Preview of the Environments of Tomorrow Week

A week on how to build places people actually want to live.

A week on how to build places people actually want to live (June 22-27).

We are accepting applications to Edge Esmeralda on a rolling basis. Apply here before the next ticket price increase on May 1st ☀️

TLDR

• Environments of Tomorrow is the final week of Edge Esmeralda (June 22-27), focused on the places that shape daily life: towns, homes, schools, streets, food systems, local governance, and the physical environments we inherit and build.

• The week is for people who care about why beautiful, walkable, community-rich places are so hard to create now, and what it would take to build more of them.

• Town founders, architects, educators, policy people, and builders will be in Healdsburg comparing notes, but the week is designed for the whole village, with talks, walking tours, workshops, dinners, and practical sessions.

• If you are interested in housing, cities, schools, land, climate, food, governance, or simply living somewhere better, this is probably your week at Edge Esmeralda.

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Most of us can feel when a place works.

A street where people linger. A school families trust. A plaza that actually gets used. A neighborhood where the buildings, trees, shops, homes, and daily rituals fit together in a way that makes life feel more human.

The harder question is why places like that are so difficult to build now, and what it would take to build more of them.

That is the question behind the fourth and final week of Edge Esmeralda 2026: Environments of Tomorrow, a weeklong program on how to build places people actually want to live.

What the week covers

From June 22 to 27, Kevin Fishner and Devon Zuegel are hosting in Healdsburg. The week sits inside Edge Esmeralda. Three connected threads run through it:

Architecture, urbanism, and the built environment. What gets built after the suburb, what makes a walkable neighborhood actually walkable, why most new developments feel the same, and what a few groups are doing differently. Sessions on housing, public space, land use, food systems, and the small details that make a street feel alive.

Town-building. Sessions on starting new places: charter frameworks, land assembly, governance, zoning, and the operational work of getting a town off the ground. People working on new-town projects around the world will be at EE26 to compare notes on what’s actually working.

Future of Education. A parallel thread led by Andrea Gallagher on schools, learning environments, and the institutions a new town (or existing one) needs to hold families. Microschools, classical academies, Acton-style programs, Montessori revivals: what works, what doesn’t, what scales.

Twenty-five sessions confirmed across the week, with more being added.

Why now

New towns are being built around the country and around the world. Bennet in Utah is permitted. Próspera in Honduras has real residents. California Forever is moving forward.

At the same time, the older monocultures are cracking. The strong-mayor cities that defined twentieth-century American urbanism are contending with housing crises their current frameworks can’t solve. Exurban sprawl has a legibility problem: it optimizes for cars and loses people. The knowledge workers who can live anywhere are moving to the places that have something to say.

And the twentieth-century compromise on schools, where a public institution taught every child in a neighborhood, is unwinding. Microschools, learning pods, classical academies, Acton-style programs, and Montessori revivals are all growing faster than the baseline. Communities that get this right have a real advantage.

We want the people doing this work to spend a week together.

What the week looks like

Late afternoons are talks and panels. Evenings are dinners at local restaurants and picnics in the park. Daytimes are kept open for unstructured work and conversation time.

Andrea Gallagher’s Future of Education sessions run in parallel across the full week.

Who this is for

• Architects & urbanists thinking about what comes after the suburb.

• Founders & staff at new town-building or similar projects

• Educators building new schools and learning environments.

• Policy people working on zoning reform, governance frameworks, or housing.

• Residents of existing small towns working to keep them alive.

• People who are interested in what comes next in this field.

How to join

Environments of Tomorrow is open to confirmed Edge Esmeralda 2026 ticket holders. If you have a ticket, you’re in.

If you don’t have a ticket and you want to be part of the week, applications are still open at edgeesmeralda.com.

Questions, speaker pitches, or partnership interest: katherine@edgecity.live

We’ll see you in Sonoma!
The Edge City Team ☀️