Welcome to the Free Cities podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast
of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 157 of the Free Cities podcast.
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and whether you'd like to do business with them right. This week, I have a well-loved and returning
guest. It's urban economist, policy analyst, and writer Vera Kichenova, also the senior economist
at the Free Cities Foundation. I saw her at the Free Cities Conference in Prague a couple of weeks
ago, of course. For those of you that don't know her, she's a former elected councillor in Russia,
editor-in-chief of a think tank in Kiev, president of the Oxford Hayek Society,
and a former researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects. This is the third time for Vera on the show,
and this time we're talking about all the latest news, research and criticisms of the Free Cities ecosystem.
Check out the show notes for her other episodes. Here's the AI's take on our discussion.
In this podcast, we discuss the rising interest in free cities since COVID-19
and address recent critiques, framing them as projects for the wealthy and or well-connected.
We explore the role of private initiatives versus state control, historical and modern examples of privately developed cities and the nuances of freedom, choice and consent in all these projects.
The conversation touches on topics ranging from free ports in the UK to seasteading, environmental benefits of free cities and the potential for new models in places like Dubai, Europe and Honduras.
It's always a pleasure to talk with Vera. She's one of the trailblazers in our movement.
She really does walk the talk, as they say. I've always considered her a great source of info and opinion over the years.
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off now i appreciate you all uh by the way see you in manchester if you're going to bit fest
this weekend and make sure if you're not or even if you are you take some time to chill out
away from it all why don't you just sit back right now relax and enjoy my conversation with
vera kitchenova
Always great being back to Prague, one of my favorite cities.
It is. And do you know what? I don't know whether you agree with me here, but I feel like this year there's a bit of a buzz around free cities.
was i mean am i making this up or for example um the last um newsletter that went out was had loads
of new projects on it um and normally you know without putting our sort of industry down it's
quite slow moving so when you see a new project it's like oh but i feel like this year i think
it's slow moving depends of what you compare it to if you compare it to i don't know the the
crypto world that uh doesn't have to like trying to in many ways ignore the existing regulations
and doesn't uh try to go against the wind and fight this all this political uh go like through
this political labyrinth and stuff, then yes, then it's going slow.
But if you think about the, I shouldn't say free citizen industry back 20 years ago, because
there was no industry, there were a few pioneers like Patrick Friedman and Tom Bell who had
to do everything all at once, and Michael Strong people, and the people in Honduras
Honduras when they were just
you know just starting all of this
then yes then it's going very fast
because now it's not one team
it's not the same people doing everything
this is quite diversified
there is the sort of a division of labor
there are people who are dealing with investment
people who are dealing with the PR side
the explaining why this is good for the host countries and for the humanity as a whole.
There are people who are dealing with urban planning side.
And so, yes, I think the biggest breakthrough in my, like, the way I sensed it was after
COVID, when so many people globally have discovered that something's wrong with the countries
where they live, even if they live in relatively, you know, okay countries, economically, politically,
they still understood that even the government that is kind of democratic still had the power of abusing their,
had the capacity to abuse their powers in extra circumstances.
So that's when I think the movement has suddenly grown, started growing exponentially.
and but yeah I think the fact that so many it's also a very good thing about our conference that
so many projects are so many teams are holding up the big announcements until we all get together in
Prague I feel myself I I agree with you about the about what happened since COVID I think what I alluding to is maybe even more to do with the fact that I think the idea
the concept of even democracy being not necessarily a good working model of governance, for example.
These kind of ideas which were, I mean, completely radical not that long ago.
And now I hear on relatively mainstream podcasts the idea that, you know, we don't really have many choices of the way we can structure our society.
We kind of got two major ones, which is democracy and complete lack of democracy.
And that's the way people tend to see it.
But here's an interesting thing that happened recently.
Do you know who, you know, Whitney Webb?
Do you know who Whitney Webb is?
She's a really, I'm a big fan of hers.
She basically is a kind of thinking person's conspiracy theorist, but she's not a conspiracy theorist, but she's one of those people that brings together all the information.
She talks a lot about digital ID and about all these kind of things.
And recently, she had somebody, she's got a massive audience.
She's got millions and millions of followers.
Somebody released an article on their website, Unlimited Hangout.
And it was about kind of free cities.
But in it, and this is the first time I've heard it from this angle, but it was quite negative, obviously.
It basically was that the idea that a powerful group of oligarchs are trying to create an alternative non-state city-state network.
Did they talk about a specific project or just the idea?
I mean, they did actually talk about Prospera, but the way they sort of dissected it was Prospera was funded by partly Peter Thiel, for example.
Or, you know, there was no research done on the ground.
It was all stuff, for example, a lot of what they said about Prospera also came from very kind of left wing publications who'd mentioned next door being disenfranchised and a lot of the talking points that we no longer even really discuss because they've all been disproven.
but it wasn't it was interesting for me to see that in a in what I would have considered a part
of the ecosystem that I actually value I think that the people doing work against these kind of
like high level conspiracies is the wrong word but but there is some truth in a lot of there's a lot
of truth in a lot of what they say and I just when I saw it directed at free cities I was it made me
realized that um it's a murky world of it can look like a very murky world and you know like
private cities um you know non-governmental whatever and i mean despite the fact obviously
that i'm surprised they even think that something being non-state is a bad idea
but we're not without even speaking about that what's your what do you think about that because
I think personally that over the next few years, I'm going to have to more and more address ideas
like this, that private cities are definitely places where very wealthy people are going to
use to be outside of the law or whatever. So come on, give me, you're one of the,
you're someone who knows a lot about private cities. So tell me, tell me where they're going
wrong. I think that the main argument is that the wealthy and the powerful already have plenty of
existing tools to lead to minimize their taxes and minimize their interactions with governments
and with the bureaucracies. The free cities are going to give more choice to people who don't have
this privilege, who don't have that access. And I think that if those journalists who are,
who've been spreading this coverage about, say, Prospera and generally ZS in Honduras.
I wonder how many of them have actually gone there on the island, on Roatan or in Morazan,
and spoke to people living there, spoke to people who voluntarily, the regular Hondurans,
not the wealthy crypto-billionaires people who moved there, because that was their once-in-a-lifetime choice,
once-in-a-lifetime chance to get out of poverty,
to get out of this precarious life that they had
surrounded by organized crime and, yeah,
and, yeah, get the chance in life for them
and for their families to thrive.
And I wonder how many of those journalists went there
and talk to them instead of just amplifying the messages
of professional activists who, as you very aptly said,
that the idea is not just the point of people criticizing free cities,
private cities, and other innovative forms of governance
is not that it's, yeah, exactly it boils down to the idea that everything private is bad,
and more or less any private alternative to what we perceive as the prerogative of the state
is inherently wrong. Because if you look at the historical scale, the nation state and the
the nation states and the has been an it's an aberration on a historical scale.
Like we've been living in cities, we've been living in empires, we've been living in other
arrangements and communities, self-governing communities, but the nation state is quite a
new thing. And the welfare state is also quite an aberration. It used to, and it doesn't mean
that they haven't been historically self-organized,
like the tools of self-organizations of people
to help those in need, to help the poor,
to help the other members of the society who needed help.
So, yeah, there's always been safety nets provided by non-state actors.
there's always been urban projects that were developed.
Like in the 19th century, at some point,
about 3% of the US lived in the US population,
lived in private towns, company towns.
And a lot of cities that are scattered all over the US now
were built privately.
Some of them quite large.
Like my presentation this year will be about
why private cities are good for the planet,
why they're good for the environment.
And one of my favorite case studies is the city of Irvine in California.
It's a very successful case.
It's the largest privately built city in the US.
Is that Orion?
Irvine.
Oh, Irvine.
Irvine.
You're right, Irvine.
