Edge City Newsletter — February 2026

Esmeralda updates, NYT mention, free research tools, Bhutan's new nomad visa and more!

March 2, 2026

Hello friends! Is it just us, or did February absolutely fly by? Either way, we're one month closer to being in the same place once again ☀️

This month, we published new essays on regenerative community and democratizing science, opened housing for Edge Esmeralda 2026, got a shoutout in the New York Times, and community members dropped our first zine. Oh, and prices are going up again soon, so if Esmeralda has been quietly sitting on your to-do list, now's the time.

Now, pour yourself a cup of something nice, and let’s get into it.

TL;DR

Esmeralda prices are going up - If it's been on your mind, now's the time. Apply here →
Patagonia community zine is out - 95 pages from Patagonia, made by the people who were there. Read it →
Bhutan launched a digital nomad visa - $2,800/year, gold-backed crypto. Learn more →
Edge City and Esmeralda were mentioned in the New York Times - named as part of a movement reimagining how America builds. Read it →
Follow us on X and Instagram ❤️
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Join us at Edge Esmeralda 2026 →

Remind me, what is Edge City?

Edge City is a society incubator that gathers people working at the frontiers of science, technology, and culture in month-long popup villages around the world.

We build living labs to experiment with new ideas, technologies, cultures, and organizations. All with the goal of advancing human flourishing.

We’re building towards a global network of temporary and permanent innovation hubs. Explore our roadmap to see how we plan to grow.

Collaboration is essential to achieve our vision. That’s why we aim to partner with folks who are interested in hosting residencies for builders, scientists, and artists at our popup villages. If you’re interested, please reach out here.

‍The story and impact of Edge City in 5 minutes. Watch the talk →

🧪 New: Edge City Community Fund (with $100K in matching)

We’re piloting something new with Artizen - a community funding pool for experiments at Edge City.

They’ve seeded us with $100,000 in matching funds that we can allocate to projects we approve - from residencies and fellowships to experiments, research, and production.

This means:

💡 Community-supported projects can unlock additional capital

💰 Every dollar raised can bring in substantial matching funds

🗳️ Even voting (free) helps direct funding

There are 4 ways to support:

1. Fund a project directly → best way to unlock matching

2. Contribute to the pool → grows matching capacity

3. Vote on projects → helps allocate funds (free)

4. Submit your own project → raise funds + tap into matching

We see this as a powerful new way to resource the kinds of experiments Edge exists to make possible.

👉 Explore or support the fund here

What's Coming Up

Edge Esmeralda 2026: May 30 – June 27, Healdsburg, CA

Applications are open for our annual flagship popup village in Healdsburg, California. A full month of building, living, and and experimenting together - co-organized with Devon Zuegel and the Esmeralda Institute, in one of California's most beautiful small towns.

If you've been before, you know. If you haven't, the recaps from 2024 and 2025 will give you a feel for what a month there actually looks like.

Residency applications are open: get in touch if you want to lead or join one
Housing guide available to help you plan
Tickets are live: apply now before prices go up again
The programming preview has been released - check out each week’s theme

"Edge City gave me experiences I could have never had anywhere else. Whether it was talking with the founders of Neuromatch, casually sharing an Uber with the founder of Neuralink, or learning to DJ with Arielle Zuckerberg, there were always these serendipitous interactions that simply wouldn't be possible elsewhere."

— Janet Shin

We recommend joining for 2–4 weeks to allow deeper collaborations to form and new ideas and habits to settle in.

Collaborate with frontier minds →

Edge City India — Scouting Underway

We're actively scouting locations for Edge City India in Q4 2026. More details to come. Stay tuned and follow us on X/Twitter for updates.

Bhutan — We're Going Back

After our transformative 8-day expedition in September, we're in active planning to return to Bhutan and deepen the collaborations we started with Gelephu Mindfulness City. Watch this space for updates.

Quick News and Updates

Prices for Edge Esmeralda are increasing again - lock in your spot now before the next bump. Get all the details on pricing, discounts, and residencies etc.

We're in the New York Times - Edge Esmeralda was named alongside California Forever and Nobel laureate-backed city projects as part of a movement reimagining how America builds. Devon Zuegel's walkable, car-free vision - front and center.

