bring my residents? They’ll see all the other places, and I may not be the best one.”
A group arriving with its own plan
One village tried this several times. A group arrives with a plan for somebody else’s land, and the plan doesn’t survive contact with the place.
Selling land with no business on it
At least one project sold land tokens with nothing operating underneath. The rent went unpaid and the community was evicted.
Building what nobody asked for
Forty families asking for a bilingual school is a better signal than any masterplan.
One funder at the centre
Projects that depend on one person’s money run for exactly as long as that person keeps paying.
2-minute quiz
Find your network state
Tell us what you want from a place to live, and we'll match you with the communities that fit — or give you something to argue about.
Take the quizWhat I'm doing
Talking to the people who run villages and writing down what is actually hard: a shared problem list, and from it the requirements any network would have to meet.
Three questions for every village:
Growth
What stops you getting the right people, and keeping them?
Sustainability
What would it take to cover your costs, year after year?
Regeneration
What would it take to leave the place better than you found it?
One founder put the scale simply: taking more than you give is extractive, breaking even is sustainable, and only a surplus is regenerative — and he says his own village is not there yet. Most of us aren't. The findings will be published on this page.
Open questions
Real questions, not rhetorical ones. The answers belong to the people running these places.
- ?
Does one village lose something when another joins? If yes, why would the strongest ones join?
- ?
Money can travel between villages while decisions stay local. Is that enough, or does any outside ownership change the place?
- ?
What would make you refuse to let people from outside own part of what you are building?
- ?
What should happen to a stake when its holder never visits?
- ?
What must never be visible outside your village?
- ?
What would make an existing country want to make a deal with a group of villages?
- ?
What do you actually want from a network? Every place wants a different crowd.
Be part of the dataset
Add your problem to the map
Running a village or a community, or trying to start one? Every problem you add goes into the Cartographers dataset of what is actually hard — the list the business model has to answer. One line is enough.
See the findings first
Leave an email and you get the write-up before anyone else.
Anonymous by default
Your village is only named if you tick the box.
Shape what gets tried
The most common problems decide which models get tested next.
Rather talk it through?
Talk it through · 20 min