Yeah, Irvine.
Okay.
Yes.
So it was built privately.
and it is one of the top 10 greenest, safest, happiest, healthiest cities in the whole country.
And a lot of people living there have no idea that it's built privately and it's not governed
privately anymore. It has a municipality, but the land is still largely owned by the
same Irvine company and the business centers the commercial spaces are also owned by them that they rent out So they still have pretty solid control over the city affairs but it works very well
And I interviewed, that was one of my case studies for my PhD.
I interviewed people who work there, who live there, including even the local politicians from the Democrats
who would say that, yes, it's not ideal that we have a private company with such an influence,
but we must admit that the Irvine company is very collaborative,
and we can always find common ground, and it's been like this for 50 years.
And this is a unique thing because I don't think in today's,
if somebody wants to build another, that was my kind of biggest question,
can you build another Irvine today in America?
And I came to a conclusion that if somebody is doing it, they would be doing it very discreetly.
Because as you know, any announcement of someone with means to build a city that, oh, there is a group of, like there is a billionaire or a group of billionaires like California Forever, for example, trying to, like intending to build a private city.
it creates a massive backlash.
The thing, the problem I think is,
and I'm going to go back
and I'm going to address three things you've just said there.
Firstly, it's true that people,
I think this is a new,
and this is definitely a new paradigm we're in now
where people, just general people,
not just people that really think these things through,
but a lot of just normal folk
starting to wonder if state-run things are the be-all and the end-all.
Like you say, it's a relatively new invention, the state.
But I think most people, and even, like I say, people who are on our side,
well, I would say our side, who say, oh, no, private cities are bad
because they're basically circumnavigating the state
as if that's some kind of a bad thing.
Okay, right. That's number one.
The problem is, I think, because, and this bleeds into the next two, people associate the state with democracy, and people think democracy empowers the underdog.
That's kind of like the reason why your average person who's fighting for what's right would say, we need the state, because the state in the countries that we live, anyway, allows me to be a part of the system by my vote, maybe making a difference, which is another thing I contest.
wholeheartedly. Coming from Eastern Europe, you don't fall for this.
Okay, right. Well, I think, I mean, we talked a lot about whether democracy is a good idea or not.
But let's just say that I'm trying to understand where this kind of idea comes from.
And the third thing is, take Irvin, for example, a private thing, which was working really well,
which people are inherently suspicious of, again. But I think the same people,
The same people who think the state is good, that democracy is good, that think Irvine would be bad if it was run by a private institution or a private company would be that it's for rich people.
Because who can now afford to go there?
Because people who are more mobile, people who are more empowered, people who are, you know, the people that build these things are people who have more empowerment.
That's exactly why we need more free cities, because we need these opportunities to be spread more evenly. We need them to be available. Like, yes, Irvine, yeah, California is, yeah, Irvine is a very, you know, it's an upmarket place to live.
But if you look at our free cities map, the free communities map, free-communities.com, for those who don't know, it's like a map of projects that are in the loop in the movement.
And then you see that more than half of them are aimed at people, at the blue collar workers, at the former villagers, like, for example, the small farm cities, which is a project in Africa.
I think their flagship project is in Malawi.
And it is aimed at the rural residents.
the idea is to give them new tools to integrate them into the, you know, the agricultural economy
of the 21st century to teach them how to more efficiently, I don't know what's, to be honest,
where is it now? Because I, last time I interviewed them about a year ago for the
Free Communities Directory, but the idea, yeah, or there is one more project that I'll be talking
on my lecture is Lavasa in India. It's a city which, it's basically India's greenest city,
entirely private. Everything's provided privately, roads, parks, garbage collection,
drinking water, primary education and health care. And most residents there are not the
upper caste Indians, you know, who live in gated communities in Delhi and Mumbai. Most of them
are the former villagers who sold their land to the developer. And in exchange for that, there was
a deal. Like you sell us your land relatively cheap, the agricultural land. You get homes and
jobs in this new city and you get all of these things for free, like an English-speaking primary
school, English-speaking nursery for their kids. Imagine growing up in rural India and getting all
of this for your family. And so because, as I think you talked a few times with Massimo
Mazzone, who is building Morazan in Honduras, it's a similar idea. He told me once that
the market for the middle class and lower middle class and working class people, the market for
for free cities aimed at them is much larger in the world.
So building these not fancy gated enclaves
with amazing architecture, with world-class architecture,
with the crypto hubs and all these things.
This is a cool thing to have because it can kind of,
you can attract the early comers,
you can advertise the idea with that.
And yeah, there is a market for that, but there is a much bigger market for cities, for the regular people who do not have necessarily access to California gated communities. Irvine is not a gated community, but there are a lot in California.
And by the way, in America, if you look at the media, I once Googled, just looked at the media headlines about private city, like this and this building private city, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, who else? Jeff Bezos.
And the headlines, if you look through them, they read like as if we're not talking about someone building a city, as if we're talking about someone bombing a city, like destroying cities on a massive scale because the level of panic and, you know, there is always this mix of fear of somebody destroying our democracy, our institutions when something goes right.
and this schadenfreude when something goes wrong.
Like, oh yeah, they will fail.
Yes, and the same people who are looking like,
who look like this at the idea of free cities,
if you look, they still, when they have a choice,
they buy flats and apartments in privately run communities About 10 today of newly built American homes are in these privately run communities
That's what people really prefer.
Well, I think Morazan is a good example of that as well.
Morazan is, well, not that they're buying properties there, but that they're choosing to live there rather than Chaloma, which is a hugely dangerous part of Honduras.
One of the most dangerous places in the world outside war zones.
Is that right? I didn't know it was that bad. I've not been to Morizan myself.
But yeah, and interestingly, in going back to the article I was telling you about this sort of oligarchs building a network of cities, they didn't mention Morizan.
And no one ever mentions Morizan. And I've reached out to the guy that wrote the article because I want to get him on the podcast.
I want to hear, he's one of these people that they've done so much research.
But I think sometimes when you apply a paranoid eye to any research, you can actually doubt most things about the intentions of people.
And I mean, because the truth is, I mean, when you mention even sort of Musk and Gates and these kind of people,
and then you mentioned the word private city after that yeah i do get suspicious i i i'm not
necessarily someone who thinks that those people have the best interests of the world at heart i
have no idea at all um so so what do you i mean what do you think about that what what is what is
it about the this kind of barrier i think there is to um people letting go of the idea like
And another, sorry to go off on a tangent, but another idea is Trump's freedom cities, which seem, do you know much about the proposal?
I know about the proposal, but as far as I know, it hasn't moved anywhere since.
So I don't think if we can, I don't think we can discuss it in substance.
Okay.
But even the idea, the idea is bad, apparently.
It's very much a part of this thing.
people that want to live outside the system.
I mean, but the truth is like...
I remember how our friend Joyce wrote a blog post for the Free Cities website.
Freedom cities are not necessarily free cities.
Yes.
I think that's a good way to put it.
Well, I mean, the truth is, you know, without putting too fine a point on it,
we kind of do want to live outside the system.
Yeah.
So you're never going to win that argument if someone believes that the state is the best way to run a system.
But I think there's less and less people who believe that.
I hope so.
Of course you hope so.
I think, yes.
As I said, the COVID was a big eye-opener for many.
I must admit, because I'm a relatively new convert to the concept that democracy is not such a good idea.
And that's not because I thought it through.
I just didn't think it through.
And this is the point.
It's an idea that is really bulletproof because most people don't even challenge it for one second.
It's not something they think about.
You wrote a paper, didn't you, about freeports in the UK?
So this is something, I mean, I live in the UK.
I talk about this a lot.
the state of the UK, basically.
And it's gone from something that was whispered about
to quite mainstream, what's the word?
