Spring 2025: Pop-up Cities Building for a Techno-Optimistic Future
Where are the techno-optimistic builders gathering at?
Enjoy this article about some of the hottest upcoming pop-up cities 🔥 in the next few months!
All over the world, bold communities are gathering to prototype new ways of living, building, and being. These are intentional communities in the cross-section of technology, health, philosophy, and culture, experimenting and prototyping a brighter future.
☝️ A friendly reminder: Many of these pop-up cities carry a relatively high ticket price, often due to the cost of running events in exquisite locations. While they can feel exclusive, they often offer incredible networking opportunities that broaden horizons and open doors.
If you’re deeply curious about frontier tech, new governance, or experimental living, some of these might be worth exploring—even just for a week!
🐘 Edge City: South Africa
📍Cape Town & Stellenbosch | 🗓 April 3–13
Edge City is inviting a group of adventurous builders to join them on this expedition in stunning South Africa. 🌊
Over 10 days, participants will co-create a beautiful container where healthy living, frontier tech, and collective learning intersect and explore iconic local projects and institutions along the way.
Expect strategy salons, distributed dinners, joyful adventures, and endless social events. If you want to be immersed in Protopian spirit with a real-world builder mindset — plus a love for yoga HIIT and daily group runs — Edge City is THE PLACE for you.
🏔️ Zuitzerland
📍Swiss Alps | 🗓 May 1 – 26
A network state sandbox designed to prototype the civilization of tomorrow. It serves as a hub for pioneers in Web3, AI, biotech, BCI, privacy, and cryptography, fostering safe technological acceleration through residencies, pop-up city events, and hackathons.
Nestled in the serene Swiss Alps, Zuitzerland invites a global community of builders, artists, thinkers, and citizens to co-create a temporary republic from the ground up.
At its heart is a living inquiry into collective governance, defensive technology (d/acc), and a solarpunk & cyberpunk inspired future.
Just looking at the website and going through the application process already brought me so much joy and hope about this project. It seems the team put emphasis on value alignment for the attendees.
The application asks thoughtful questions that nobody else does, like ‘What are some values you changed in the last 1-2 years’ or ‘What specific topics brought your interest to our project’ — and I can only imagine how deeply insightful would be to meet this community in person!
🌴 Metacamp: Arts and Culture in the Jungle
📍Guanacaste, Costa Rica | 🗓 April 2025
Most likely, you’ll meet some freakishly talented and ‘grid-free’ people at Metacamp. It is a living campus for regenerative founders, system thinkers, artists, and community stewards. Some of my personal friends will be going down to this camp, and they are AWESOME.
Each month-long session invites a range of carefully selected participants to immerse themselves in nature, deep work, and collective creativity. It’s a space where spiritual depth meets intellectual rigor—offering daily rhythms of embodiment, co-working, and shared meals, alongside systems design workshops and deep dives into regenerative economics, technology, and culture.
Registration is probably closed given that it starts in a week... But Metacamp seems to be a recurring occasion, so I definitely recommend staying tuned to them.
🌉 Frontier Tower: San Francisco
📍Downtown SF | 🗓 Launches April 3 (ongoing)
This is quite an exciting one — a living laboratory for frontier culture at the heart of San Francisco.
Frontier Tower is an ongoing community experiment inside a physical building in SF—serving as a hub for founders, artists, researchers, and people reimagining the Internet and lifestyles in the city.
Part tower, part temple, part collective clubhouse—this project channels the energy of urban alchemy, bringing together technologists and mystics under one roof.
SF is known for its frontier builder culture, but also has such a vibrant social and art scene. I am beyond excited for what this project has to offer.
This overview of the tower at berlinhouse.com feels like a dream come true. 🤩
🌿 Vitalist Bay
📍Berkeley | 🗓 April 4 – May 29
A month-long deep dive into human vitality and living systems, situated in a forested cove on the California coast.
Life is Good. Death is Bad
— is the slogan to be found at the bottom of this website, signaling and maybe inquisitive? 🧐
Disregarding how ‘strange’ the ‘anti-death’ movement might sound like, I do believe longevity science that improves the average health for humanity is a mission worth pursuing. The possibility that frontier longevity science meets traditional wellness practices does fascinate me.
Imagine forest saunas, somatic workshops, DEXA scans, advanced biomarkers, stem-cell therapy, gene editing… meditations, and deep rest. This could be a rare place where the future of health is right at your doorstep. 🧬
🌴 Ipe.City: Brazil
📍Atlantic Forest, Brazil | 🗓 April 22 – May 22
Startup societies can create leaner governments, include communities at the core of decision-making processes, and drive social development for the underprivileged.
This project came under my radar from a lovely stranger from the internet who stumbled upon Pop Out club.
This month-long residency is expected to have technologists, builders, and optimistic futurists to construct shared mythos while living together under the rainforest canopy. Expect ceremonial living, storytelling, co-built spaces, and moments of awe!
BIG UP 🙌 — the readers for this blog will get 15% discount if going to this pop-up event
As an Ipê Ambassador, NetX State offers a 15% discount for those attending the Pop-Up City. To claim it, use netxstate@gmail.com in the CODE field when applying here: https://tally.so/r/mVv09M
🚢 Ark Liberland: Pop-up at a Micronation
📍Liberland | 🗓 April 13 – May 11
Liberland is a self-declared micronation, a libertarian experiment in sovereign statehood located between Croatia and Serbia.
Yes, this is real, and it’s fascinating — a micronation hosting its own pop-up gathering.
Now, I have not met anyone personally from this community, so I cannot give a solid ‘vibe check’, and the website has very limited information on the programming of this event, but I imagine more mystery can be unlocked if you kindly shoot them an application email :)
I was curious about where the event will be hosted, and it seems to be pointing to the Ark Village at Liberland, a cozy-looking hub of cabins in nature.
🌐 Network School
📍Global / Online / Local Nodes | 🗓 Ongoing Enrollment
This one needs no introduction, from the man who coined the term ‘Network State’ himself, this is not just a pop-up, it’s an ongoing university about building network states of the future.
Network School is an ongoing experiment in distributed education: self-directed learning, peer-to-peer mentorship, and project-based growth.
I personally have met some really incredible people who have attended and spoke highly of the experience, as well as some people who left with criticisms.
I would imagine that this would be a Schelling point for a community interested in this movement of future societies, and worth checking out if you’re interested about this movement.
Why This Matters?
We need new spaces to nurture new ideas, different containers that cultivate different states of mind.
Pop-up cities are not just retreats or conferences. They are living prototypes of new worlds — creating post-nation futures, regenerative cultures, and alternative economies.
So if you’ve been feeling the call to explore, build, or become someone new, this is your sign. 🌱
We’ll see you out there!
For Mother Nature and Our Fractal Universe
Thanks for providing this awesome resource Nico <3