Charter cities are a great idea. You take a poor country, create a special zone in it where the country won’t exert its usual harmful influence, and allow that special zone to grow to a self-managed city. The idea is that if you just change governance, you can create real economic growth with mostly the same resources that the host country already has.

The Charter Cities Institute lists several examples of this on their website: Shenzhen, which was a village and is now a futuristic city; Singapore, which was a swamp and is now a futuristic city; Dubai, which was a desert, and is now a futuristic city; Hong Kong, which was a less than futuristic city, and is now – a futuristic city.

The main issue with new charter cities, at least according to the very sparse Wikipedia article and what little info I could scrape from Claude, is not the idea or even the execution of charter cities themselves, but the country where they are founded.

Próspera, one of Honduras’s ZEDEs, is apparently facing problems with the Honduran government. One government decides it’s constitutional and good for Honduras; the second one overturns the decision. It seems that the founders of Próspera were ready for this because they managed to set up international agreements and penalties, so that it isn’t trivial for an unfriendly government to just hit the undo button.

But the story of charter cities having trouble getting off the ground is not exclusive to Honduras, and in fact Próspera seems to be closer to success than to failure.

The main problem is, and will likely continue to be the host country. Charter cities can self-govern in many areas: immigration, economic policy, building and zoning code, civil courts, even policing. But they are not countries, and they (usually) don’t have authority in criminal law, nor a standing army. And if they happen to be situated in unstably governed countries, then all this autonomy is exactly as stable as the weakest chain in the link – the host country’s government.

What charter cities need are, therefore, not poor and undeveloped countries (which are often paired with unstable governments). They need stable, reliable, boring governments, in countries with stagnant economies.

Could we think of a place with a boring, stable government, but slow economy? Hmmm…? Probably Europe in general, and European Union specifically, and certain countries inside the Union even more specifically.

The European Commission should create a charter cities program, where member states can apply and form special economic zones that are excluded from the tax code of the host member state (and from most other legislation). Maybe existing villages or cities could apply, and be converted; or literal empty patches of land could be marked for future development.

The point is: Europe needs to grow its economy, and needs to run experiments which would combat the overall stagnancy.

I imagine a future where there are numerous cities operating as European Free Cities, or European City-States, exempt from the taxation of the host member state, and from most of its legislation. Tens of small European Singapores, scattered around the map, attracting investors, builders, workers, families, both from within and without.

Some of these Free Cities would fail, no doubt. But that is the point of an experiment, to try something “crazy” out without rolling it out to an entire population at once.

The European 28th regime is the perfect context for this, Europe’s supposed equivalent of the Delaware S-corporation. These Free Cities could use that as their incorporation scheme, or could run their own scheme.

Europe is known for stability, and experiments need stable environments to be run. Moreover, Free Cities are lindy, as throughout Europe’s history there have been many charters given to such cities. Not to mention the foundation of Western civilization: the city-states.

Abandon modernity, return to the Hanseatic League!