Anger about what's happening in the UK across many fronts,
economically, policy-wise, immigration, all these things.
It really seems to be getting quite gnarly there, quite riled up.
um so since that when did you write that paper that was that was it was published in january
this year oh is this year yeah so come on then juxtapose those two ideas because your your your
belief obviously is that the you know the uk could be using free ports to to to start turning itself
around for for the lack of a better alternative okay right okay so you're you're in agreement then
Have you been back? You lived in the UK for quite a while.
Yes, for seven years. And I still consider London my kind of home.
And do you know much about the general sense of what's going on there at the moment?
Yeah, vaguely.
Right. Well, because, you know, I do live there.
And it's obviously hard to know whether I'm not just a bit too immersed in that side of things.
but I do know that when I go to the pub now and I speak to the guy that runs the power our local
pub's just been taken over by a new land landlord and landlady and they're all discussing the same
things a lot of them are talking about how difficult it is to run a business number one
and the other thing they're talking about is how much um they want a different way of they want a
different party in power and they don't want the conservatives and they don't want don't want labor
So those two things seems to have gone mainstream, which is hopefully that's where the free cities movement just steps in and goes, well, here's an interesting solution for you then.
I think you'd argue that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, but the free ports agenda that was proposed by the previous conservative government has very little to do with actual freedom.
It was a very technocratic solution. And if you look at it, the Labour Party, who is now in power, they proposed this new generation of new towns. You know, they were the new towns in the 50s, which was a very top-down, like a massive top-down project of initiative of building new towns all over the UK.
very few of them succeeded
and now they want to repeat it
and if you look at these two proposals
they don't have very much difference to be honest
they're just framed differently
in accordance to each party's
the voters values
each party's ideology
but at its core
it's a very technocratic solution
we create a commission to oversee a committee
to control a task force.
And this task force is going to
cherry-pick the locations
based not on market demand
and population trends,
but on some political will,
political considerations.
And we're going to cherry-pick the industries
that will be prioritized there.
So it can be in the conservative case, it was the, the idea was to revive the industrial heritage of the UK in the labor. It's more toward, it's more in the direction of supporting green industries.
But institutionally, it's a very similar thing.
It's just the government picking places, picking industries,
and it's just adding new layers of bureaucracy instead of circling out a place
and removing bureaucracy from there as much as possible.
Do you think that's something that could ever happen in the UK?
or at least in the in the medium short to medium term like 25 30 years do you think that could happen I mean I I'm very skeptical about the idea I feel like the bureaucratic blob is so big in the UK it's so well established
that it's almost impossible to deconstruct it.
And the thought of creating something which is outside of this
is even less likely because it's an absolute threat at that point.
Because there's such a stark contrast.
If you created a free place in the UK,
it would be so obvious how different it was.
Because the current state of the UK is literally a quagmire
of rules, regulations, like you say,
committees, everything takes 30 years to do, you know, I mean, you know, do you think it could change? And if so, how?
Well, if you ask about the 25 year timescale, a lot can change.
Because if you look 25 years back, a lot of things have happened that we could never predict.
from COVID to the rise of crypto.
And do it now, AI, I don't know.
You can only think what can happen in the next 25 years.
Many of this thing may become irrelevant.
And generally, again, if you look at historical timescale,
I think I still believe, historical and geographical,
that the UK deep inside has this respect for institutions.
So I hope in the long run it is like,
the thing is, I think it's a task of persuading the population,
persuading the decision makers and the media content creators
that this is going to be a good thing for the country,
a good thing for the people to finding the right words.
uh to frame it the right way to frame it uh so well the uk had margaret thatcher and her reforms
uh they had free like she introduced the free ports she created uh places like the canary wharf
uh which was basically the city of london 2.0 their self uh to some extent a self-governing
territory within London with a special economic zone status and with urban development corporation
status that allowed the developers to circumvent the usual planning rules.
And that was a stunning success, as you know.
And still it made London one of the main financial centers in the world.
And it's funny that if you listen, well, remember the last time we were choosing the leader of the Conservative Party.
Everyone had the sense, the need to praise Margaret Thatcher, like every single candidate.
None of them, well, they didn't end following, like trying to implement her style of reforms policies.
But some way, yeah, her legacy is respected.
So the idea that you could revitalize Britain with the current Freeport framework that's happening in East,
is it all East London down the Thames there, isn't it?
There is one, yes.
Yeah. Is that, what do you know about that going forward now, for example? Is that, is it just turned into another dead end, do you think?
I don't know, to be honest, haven't been following. But three days ago, I was approached by another large scale urban development project.
uh so who's in the uk yes i uh yeah i won't won't won't name any names but i was just uh
it felt good that they they wrote to me we read your paper and we think that we would benefit from
some understanding of the the policy side of this so yeah there was some reaction to the paper a few
people. Yeah, I know that the Thames, the Thames Report team also discussed it. And they also felt
empowered when they say that that IEA, the Institute of Economic Affairs, who published it,
it was exactly the think tank that brought that it was the the think tank behind Thatcher's
reforms. So they are one of the most influential think tanks in the UK. So yeah, I hope that this
paper was ended up on the right tables of the people who are on one hand can politically enable
something like that on the other hand who have means to like developers who have means to build
it like you say though there's a big difference between a freeport idea and a free city idea and
i think what drives a free city idea is freedom in some shape or form i know that with a freeport
you get a degree of economic freedom possibly but i don't really think that any of us are driven
by just that idea now i'm i'll be interested to hear your opinion because i think going forward
as well over the next sort of 10 or 15 years as more projects come online i think people are going
to be asking questions about the validity of these projects because they're all going to be
happening to there's going to be different degrees of freedom happening in all these projects
and so it's going to be very easy to take the standard liberty free city idea and then juxtapose
it against what's actually happening in reality and people go well this is crazy this isn't a free
city. And I'm already starting to have those conversations. And my instinctive response
has been, and I want to hear what yours would be, is that if there's more freedom inside of
this place than there is outside of this place, then it's all good. I'm not going to judge the
degree of it. Yeah, I want as much freedom as possible. But more freedom is better than no
freedom. What would your idea be? Well, first of all, I think it was Milton Friedman who
stressed this idea that you cannot separate 100% economic freedom and personal or political
freedom. These things are intertwined. I think it was his example. If you cannot
have means to publish a newspaper, if economically you're not allowed to publish your own newspaper,
is this political or economic freedom infringement in some states.
So there is always one thing is always interconnected with the other.
But yeah, exactly, there is the idea of pockets of economic freedom
is much more easily sold, I guess,
than the idea of allowing people more,
creating these pockets of more political freedom.
but again
so I live in Dubai now
it's a very well known
place
where that champions economic freedom
but it inevitably
translates into more personal freedom
if you go to Dubai it's a much
more socially liberal place
than basically any other
city in the Gulf
so these things
and I know
that you know there are
other places in the region that are trying to copy paste Dubai, like Doha in Qatar and
Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
And there is an inevitable move in that direction Like you trying you creating free economic zones and then you have and then you allow women to drive
and then you hold electronic music parties in the desert
and then you have exhibition, like modern art exhibitions
where you allow much more, where you can clearly see things
that were impossible to see anywhere in the region 10 years ago.
So that's another example.
Actually, that's one of the reasons why the governments of non-democratic countries
might be wary of the idea of three cities,
because they can realize that if you create a hub of economic freedom,
you should be ready for some...
And the people coming there would also probably be expecting more personal freedoms there.
So not everyone's ready for that.
But I mean, in Dubai, Dubai is a good example, because do you think Dubai's trajectory is kind of topping out then?
Or do you think you'd say it's the most socially liberal place in the Middle East?
The Gulf.
In the Gulf, let's say. Do you think they've decided, OK, now we've reached this good point? Or do you think, you know, liberal ideas in the social sense go on a lot further than this?
