Why I’m Spending The Last Week of June At a Pop-Up Village in Northern California

If you’re wondering about how to build a better world, Plato’s Republic is as good a place to start as any.

And if you do start there, as I did twelve years ago, in my research for Our School, you quickly realize that any serious effort to imagine an ideal society must view the education of its citizens as the cornerstone.

“But how, exactly, will they be reared and educated,” Socrates asks us. “And does our considering this contribute to our goal of discerning that for the sake of which we are considering all these things -- in what way justice and injustice come into being in a city.”

Indeed.

In that spirit, I am encouraged by the slow but steady growth of communities around the country that are establishing not merely schools but “learner-centered ecosystems,” which, although they may not yet be true civic cornerstones in the way Socrates and Plato envisioned, are nonetheless powerful interim steps in our effort to get all the way there.

In ecology, it’s called an edge effect, and it refers to what happens when the boundary between two distinct habitats starts to support a higher biodiversity and population density than either habitat individually. The most famous example of this might be the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, a decision that set off a “trophic cascade” that changed not merely the quality and quantity of the wildlife, but the health of the park’s water systems as well.

Suffice it to say, then, that when a pop-up village calling itself Edge Esmeralda reached out and asked me if I’d like to spend a week with others seeking to prototype a new way of building, learning, and living together, I said sign me up!

In fact, the village will exist for the entire month of June, with different themes each week (I’ll be there for the final one, Environments of Tomorrow). As co-founders Timour Kosters and Devon Zuegel put it, “Over the last two years, we have gathered in Healdsburg to prototype a new way of living. We’ve turned a town into a campus, strangers into neighbors, and wild ideas into concrete projects.”

In true edge-effect fashion, the popup village is a testing ground for Esmeralda, the permanent village they aspire to build just 15 minutes away.

“Picture living in a walkable town surrounded by friends, collaborators, and people you admire,” they continue. “You spend the morning in deep work, pushing forward a project you’ve been meaning to ship for months. At lunch, you join a group of people focused specifically on your field, whether that’s AI safety, synthetic biology, or education reform. In the afternoon, you take a break for a dip in the Russian River or a bike ride through the vineyards. The evening ends with a community dinner made from local ingredients, followed by a salon on the future of governance or a spontaneous acoustic jam session in the town square.

“Edge Esmeralda is where we test the culture, the governance, and the vibes that will eventually be formalized in the town nearby,” Kosters and Zuegel explain. “By joining us in Healdsburg, you aren’t just attending an event; you are helping to co-author the DNA of a new town.”

Aspirational? Yeah.

Utopian? Maybe.

A viable prototype for the future (with a viable vision of how education can serve as the ultimate justice-oriented trophic cascade)?

Come join me, and we can decide together.