The first Edge City Zine is out - 95 pages from a month at the edge of the Andes, made by the community, for the community. And the full circle moment: the platform it's hosted on, Punto Press, was built by Soul Choi at Edge Patagonia. A tool born inside the village, now telling its story.

We have some new friends in the ecosystem

Welcome, PL Genesis!
We're joining forces for the Frontiers of Collaboration hackathon - frontier builders, deep collaboration, and the kind of serendipity you can't manufacture.

Welcome, Alethios!
Our villages have always been living labs. Now residents have the tools to make the experiments count. Plus, free access to the Alethios Study Planner for all participants.

🤔 Did you know? Bhutan just launched a digital nomad visa
$2,800/year, 12 months, live anywhere in the kingdom. Entry requires a $10k deposit into TER, its new gold-backed cryptocurrency. Very on-brand for Bhutan.

Builder Spotlight: Akshaya Dinesh, Edge City Fellow @ Patagonia 2025

A self-taught coder since age 13, Akshaya built multiple venture-backed startups before burning out and developing a chronic hormonal condition.

She turned that experience into fuel, building an app to help women manage symptoms daily, shipping v1 to the App Store just before arriving at Edge City as a Fellow.

At the village, she iterated in real-time with user feedback and found a community that deepened both her product vision and her approach to intentional building.

Ecosystem Highlights

Edge City attracts people who are always building something worth paying attention to. Here's a snapshot of what's live across the community - projects to join, tools to use, and experiments to follow.

Roots of Progress: Progress in Medicine
A 5-week summer program for high school students exploring careers in medicine, biology, and related fields. Five weeks live online and 4 days in-residency hosted at Stanford, with research labs and Bay Area biotech company tours. June 15–July 24. Apply by March 29. (Apply here)
Funding the Commons SF: Intelligence at the Frontier
A 2-day vertical festival across 16 floors of Frontier Tower, San Francisco. 1,000+ builders, researchers, and artists tackling the coordination systems superintelligence will need. March 14–15. (Register here)
MonasteryX
Deep work meets deep practice. A month-long residency at a meditation center in Chiang Rai, Thailand (March 14–April 12) with meditation teachers, high-agency peers, and all your daily needs met. (Apply here)
AI-Native Orgs
Stepan Gershuni is writing the AI-native org playbook and is looking for founders and operators who've restructured around AI agents. (Get involved)

Food for Thought

"When a path becomes the default, it no longer says something meaningful about you, but instead starts being an optimization problem. And optimization problems are increasingly not that interesting.”

- Michael Dempsey, VC-Backed Startups are Low Status

What We’re Reading and Watching

Reading:

On the Edge of the World: Reflections on Anti-Fragility - A meditation on anti-fragility and why the most interesting things happen at the edges of systems.
The AI Agent Quickstart Guide (for People Who Don't Code) - If you've been curious about agents but felt locked out, this is your entry point.

Watching:

EdgeCast - Run don’t walk to watch the latest spotlight series of creators, builders and founders found at Edge City. Shoutout to Danny Amara.
The Punk Rockers: Cypherpunks, Solarpunks & Afrofuturists - Miss Purple on why the cypherpunk, solarpunk, and afrofuturist movements are more relevant than ever. Thank you to Miss Purple for this awesome piece!

Beyond Edge City, but still relevant to the ideas we're exploring:

Coasean Bargaining at Scale - What if AGI agents could finally make Coase's vision real? A sharp essay on decentralization, coordination, and what co-existence with AGI might actually look like.
The Future of Focused Research Organizations - The NSF just launched an initiative to fund a new generation of independent research orgs on what does and doesn’t make a research organization actually transformative.
Let a thousand societies bloom - Vitalik Buterin's vision for tribes, zones, and popup cities as laboratories for cultural and governance experimentation, and why small-scale voluntary experiments beat grand ideological takeovers.

The best thing about Edge City is the people in it. If you're reading this, you're already part of it. Now come help us build it.

As always, thank you so much for reading. We’re looking forward to reading all the applications and projects for Edge Esmeralda! ☀️

Timour & the Edge City team