Because it is interesting because everyone, like people treat Dubai like it's black and white.
They either love it or hate it.
And I understand both sides.
We love it because it's a really interesting model that sort of is very economically free.
But socially, if you compare it to somewhere else in the West, it seems to be, you know, quite authoritarian.
So people either jump on that side of it or on the economic freedom side.
They don't seem to hardly anyone goes halfway.
People in the West have seen nothing but the West.
So they only compare it with what they see at home.
But for the millions of people coming there from from other developing third world countries, it's a big improvement on all kinds of freedoms.
And I also wanted to add to this, you know, I think false dichotomy between political and economic freedom. And you ask what's more important. I think that's exactly why we need a market for free cities, the market for good governance, as Titus calls it, that different people have different priorities.
For some people, the streamlined rules of running business are more important.
For other people, their sense of agency is more important.
Even my favorite example is in Honduras.
You have two Zedis, which one of them, Prospera, has some elements of democracy.
The other, Morasan, is an entrecom, as they call it, entrepreneurial communities,
where the developer makes all the decisions. And both are absolutely, both are good, both are fine.
So I also don't like the idea that democracy is bad per se. I think it's about consent. It's not
about the way you make decisions. So if you sign this agreement of coexistence when you move to
Prospera, then you sign up to these procedures. Within a condominium, you can have democracy,
you can have more democracy or less democracy, but it will be a privately run community and
everyone moving there would explicitly sign up to these rules of decision making. Some people
value this. So for example, Irvine, it's also a very peculiar case because it was built,
Orange County, where it was built in California, was one of the major strongholds of the
conservative party in the US back then, in the 50s, in the 60s. But the city itself was,
because it was growing around the university campus, the University of California Irvine
campus, it was attracting very liberal minded population, people who wanted, who were inherently
suspicious of big business, who wanted a say, who wanted democracy. And that created this very
interesting, like very balanced way of decision making. And the Irvine company,
the developer, they decided to introduce, you know, more, to give, voluntarily gave their power,
like some powers, they decided to create a municipality because they thought, oh, that is
from a market perspective, that's going to be good for us, because that will raise the value
of these homes, because people moving here want to work with the university, they want to work in
the creative industries, it's California, so they want some democracy. And if we allow them to vote,
if we create this municipality, then the rates, the prices of houses that we build will go up
even further. So it is all, that's why we need the market, because different people have different
priorities you're absolutely right consent is at the is it is at the base layer of all this
it's true um but but how does it work then say consent is paramount okay so you have a place
that is a marginal improvement so in a way to join that place you it takes your consent but it might
not be, you know, you may have no choice, if you see what I mean. You say you live in a very
authoritarian place and suddenly this little pocket of freedom springs up. But really it's not that
much freedom if you compared it to many other places, but it's marginally better. The consent
is still there, but you're still not living in a free place. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm,
The reason I'm asking you is because I know over the next 10 years, I'm going to have to talk about this more and more and more, because I think this is the truth.
I think the Free Cities movement's gone through a kind of a few stages and it's been quite theoretical until the ZAs.
And now I think over the next five to 10 years, we're going to suddenly be sort of like thrown into this arena of lots of real life examples.
Yes.
And the real life examples of free cities are not what we necessarily spent years talking about.
They are.
Here's what we can achieve within the parameters of where we are.
And by their nature, a lot of these places are going to like Dubai. They're going to arise in places where there isn't huge amounts of freedom, even economic or social. So consent is super important. But I suppose in a way, there are some people who would say, well, yeah, I'm giving you my consent to be here because it's better than where I've come from. But it would be much better somewhere else.
So I suppose that relies on the ability to vote with your feet, which is not actually, which is quite a privilege.
Yes, it's quite limited for the majority of the world population. That's exactly the reason why Dubai is so special, because it's very easy to come there. If you're from a poor country with minimal qualification, it's easy to come there and find a job.
If you find a job, then, yeah, it's very streamlined.
And they know that if they mess up something, all these people have somewhere to go back to.
And the next morning, the city will be empty.
So they have very, very strong incentives.
Do you think that true Do you think the people would move that quickly I know maybe someone like yourself because you a very mobile person you you consciously decided to live there and if if you got if it
changed and you didn't enjoy it you'd be you'd move to the next place but but your average person
that came in at a very low level job say yeah i can i can tell you yeah like uh we have a nanny
and if you talk uh to nannies they say oh i worked for three years in saudi arabia then for four
years in Amman, then two years in Abu Dhabi, and now I'm here.
But why do they move around?
Because they find a specific contract, a specific opportunity,
a specific family.
So, yeah.
And do they have their families with them?
No.
Do they plan to go back to where they're from?
Yes.
So it's like an interim period of earning as much money as they can,
sending it home.
Because you can't do it back at home.
Right.
But what about people that come to live in these places?
Because this is a super important thing to discuss.
You know, Prospero has this.
Every new startup or free city has this problem.
Is getting people to come could be pretty easy, actually.
Especially if you offer a good tax regime.
But getting people to stay is a whole different thing.
And I would say it's important.
You know, certainly if you're a super competitive government, you probably don't care because you think, well, as long as we keep, as long as this place is great, people are going to want to come here.
But I think governments ossify over time slowly and states ossify and even royal families who run countries.
that you know that that's why you need competition because they must always be anxious that oh if i
do a misstep then this guy next door uh will benefit then all these people will come to
i don't know then they will leave dubai and come to doha for example or i don't know any other part
of the world do you feel that that's true there do you feel as someone as a resident there are you
are you consciously thinking, well, are you looking for something better,
even though you're in Dubai? That's what I'm asking.
Well, as you mentioned, I'm part of this very special crowd
that is always looking for something better, that's always thinking,
oh, is there, you know, you want to be on the front line of,
you want to be the change that you're dreaming about.
So, yeah, we're not ruling out the possibility of moving somewhere else.
But for now, yeah, we like it there.
And I think we discussed it last year here that I mentioned that when I came there, I still had an impression of Dubai as a very transient place.
When people come, earn money and go somewhere else.
And then I started meeting people who were saying, oh, we came here.
We thought we were here for three, four years.
and it's been 17 years and my children grew up here and they're now students and i see
i already see the third generation people uh growing up in dubai but what's your grandparents
moved but the thing the interesting about dubai is you can't become a local can you you can't
become an emirati so that's an interesting dichotomy really again it's it's it's all about
choice. For some people it's important. For me it would be important because I was born in the
Soviet Union. I wanted a citizenship of a stable country. So I got my British passport. And after
that I started thinking of living somewhere else, which was Dubai. But I think for people who already
have a relatively strong passports that's that's not a problem and yeah for people who come there
like having weak passports uh yeah they are thinking for them that's a big problem and they
are thinking but they are thinking like okay i'm thinking should i buy a syndicats and kits
citizenship uh should i buy some other citizenship because more and more people this was i think this
was only the idea of the flag. The flag theory was a very marginal idea a few years ago. And now,
or maybe that's the Dubai factor. I hear people casually talking about it. Oh, which passport
should I invest in? Well, it's still a niche, I think. Bitcoiners are the same. It became,
you know, five or six years ago, it suddenly started getting talked about a lot. There's
quite a few people I know who I know from the Bitcoin world who now do that for a living,
who, you know, basically tell you which passports to get and how much it costs and fast track them
and all this kind of stuff. I will be chairing a panel about that. I saw that. Is it the why I
moved in search of freedom? No, that's another one. It's how to thrive as a borderless entrepreneur.
Okay. All right. Going back to the fact that you never get citizenship in Dubai,
right do you think that's a good model going forwards do you think that um if you run a
private city obviously it would kind of work the same because there'd be no such thing as
i think that ideally people want to you know grow roots where they to get rooted where they live
i think it gives you much more uh you know sense of stability especially if you so ideally i i think
there should be a route like this.
