How a piece of land would change, in stages
No land is held and nothing here is built. These are the stages the plan sets, the rules the place would keep, and the test each stage has to pass before the next one starts.
The same land, four times
The first stage needs no land. From the second on, the dotted edge is land nobody holds or has walked. Each stage starts only when the one before it has passed its test.
Stage 1
One household, before any land
A household writes rules for the AI it uses, runs a 60 to 90 minute exercise at the kitchen table with the AI on, then off, then with the person who set it up away, and spends a day with the machines switched off, counting what still worked.
Before the next stage: The household can do its own essential tasks without the AI, and someone other than the founder can run them from written instructions.
Designed, not yet run
Stage 2
A first cluster
One building of 6 to 10 homes, 10 to 16 people, with a shared kitchen, its own panels and its own small computer room. Someone outside the cluster meters it through one full winter.
Before the next stage: Energy per resident under 15% of the US average, sun-warmed air covering 70% of space heating from November to February, and motors run straight off the panels meeting 80% of daytime loads.
Not started: no land
Stage 3
Three to five clusters
More clusters, linked by a power line. Residents train for the paid work of keeping the place running: power, water, records, repair and care.
Before the next stage: Each cluster passes its own winter test, and the upkeep is done by people who live there.
Not started
Stage 4
A district
The clusters share fields, a workshop and a hall where decisions are made and the record is kept. Each cluster keeps its own computers and its own data.
Before the next stage: The residents switch the AI off for a day, and everything they need to live keeps running.
Not started
The rules the place keeps
Written down before anything is built. The residents can change them later, in the hall and on the record.
The land is held in a trust, so it cannot be sold out from under the people who live on it.
Homes are owned as a limited-equity cooperative. A share sells at a capped price, and only to someone who will live there.
Homes come in clusters of 6 to 10 under one roof, with a shared kitchen. There is no central power plant: each cluster makes its own.
Energy follows Living Energy Farm’s order: use less, store heat, use electricity last. In daylight, motors run straight off the panels.
Computers may use at most a tenth of a cluster’s energy, and heavy work runs in daylight. Each cluster’s data stays in that cluster.
Nothing needed for food, water, warmth or safety may depend on a computer.
Nothing an AI writes enters a decision or the record without a named person’s signature.
The person who started it may not keep the record, hold a share of any key, chair a council, or run the meeting about his own proposals.
Bedrooms stay quiet and dark at night. No advertising, no cameras watching shared space, and a public list of every sensor.
Keeping the place running is paid work that residents learn, offered first to the people whose jobs are most exposed to AI.
What it learns from
Districts and pieces of land that people set out to change: who held the land and the decisions, and what happened.
| Place | Who held the land and the decisions | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Dudley StreetBoston, from 1988 | Residents. Their land trust, Dudley Neighbors Inc., was set up in 1988, and in 1989 the city’s redevelopment authority voted to give the residents’ group the power of eminent domain over vacant land. | The trust holds over 30 acres of community-controlled land, with 225 permanently affordable homes built on parcels that had been abandoned.Dudley Neighbors Inc., John Emmeus Davis, CLT Center, 2015 |
| Champlain Housing TrustBurlington, Vermont | The trust keeps the land under the homes. Its board is one-third residents, one-third public and one-third members at large. A seller keeps a quarter of any rise in the home’s value. | Through 2009, 683 families bought homes this way; sellers still earned a median 30.8% a year on what they put down, and the homes stayed affordable from one buyer to the next.Temkin, Theodos and Price, Urban Institute, 2010, Champlain Housing Trust |
| Community land trustsUnited States, the 2008 to 2010 crash | Nonprofit trusts own the land; households own the homes on 99-year renewable leases. | At the end of 2010, 1.30% of land-trust homeowners were seriously behind on their mortgages, against 8.57% in the conventional market. The land-trust owners all had lower incomes.Emily Thaden, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011, National Community Land Trust Network |
| VaubanFreiburg, Germany, from 1994 | The city owned and planned the land. A residents’ group, Forum Vauban, had an official planning role and helped over 40 resident building groups get plots ahead of commercial developers. | About 5,500 people live there, with 172 cars per 1,000 residents in 2013. Forum Vauban went bankrupt in 2003 when its European funding ended.City of Freiburg, data for 2013, Participedia |
| Limited-equity cooperativesUnited States | Residents own the building together and agree to cap resale prices. | Of 300,000 limited-equity units counted, only 160,000 still had their limits. Many co-ops voted the limits away once their rules or mortgages expired, which is why this plan puts the land in a trust.Lillian M. Ortiz, Shelterforce, 2017 |
| QuaysideToronto, 2017 to 2020 | A public agency, Waterfront Toronto, owned the 12-acre site. Residents had no vote. Sidewalk Labs, Google’s sister company, proposed a district run on data collected from the people in it. | Sidewalk’s own privacy adviser resigned over its plan for residents’ data. The agency refused Sidewalk’s wider 190 acres and its data trust, Sidewalk quit in 2020, and the same site was re-tendered for over 800 affordable homes.Auditor General of Ontario, 2018, Engadget, 2018, BetaKit, 2019, Waterfront Toronto, 2022 |
| PrósperaHonduras, from 2017 | A private company, under a national law that let charter zones make their own laws. | Congress repealed the law unanimously in 2022 and the Supreme Court struck down the framework in 2024. The investors answered with international arbitration, still pending, rather than with anyone who lives there.Rest of World, 2022, ICSID, World Bank |
| The Line, NEOMSaudi Arabia | One state fund owns and pays for all of it. | Planned as a city 170 kilometres long. In May 2026 work was reported halted until after 2030, and NEOM’s 2030 population target cut to 100,000.Semafor, 2026 |
| California ForeverSolano County, California | Investors who bought about 55,000 acres of farmland quietly, through a company that did not say who was behind it. | It withdrew its 2024 ballot measure after a county report projected a $103.1 million deficit at full build-out, and has since sought annexation by one small city instead of a countywide vote.ABC7, 2023, KQED, 2024 |
What could stop it
- Whoever owns the land. If the homes sit on leased land, the rules last only as long as the lease and the owner’s goodwill. That is why the plan holds land only in a trust.
- Winter. Living Energy Farm’s results come from Virginia. Nobody has measured these designs through a Pacific Northwest winter, so the first cluster is metered through one before anything else is built.
- Building codes. A high-voltage direct-current line between homes has probably never passed a Washington electrical inspection. The fallback is a 48-volt system.
- Utility law. A cooperative that sells electricity between buildings risks being regulated as a power company. Sharing heat, or keeping each building’s solar behind its own meter, avoids that.
- Money. Housing funds go to nonprofits and developers, not to individuals, so a housing partner has to lead the building. None has been asked yet.