Reflections on Pop-up Cities

Over the last two years I have immersed myself into the realm of pop-up cities—temporary communities that merge technology, culture, health, philosophy, and ambitious visions for humanity's future.

What is a Pop-up City? A pop-up city is a temporary, intentional community designed to foster collaboration, innovation, and experimentation in a physical space for a limited duration, typically a few weeks to months. Blending elements of co-living, co-working, and community-driven progress to explore futuristic ideas around techno-optimism, longevity, decentralized governance, and network states.

What is a Network State? A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

This text will focus more on the reality of pop-up cities, since it has been my experience. The larger vision of network states is a topic for another day.

The central thesis of pop-up cities and network states, in my mind, is Innovation. It is a way to do faster Regulatory, Technical, and Cultural innovation. Find an aligned community via the internet and create something together in real life.

Cultural innovation is exciting. Low-key modern life is quite lonely and unhealthy, with everyone living alone in an apartment and spending 8+ hours on the screen. How can we set up our lives to be more engaging, reflecting humans' clan-like existence in the past?

Pop-up cities allow for a blank canvas to create new norms around health, longevity, and what kind of daily routine is encouraged. I often describe a pop-up city as a university at 20% speed: you spend 20% of your time engaged in structured learning or building together, and the rest you figure out yourself.

Meta-Lessons

Cultural Diversity: I met ~1000 people across ethnicities, religions, and value systems, broadening my worldview. Most pop-ups I’ve been at aimed at Dunbar’s number ~150 people. These were more than just one-time interactions; spending months at a time with people gives you a more real view under the mask, so to speak.

Human Behavior in Groups: Observed tribal dynamics, hierarchies, relationships (e.g., intense town halls, friendships, partnerships, business relationships); rare insight into raw intense individual and group interactions in person.

Healthy Habits: Practices like yoga, shared meals, shared workouts and more social interaction boosted mindset and productivity .

Early alpha on culture and tech trends - When you are surrounded by people there is more contact surface to new ideas and trends. You see much more as compared to being alone or only on the internet. Examples: crypto/ai trends

Crypto native use cases - Actually using crypto for useful things (like buying the local currency in cash, trading with others, poker, you name it). Being more fluent in crypto as in actually using it to transact for different reasons.

Lots of high agency people looking to build projects, lots of opportunities going around. You can test ideas, find co-founders, find your first users very fast in a pop-up city environment

New lens to view society, technology and history - Seeing the big picture movement from Religion, State to the internet. Seeing Capitalism over Socialism. Seeing information warfare on social media.

Seeing internet entrepreneurs in action - I’ve met so many successful business owners running businesses of all different kinds with one common denominator - they are running it over the internet. I had trouble finding these people in my local environment at home but they are more common at pop-ups

Topics of pop-ups are similar - at least in what is being discussed. Its a fast track to learn about decentralization, techno-optimism, longevity and similar topics.

Pop-up specific lessons

These are just my personal views on what I think is important.

Culture = Norms and behavior (healthy food, more serendipitous human interaction is good, working out is good, meditation is good). Important lesson: you can set a new standard by what people you attract and the values you live by on location. Notice theres a big difference between stated values and actual lived values. If the values are truly lived they will spread in that pop-up community in a great way.

Leadership—I think what works best is a very transparent leadership model where you know who is in charge, but they are actively listening to the community in some form of town hall meetings. Someone needs to make decisions; otherwise, there will be endless discussion around governance. Don’t control too much, however.

Serendipity - Maximize serendipitous interaction. In practice this means: have everyone share meals together and live in very close proximity (ideally in the same building).

Holistic Communities: Balance masculine tech focus with feminine, health-focused, or spiritual elements to to have a more diverse crowd.

Sustainable Funding: Move beyond grants to participant fees to other sustainable models, maybe accelerator type or have corporate partnerships for hiring & project work.

Local Integration: Collaborate with locals to build win-win relationships and counter negative media narratives.

Potential for scientific research: For example the 1-month microbiome experiment at Zu-Grama had all residents eating same food and testing before vs after. Thanks MicrobiomeDAO!

Be watchful for Larping: its easy to get caught up in “meaningful” discussions about governance and endlessly building digital tools for the community. Still, you should be critical of how useful all of this is in reality, as it is very easy to just LARP and have fun without accomplishing much.

Personal lessons learned

Its important to preserve your own energy with good habits, especially in a relatively intense environment as a popup city.

The more you give the more you get. Be an active instead of passive consumer.

The builder energy is exciting in the first months at a pop-up. Lots of people looking to apply themselves, solving problems, creating projects and startups. Take part in it.

Memorable things have been projects I’ve been part of: for me it was creating different AI agent systems, publishing two books, AI video art, blogs and podcast.

The culture of the region is important for me personally. So far I’ve enjoyed India and Brazil a lot because of the local culture is fascinating to me.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kinda people are at a pop-up city?

I’ve met people from all over the world, most from the West, followed by Asia, India, South America, and Africa.

Most have a techno-optimistic worldview. The average age is probably around ~30. Common interests are crypto, AI, longevity, healthy living, spirituality & startups.

Maybe half have a steady job meaning they are working on their computer. The other half is a healthy mix of lost souls, students and founders.

Not many children, I’ve met a few families but can count them on one hand. Most are traveling solo or with their significant other.

How many people are at a pop-up city?

In my experience, around 50-200 people stay for the whole duration (1-3 months). Many of the pop-ups explicitly focus on Dunbar’s number, which is 150. However, there are often conferences, special theme events, and guests visiting over shorter periods, so the real number of people somehow interacting at these popups is probably closer to 500 or more.

Which pop-ups have you attended?

Zuzalu Montenegro 2023
Edge Esmeralda California 2024
Network School Singapore 2024
Zu-Grama India 2025
Network School Singapore 2025
Ipe.city Brazil 2025

Should you join a Pop-up City?

Maybe. I will probably do more since I’m traveling and I really enjoy this way of connecting with people and cultures from around the world. Still, this scene is very early and the reality is less glamorous than what you may read online. Think of them more as long co-working environments with semi-aligned people.

The application process is usually open but heavily curated by the organizers. Its almost as if you are joining someone else’s home for a few months so they have the power to decide who to bring.

Thanks for reading!