But again, for the lack of a better alternative, if you ask people,
do you want economic opportunities without, with zero chances of becoming
local, or do you just want none of this?
As you can see, like four or five millions are choosing this option,
that the non-ideal option.
But yeah, it would be very good if the free city is good.
So, for example, if we're building a free city, we depend very much on a host country.
And usually you can't circumvent the immigration rules.
So if America builds the free cities, it doesn't mean that you can move there circumventing the immigration rules of the U.S.
No matter if you have a good deal, if you have a contract for work or whatever.
And it's the same goes for any other host country that usually you, like as a developer of a free city, you don't have this power.
So you have to deal with what you have and you have to sacrifice this.
You know, you can't grant your residents and businesses this opportunity, but it's still better than nothing.
Do you think that's a long-term idea though? Because I've heard, I'm sure I've heard people connecting with Prospera saying that they want to, for want of a better word, a Prospera passport that allows you to, you know, is that, how does that work under a contract-based system then? How do you get like nationhood?
For now, it doesn't work this way, I guess. But maybe we can get a reasonable host country that can. No, I think it's very common. You'd better talk about this with Tom Bell, who knows all the legal nitty gritties of dealing with host countries, building a free city.
so honestly I don't know
I think this because even on a country
level you cannot do this you have the UN
imposed passport
system you have the
land all the land you have
all the earth basically
divided by between nation states
so even if
you have a country imagine
this it's
it's not
it not realistic now but imagine we have a host country that says yeah we will sell you the we are to sell you a piece of our land completely and you can build your own country there
The global rules do not allow that.
I think Joe Quirk might have issue with what you've just said.
Yeah, so I should have said all Earth.
That's why at first I said all Earth is divided between Latin states, because exactly, yes, you have the neutral waters.
And that's why seasteading, I think it's such a cool idea.
It is.
Honestly, I probably bang on about it a bit too much, but it's grown on me hugely.
Mainly because I talk a lot about free cities with people that don't necessarily even, hadn't even contemplated the thought.
When I talk to them about seasteading via cruise ships, they understand private cities suddenly.
in land-based ones as well.
Yeah, you don't have democracy on the ship.
Exactly.
Like the captain is the dictator,
but a lot of people pay a lot of money
to spend months and years on the ship.
Basically a movable private mini city.
It is.
Do you know the latest ship that's just been built?
I forget what it's called.
Something number two.
It costs two billion.
It's unbelievable when you look at this thing.
If you ever doubt it.
Yeah, that's a budget enough to build a city.
Yeah.
Well, it is a city.
It's a private floating city.
You know, it's this idea.
I'm kind of making it my life's mission.
Not that I'm necessarily a seasteader at all,
but to just get this out into the general consensus opinion
that cruise liners are free private cities.
Yeah, and Jock Work and Padre Friedman in their Seasteading book
are talking about people who are already living on board.
They talk about there was some retired woman
who decided to just put her savings into living on a big ship
and she just lives there permanently.
And one thing I like about this, you know,
You take any idea that seems wild and if you look deeper, it's in parts or as a whole, it's been already implemented in discreetly or just we don't register it.
Like the idea of living on a big vessel autonomously, but it's there and people are doing it.
It's also, for your average person, probably the highest standard of living they could ever get.
Because the ratio of people that work for you, basically, I think on a lot of ships, it's three or four to one, the number of people working on the ship compared to the number of people that are actually on it.
And again, it's one thing that is now only available to the very wealthy, but through the development of technology and investment and projects like the ones that Jockwork is endorsing and the seasteaders are doing can become gradually more available to the regular people.
There will be, I know, numerous presentations at this conference of new seasteading projects of low cost sea living, ocean living projects.
Like you don't have to.
Yeah, it's nice living on a two billion billion sheep.
But if you use the most advanced architect, like you can use modular construction to build low cost catamarans or floating platforms.
Again, it's better to.
Yeah, let's let's wait for the announcement.
I know there will be quite a few with the technical details.
But yeah.
The thing is, Vera, I don't think I think people are sleeping on how important the seasteading notion is in our community.
I did because I've always thought of it as quite a far out idea.
But philosophically, it's the perfect, it's the most perfect working model of a free private city.
Yes.
And you can show it to someone and they can imagine themselves walking into this place with free food.
Well, free, you're obviously paying for it.
But loads of staff asking you how you're doing.
A beautiful, someone cleaning your room, you know, like.
And you're not caring who's in charge.
You're not trying to vote for the guy that runs the ship.
All you care about is that the ship works well.
The legislation that runs the ship is kind of regulations enforced by self-enforced regulations.
So there's no state necessarily.
And you're flying a weird flag.
It's not necessarily the flag of where you are.
And you can cruise into any country you want.
You don't even need to know where this country is.
Exactly. But they just let you in.
You know, you can fly the St. Kitts flag and you can cruise into any port as long as you, you know, and they don't care.
They don't suspicious of you. They're not wondering, wait a minute, there's this private kind of, you know.
So, I mean, really, short of the fact that it's movable, it's a wonderful way to show the land-based version of that, which isn't as effective, funnily enough, because it can't move.
I mean, for me…
Yeah, because anything movable can be very easily absorbed by the host country.
Yes.
Because, yeah.
But that's why I think people shouldn't sleep on the idea and shouldn't sort of just say, oh, that's fun.
But no one's ever going to want to live on a boat or on a this or on a that.
Because if you don't hold that in your mind, you're basically selling your dream short.
Because voting with your feet is one thing.
But voting with your city is the ultimate future for us.
And I think the ultimate, when you look into the very far future, that's a space thing as well.
There's a frontier out there which is bigger than any frontier.
And you know, when I moved to Dubai, I realized that mentally and in many ways, technologically, humanity is ready to live on extraterrestrial colonies.
Because for four or five months in a year, you basically, you live under a dome.
You barely leave the building.
You have to live in air-conditioned spaces.
You go from and you have all sorts of indoor gardens and an indoor ski resort and all these crazy things.
And you see that a few millions of people have moved there voluntarily and they are ready to deal with such a harsh climate because the business climate is good.
And I thought, yeah, maybe we're ready to live on Mars because you would think, oh, no one wants to live in a dome.
No one wants to breathe artificial air and spend all your time indoors.
but then you go to a Gulf city and like, actually not no one.
It's not ideal.
And a lot of people who can, they leave Dubai for the harshest months.
Tell me something then, Vera.
Given the choice, if a Dubai-like place existed in Southern Europe,
would you move to it?
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
So it's true then that, you know, you wouldn't choose to live out into space under a dome
if you could live somewhere else.
Yes, they have to be other upsides to make you sacrifice for, I, no, I have, that's why
I think again that we as the Free City pioneers have to pursue all different kind of roads from the
extreme idea of seasteading, which is living up like entirely in the neutral waters with
zero, like without asking permission from any government to trying to win an uphill battle
for the free ports and other existing pockets of autonomy in legacy democracies, if we may call
them this way because people want different things because I am I'm the first person to love
old cities and old architecture whenever I come to Prague I just want to run around touching old
stones and walking so yesterday we spent seven hours walking in the parks despite the rain because
you don't have this in Dubai and this is what I miss badly and people want to go to a pub that's
older than your grandparents. I remember when I first came to the UK, to Oxford, and we went on a
tour, the city tour, and the tour guide said, oh, this is the oldest pub, it's 600 years old.
And the Australian classmate of mine said, yeah, older than my country, older than many countries,
the most countries in this world. So I totally understand people who love history, who love
architecture of past eras who love going to the the possibility of going to a forest on a hike
on a weekend or just spend all day in the park like we did yesterday so if we can if we can build
a pocket of more freedom in a in a place like that i think that's what people would choose
do you think that living in dubai is having from that perspective is having a negative effect then
do you would you call that a negative externality of living in dubai is the fact that you have to
deal with this climate yes yeah and and not have old buildings and not my local pub by the way where
i used to live is 900 years old the ritz the ritz bent in um which city is that city oh town
No, not even town. It's near Hay-on-Wye. It's an old black and white building called the Ridspens Inn. And if you look into it, it's been a pub for 900 years. But it was a drover's pub. So it was the drover's route, which were the routes that people used to drive their animals to market.
Yes, yes.
There's a barn, a drover's barn next to the pub, and then there's the inn where they used to stay in.
And it was actually the route to London, even though it's a four hour drive to London from there, even in a car.
That was one of the places.
The drover's roads were built specifically to take cattle to different markets and stuff.
But but do you so as a as a negative externality, then what happens when somewhere like, I don't know, Italy suddenly starts building free places?
Does Dubai, is there a drain? Like, how does Dubai compete with that?
I mean, it's an interesting idea, actually, because if if it did happen, I mean, it's not this is this is the thing that sometimes baffles me a little bit.
Why in the hell is someone powerful enough with access to resources not looking at Dubai and saying, we basically just need to recreate something like this in Southern Europe?
Show me a person that doesn't like the Southern European climate.
So far, I see the opposite.
So far, there was an article in Financial Times a few weeks ago.
Dubai is embracing the Danish lifestyle, and it's about the...
Actually, all of this is obviously driven by private developers.
Dubai, the new popping up communities, which are focused around cycling and walking and...
In Dubai.
In Dubai, yes.
So far, I see the Gulf cities trying to go greener and embrace more European lifestyle.
other than Europe trying to embrace economic freedom, which is very sad.
And I do hope that.
I know, I remember there was one free city initiative.
I don't think I can name it, but they wanted to build a place in the Mediterranean.
I think they realized later that politically that's pretty difficult.
But again, Mediterranean is not just Italy and Spain, very heavily regulated countries.
Mediterranean has a Montenegro, and we know about the Montelibro project.
Montenegro is now heaven for digital nomads.
During COVID, it introduced a new route for people working remotely to easily settle there.
That's one of the reasons that the Montelibero started growing.
No, I've been.
Yeah, I've been.
I've been.
The problem, once again, though, is Montenegro is a kind of country which is trying to come into the 21st century, let's put it.
That's not a very good way to describe it.
But unfortunately, that means wanting to join the EU, for example.
And now the moment they join the EU, I would say that projects like that become very difficult because everything in the EU is top down.
And I don't see anyone at the European Parliament really that into the idea of independent places.
And, you know, unfortunately, because we're all Europeans here and have grown up in and around Europe.
and we love the place yes we do we just hate the way that it runs and that's a very good way to put
it yes but it's true i mean my country where i live i love my country and i love the uk when i'm
at home on a farm in the middle of nowhere and i and i'm not thinking about the way the country's
run i'm in heaven and then as soon as i have to deal with something bureaucratic or as soon as i
turn on and put the news on or you know all of a sudden I get that sinking feeling in my stomach
which is like am I am I gonna have to give all this up one day and it's getting quite close
it's getting quite close to that thought mainly due to the economic climate and and the simple
fact that I know if I positioned myself somewhere else I could have like you've done I could have
such a different life i would just miss that core experience of being british living in the
countryside um being part of london very much it's it's a real shame it's a real shame because
it's uh you know i i don't know how it turns around i listen to a lot of people now discussing
the UK quite publicly. I see, yeah, in Dubai, when you meet with friends, I see a lot of people
fall for this confirmation bias who are starting discussing in details how Europe is going downhill.
And I think a lot of them are trying to persuade themselves that they made the right choice.
You think so?
I like to be realistic. I know for the time being Dubai is better for us, for our family.
But as you say, yeah, I love London. I love the UK. I love Europe. I love cities like Prague.
If there was more freedom here.
Do you agree with the trajectory that people say that Europe's on?
And by Europe I mean the UK as well I mean just those kind of centralizing forces bureaucratic expansion you know do you believe in that Do you think that true It not people coping who live out in Dubai
I don't think it's going in the right direction, but I don't think it's, you know, doing it in a catastrophic way.
But you still choose to live in Dubai?
For now.
We should talk about why free cities are good for the environment.
Is it as in when you say free cities are good for the world, do you mean the actual environment?
Are we talking green things here, that kind of thing, or are we just saying good for the world?
Yeah, I think for the actual environment.
I thought that that would be a provocative enough headline.
Yes, because it's one of the most used arguments against private development in general and large-scale city-sized private development specifically, that it is allegedly killing our planet.
It's destroying the nature. It's destroying the animal habitat and all these things.
If you look at the protests all over the world against any sort of construction, there would be people holding placards and save our trees, stop the developers.
And I think that it's very important to understand, to have the arguments in hand when you argue with these people, because this is not true.
because private cities, yes, if you look around the world,
private cities and even smaller scale private development
is because they respond to market incentives.
And if you look, there was this, I'm using it in my presentation,
there was the real estate survey in America asking people
when you choose a place to live, what are the main factors?
And number one is being close to a green place, being close to a park or any other green area.
It's more important for people than the tax bracket, than the amenities, schools, shops, restaurants, even commuting distance to their work or school.
The one most important thing.
So when people have this choice, they vote green and free cities give people this choice.
And Irvine, as I mentioned, is one of the greenest cities.
Yeah, it was already one of the greenest cities in the US in the top 10, like repeatedly ranked top 10. But about 10 or 15 years ago, the Irvine company donated 40,000 acres of their private land to the public as a nature reserve, which became one of the largest nature reserves in the whole United States, which commercially, if you look at it once, it looks like a crazy move.
Why would you give up such prime land? You can't imagine how much money you can make building on it in California, where the land is one of the most expensive commercially.
but if you look at it twice
it makes commercial sense
because it's
risen dramatically
the prices of houses that they
already are selling
in Irvine
and also in the neighboring towns
so
because as I say people
people voting for this and
again Lavasa in India
the one I mentioned
it's not for the rich
It's for the city that's the majority of population of it is the former villagers, the farmers.
And it is the greenest in India.
If you look at India, it's one of the most, like it's an environmental disaster.
Six out of 10 most polluted cities in the world are in India.
And on one hand, you see Mumbai with all the slums and the pollution.
And then you drive for a few hours and you're in Lavasa, which is the greenest city.
It's on the hill.
It has this Mediterranean-style vibe.
So, yes, that's another thing.
If you look at many of this, people love the Mediterranean.
So many of these developers, private developers, are trying to recreate something like this.
It looks like Portofino.
It's colorful terraces on the hills with a lake.
And it is, yeah, they planted six.
I don't remember.
They planted a massive amount, I think 600,000 trees.
And ironically, it was shut down for a while on environmental grounds
by the professional activists, as I call it, as I call them,
people who said that private developers are destroying environment.
That's why we have to shut down this project.
And they had their connections in the government.
So it was shut down for a few years.
And the locals were fighting back.
The locals were coming to the press and to the court and saying,
these people don't represent us.
They don't protect our rights.
We want this city to continue getting built.
We want to live here.
Was it a brand new development?
Yes.
Nothing was there to begin with?
Yeah, 2005, I guess, that's when it was late.
Okay.
This first town was late.
That's where all this stuff arises, though, isn't it?
You could say the same thing about Prospera.
When I first went to Prospera.
It's just nothing there.
Prospero is another one, like another argument why we need free cities to save the planet is because they create this places for experimentation.
because you don't, like, if you want to implement,
you cannot just implement the, like,
take an existing city and tell the people,
like, from tomorrow we're all riding electric cars.
But if you build a new city, like Mazdar in the Emirates,
where I think you've been,
or there is also the Dubai Sustainable City,
which is not a city, but, like, a neighborhood
where it's entirely car-free.
And again, it's a matter of consent. So people who want to drive cars, they just don't rent or buy there. And you can in Prospero, they have the Circular Factory. It's a startup that gives the local rural populations around the world this high tech tools for low cost and environmentally friendly construction, like robotic arms or 3D printing of
construction materials, of construction blocks. And Prospero has it because they didn't need to
go through all the regulations to establish something like that. And these things are,
when they are test-driven in places like Prospero, they can later be implemented anywhere
else in the world. So the Honduran government that's fighting against Zeres, they should
understand they're not just taking away the economic perspectives of their own people,
they're slowing down green technologies progress worldwide.
I don't think the Honduran government can see past the political sphere anyway.
That was a rhetorical.
It's not even worth discussing.
But one thing though, which is true,
and I think this is where a lot of these ideas stem from,
is that the part of Prospero which isn't Pristine Bay
is just a wilderness.
So they are cutting down trees to build a city necessarily.
So there is truth in this.
There is truth.
And I'm sure the same probably would have been said for Lavasa.
Is it Lavasa?
Yes.
If it wasn't...
Lavasa planted more trees than they cut.
That was specifically determined in the court.
But the thing is I think people and I come from this I in this category People like wilderness They don like trees in London Dubai is building 600 trees per day in the past year
Dubai is planting 600 trees per day.
I've looked at the statistics.
Dubai was a desert and most of the Emirates is the desert.
Now you see this oasis, the pockets of greenery.
the neighborhood I live in is called the greens the near one the nearby is called the lakes and
that's the meadows the springs so it tells you what people want people want pockets of wilderness
now they're building the one they call the wilds but the point is they're not wilderness that's the
thing it's like if you went it's still better than the desert I mean if we're talking about the
I don't know, the jungle, then that's one, building in the jungle, that's one thing.
But if we talk about building in the desert, definitely you have to plant the trees and it's definitely getting greener.
But what I mean is this is where the idea comes from.
And Prospera is a living example of this.
They are cutting down the forest to build Prospera.
So people, it doesn't matter whether you plant more trees than you cut down.
people would necessarily look at that and say, don't cut that down.
That's a bit of right hand.
What people? That's the question.
If you would say to people, do you want these trees to grow
or do you want economic opportunities?
Again, these are the people coming from the mainland in case of Honduras
or just, as I call them, professional activists who are saying that
it's like about, how to put it,
different people have different priorities. And if you already have a good job, if you have
everything you want in life, then you start thinking, oh, should I move to a greener part,
to a greener part of town? Should I move to a countryside where like the outskirts of London
from a small cramped flat in the center, because I can now afford it. But if you ask a person who's
just in the beginning of this, like in the lower part of this ladder, like, do you want to live
surrounded by trees or do you want to live surrounded by opportunities to make your life
better, to give your children a good education and a good start in life? They probably would say,
yeah, I'm okay with cutting these few trees. The problem is that people who get to decide are not
people who are faced with choice. And again, if you look at the planetary scale, and if you look
at, there is this thing called the environmental Kuznets curve. It's the curve, the graph showing
the dependence between industrialization and environmental damage. And the beginning of this
curve looks like you would imagine, and most people would imagine, because a country becomes
more economically developed, the environmental damage is growing. But then something unusual
happens something. The second part of this graph, most people don't realize it. When the GDP per
capita hits about $10,000, $15,000 per person, environmental damage per person starts falling
down because people can afford a greener lifestyle because people have reached, they have acquired
the basics and now they can, or they switch from a diesel car to a hybrid car, then electric car.
if we talk about very poor countries first they cook their food using coal then they switch to
gas then they switch to electric uh cooks so and they they have a more they have more choice they
can say oh i can i don't know some people choose to recycle some people choose to walk a cycle to
their work or school. And free cities are doing just that. They're helping economic progress,
economic growth. If you look at China, which has places like Shenzhen, one of the most spectacular
illustrations of how special economic zones can get millions of people out of poverty within a
single generation. And within the special economic zones in China, there are almost 20% more green
patents are registered. So these are places where not just economic growth is generated, but also
the green technologies are generated there. And these things have a spillover effect on the rest
of the country, the rest of the world, because that's how innovation works. So in the Emirates,
you've been to Mazdar, the green city. It's not much of a city, but it is a green lab. And
the Abu Dhabi electric bus was developed there. The offshore winds farm that are now used in the
UK were developed there. The solar towers that's used in Seville was developed there. So it's a
small place in terms of uh community it's a very small community with not many people living there
but it's a hub for green technologies that are being implemented everywhere else and these are
the things that on a global scale make our life greener yeah i i still think that um you you were
saying that that given the choice a local person would say i don't mind cutting those trees down
if my standard of living gets better and I agree with that.
I think where people who want to sort of halt things like that come from
is with the benefit of hindsight,
often they would look at places that have gone through that process
and to the detriment of the environment.
And they would use that for sure as a reason to say,
well, look, just leave that bit of wilderness.
Don't build on it then.
especially on an island like Roatan where you could argue there is limited resources of it's
an island there's only so much you can develop a place before you lose it all and there's a lot
of people that would rather that didn't happen I mean even me I would look at that and go if I
yeah I like I like wilderness I like that's an important part of my life is being able
to be in a wilderness not somewhere in Dubai where it's a man-made wilderness because that's
not really a wilderness for me so i'm not i'm not saying it's right or wrong or whether i even have
an answer because at the end of the day it depends where your focus is if you focus on the betterment
of people you would say well the wilderness will suffer at the hands of people it will if you want
a better standard of living if you want a better accommodation a better protection from the dangers
of the wilderness, which is basically what that is, this kind of trajectory you're on.
So, but I do understand why people get upset about things like that. And the answer probably
is, well, we'll create more wilderness than we destroy. And as you say, over the long term,
it seems that that happens. But that's probably not good enough for a lot of people, because
that they'll see they'll see the destruction that happens in the first five years 10 years
whatever and say you know and and i'm not even saying that that i mean rotan's an interesting
example because there is a finite land mass there but there's a lot of wilderness in a lot of places
you look at russia for example russia you've got so much forested land people uh in in millions
are leaving places, countries like the Philippines
with untouched forests and go to places like Dubai
where you can barely breathe during several months in a year
because they have different priorities.
Yeah.
So what do you think Dubai is going to look like in the future Do you think they going to go do you think they going to create I wouldn be surprised knowing the way they think
They'll probably create biomes, won't they?
They'll build massive, the kind of things you'd expect to be living in in Mars.
They'll create them in the desert and there'll be snowy environments.
They'll be, because they literally can't create the climate they need.
Last year I went to a Christmas market in Dubai and there were artificial snow and kids were creating snowballs from artificial snow and throwing to each other.
That looked very weird.
But I think, yeah, there was nothing like that a decade ago.
I mean, it's better than.
I don't know how I feel about stuff like that.
I mean, this is my overarching kind of my memories.
I've worked in a number of places in the Middle East, including Doha.
And when I lived in Doha, I lived there for a couple of months just on a small job.
And I lived in a sort of Venetian part of Doha.
But I had to say it was a soulless place.
It had canals and I lived in a house that you could walk to.
But no one was on the streets.
No one was doing anything.
I don't know whether
I'm a very weird person
I think I'm the only one who walks for two hours a day in Dubai
I deliberately chose a nursery for our daughter
So that I could walk there and back for half an hour one way
But most people don't do it
And it's hard to create
People, when I told in the nursery to the teacher that I just walked
They looked at me like I was crazy
But I'm trying in London
I used to walk for two hours a day at least
yeah me too i mean i'm a big walker but walking through a city is not enough for me i think i
need to be walking in in the in the wilderness and i've never thought that i would i've i've
thought that i could live in dubai for the opportunities it would offer my children
but it would be a different opportunity so i'll give you an example my eldest daughter has a horse
and she rides her own horse.
But she rides it, if she lived in Dubai,
she would probably, she would be riding a horse,
but in a different way.
Not necessarily a better way,
but in a more kind of refined way,
in a way that probably people would aspire to.
It would be at a riding center.
It would be probably with good teachers.
It would, you know.
But I am in two minds as to whether that's necessarily better.
it appears to be better and people would say oh you know because i've met you know when we made
that film in dubai i met a number of people there who flow it flew in their horses from argentina
and they live on you know it's amazing the kind of level of of of that you can live to there
but whether or not it's it's better than the the the the life that that i have in the uk it's hard
to say economically 100 it is but everything else and even with all the innovation that's happening
there maybe i'm just old but there's a limit to how much innovation i actually need in my life
i think i don't know am i am i too old is that is that an outdated idea i mean you know i think i
probably am too old anyway um one last thing i want to talk about before before we finish i don't
know if you know much about this but do you know much about olivier jensen's new project destiny
oh you don't that's we've just announced it it's instant kits i just wondered if if you had any sort
of inside info on that because i obviously want to speak to him um about it and i'm sure that'll
happen at some point but it looks like quite exciting and and it appears to be um another
example of more projects appearing on the landscape which are using the the ideas we've
been espousing for many years and and really really happening you know uh have you had a
wind of any other new projects that you're interested in of late not just that one i was
looking forward to the conference to hear more details right yeah we're recording this two days
before the conference starts or one day so but but you're right there's gonna by the i mean we can
probably talk about one really exciting thing that's basically next year the conference is
going to be held in prospera i mean it will have come out by now but that is that's super exciting
I love Prague. I love the city of Prague. And actually, for many of us, Prague will be the definitive place where this kind of stuff happened.
Yes, I think it's a big sign of optimism. I think Prosper actually, a lot of people, as you said, are complaining that how free cities look on paper is much more grandiose compared to how they end up getting actually, when they actually start getting built.
and Prosper is one of
they saying oh you were talking about
you're actually talking about a place
where just a few hundred
of population permanent
and for now
it's more of a resort slash
convention center
place where people come and go
than a
permanently populated
community
but
these all we have to remember that
this has been all achieved despite a very, very, very hostile attitude from the government,
that the government that came to power in Honduras in 2022, they made it one of their core promises
to shut down the ZS as unconstitutional, neocolonial, environmentally dangerous,
all these things that we keep hearing. And they used every single tool they had,
including very, very dubious and absolutely nonsense things like declaring it illegal, the regime retrospectively illegal.
And the fact that all of this, the community has been built and it is now achieved such a level of development that we can bring this 400 people that get to Prague, we can expect to bring them to Prospera is a very huge sign of success, if it happened despite this hostility.
And it means also that we have to give credit to the legal team behind Prospera and the ZS in general that have managed to, through studying all the past failures, not just in Honduras, but in other places, through studying what went wrong in other cases.
when if you talk about dealing with a host nation,
how to safeguard these projects
from whichever political turmoil may come
because many of these projects are happening
in very unstable places.
And they've introduced four levels of protection
from the CAFTA agreements to,
I don't remember the legal details,
but they have several levels of protection.
So if this doesn't work, this should work.
If they cancel this deal, then we can go to these courts.
And you see, they didn't manage with all their power, they didn't manage to close it down.
And now, next year, we're heading to Prospera.
Imagine what they could have achieved and what they will hopefully achieve.
if the government is more friendly.
And there will be elections soon, so fingers crossed.
Yeah, I think actually, Vera, it was you that in our discussion about one year ago,
we talked about defending a free city.
And I think I've been, your talking points back then are now,
they've been fully integrated into what I say.
I think I'll remind you, you said there are three main ways to safeguard a free city.
legal, economic and community. And it's true. It's absolutely true. And now Prospera are living
proof that the legal one works. They're learning huge lessons with the community one because
they've allowed a PR campaign by their political foes to work, unfortunately. But now it's turning
around and now we see probably 50 50 mixed you get more and more people are going there now quite
high profile youtube channels again they're getting millions of views yeah and now you're
seeing people reporting the truth so that um and the and the economic one well the government are
never going to get behind that the current government the new government which i think
most people are imagining that there'll be a change in government uh away from the left more
towards the right or the centre at least. So they will be more into the notion...
Because you can't imagine a more hostile government. So it can, from this level,
it can only, from this low point, it can only get better.
Well they even I mean they got more investment during this time than they had previously And I know that was in position before But the people the new investments came despite all the problems
So, I mean, that's why I said it.
You can imagine how many investors turned away from it because of the, well, because they're rational,
because you cannot blame people for not wanting to lose their money.
Now imagine them all coming back.
Well, one would hope so. But this is why I said at the start of this conversation how I feel really excited at the moment. I saw the last newsletter that the Free Cities Foundation put out. And I just, I was like, wow, new project, new investment. You know, we all secretly knew that we were going to run the conference next year in Prospero. And it's like, this is super exciting. I think it's the most excited I've been.
And the podcast, which we started in Prospera, funnily enough, has been going now for, well, say 150 episodes.
So that's nearly three years.
This is the most excited I've felt in that three years.
And the conference has not even started yet.
No.
Well, unfortunately, as you know, I don't get to spend a huge amount of time.
We haven't even heard yet from all these announcements.
You're true.
I wish I could be there watching it happen.
I'll be there at the opening ceremony and a couple of the functions.
And good luck with your talk.
You're going to be why we didn't really speak about a huge amount,
why free cities are good for the environment.
But that doesn matter because I think you always got something interesting to say You one of the preeminent people in the movement I would say You done certainly on the not educational what am I trying to say
On the side, on the research side, yes.
You're one of the most knowledgeable people.
So thanks for bringing that here.
And yeah, good luck with your talk.
You're speaking to the…
Thank you.
It's always immense pleasure talking to you on your podcast.
It's been, yeah, the third time.
Good.
I'm glad, you know, we're also, you know, I feel like the podcast is,
my vision right from the start was always to create something
that we could put at the center of the movement,
which gives us the opportunity to talk about this stuff
or to, you know, like when things happen to be able to, you know, like send them out into the world.
And it seems to have worked.
I mean, the only competition we'd have for that title would be from completely,
would be sort of from the kind of network state end of the spectrum, which have their own conference.
But we, as the Free Cities side, we have basically created a really great arena to be able to discuss these things and also to be able to sort of tell people what's going on.
Hopefully, honestly.
That's why, you know, I appreciate your candid responses.
And I going to keep this going to keep it up basically because I think we I do believe we heading into a five to 10 year period of many new discussions about this stuff because I think lots of new projects I know of a number so do you but we can speak about which are
about to be built or in the process of testing the viability of. And they will all run into the
problem of people will look at them and say, well, hey, that's not a libertarian utopia.
and I'm thankful that the Prospera has kind of, you know, laid the groundwork in many ways.
But Prospera is just one part of the spectrum.
And there are going to be projects from very far this way and very far that way.
And we're going to have to basically advocate for what they're doing
if they're creating a better place, if they're creating a freer place.
I think it's just important that people understand that that spectrum of freedom is something that you strive for.
And there's not a solution that just comes like that.
Yes, as Tom Bell once told me, we're climbing up a ladder of consent.
You cannot jump up the top of the ladder.
You have to go step by step.
That's a brilliant way.
We're climbing a ladder of consent.
Right, I'm committing that one to memory.
Thanks, Vera.
Lovely to see you again.
Likewise.
Good luck with your talk.
Thank you.