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Chapter 10: City Plat, the Family Campus

The second infrastructure solution is physical, and is an extensive undertaking. If the Lifecast App is the digital warehouse for social change concepts and ideas, the City Plat, or Family Campus, is the lab where those ideas can be carried out and experimented with. 

Most of our current infrastructure is designed for the sake of our institutions. Schools and businesses are built to industrial-era standards. Housing and transportation infrastructure is built for individuals without any consideration for community needs (which, ironically, also makes things more difficult and less comfortable for individuals who require long commutes, school buses, and a maze of routes to complete weekly errands). Too many buildings are single-use, sitting empty much of the time. Increasingly, natural spaces are being covered by concrete to accommodate urban sprawl. 

To optimize the social change solutions presented by the Center For Social Change and partner organizations, we need a more optimal setting.

The City Plat community is a post-industrial, modular solution that focuses on engagement density and the importance of the family as the center of society. The City Plat will focus on sustainable living, decreasing our dependence on cars and improving community self-reliance through local food production and industry. Families will live in multi-family housing, drawing support and inspiration from others. 

This may sound familiar to any of you who have studied David Hall’s work on the NewVista urban development model (see NewVistaFoundation.org for more information). The City Plat principles developed by the John and Abigail Center work well with the NewVista model and Center founders look forward to the development of a NewVista community. 

The City Plat offers communities a chance to start fresh, without the assumptions, baggage, and waste of past methods and institutions. Communities can base their layout and infrastructure on what families need to thrive. 

The heart of the City Plat community is the home. By providing a place for learning, entertainment, industry, and growth, City Plat homes will eliminate the need for so many outside influences and structures. Each home will have a circular area in the center that will serve as a library, meeting room, dance hall, and connective area for the rest of the home. Other spaces on the main floor facilitate business, music, and formal entertaining. Downstairs, the house will have large spaces for play, laundry, food processing (including a large kitchen), a theater, etc. Other living spaces and bedrooms are upstairs, in the corners of the house. The home is practical and luxurious, large enough to provide privacy and space for four families with communal space. Because families will share space, they will be able to have amenities they may not be able to afford or justify on their one. Children and adults alike will have friends to confide in and work with. 

Groups of homes will share garden space and other communal areas that aren’t part of the house structure that families can access as they desire. Vital community buildings will be close enough together to eliminate the need for cars or long commutes so families have more time to spend together and individuals have time for play, practice, and recreation. Though this structure does promote self-reliance, families can outsource or provide services as necessary and desired. 

Each City Plat will have a population of about 20,000 and will include the businesses and industry most necessary for the community. This is not to say that each Plat will be entirely self contained; some City Plats will specialize in specific industries and provide services to neighboring Plats as necessary. 

This will be a significant change from our current way of life, so there will be a graduating-in phase. Groups of families could decide they are stable enough to spearhead this effort and begin building a community. Ideally, these families would have the means to start the community debt-free, thanks to their own resources and support from the John and Abigail Center and partner organizations (see chapter 12 on the Million Dreams Conference for more information on this funding model). Once a community is up and running, they can turn outward, helping other groups of families join the City Plat or build their own.

The beauty of this organizational structure is that most problems or issues can be dealt with at the most local level. Families and groups of families can solve problems for themselves, instead of relying on a bloated bureaucracy to do it for them. With stable families at the center of things, local structure is the most important. 

Key Benefits of the City Plat model:

Scalability and sustainability: communities are built to grow and sustain themselves. With more community needs focused on the home, the community can scale at a much better rate than our modern industrial communities with their need for increasing infrastructure. 

Not dependent on industrial norms and overspecialization.

By sharing resources, all families will live in large, luxurious houses with access to amenities currently reserved for the upper levels of economic success. 

Eliminates the need for extensive freeway systems and hundreds of single-use buildings. 

Better harmony between spiritual and physical things. 

Better stewardship of natural resources and lowered dependence on cars will improve environmental impact.

Faster rate of social change possible in this setting.

Next Steps

We hope to break ground on the first City Plat by the end of 2022, with bigger facilities following each year after that. Much needs to happen to make that a reality. John and Abigail staff will meet with social entrepreneurs, the market research group, and the launch team to discuss logistics, answer questions, and come up with solutions (if you’d like to be part of these groups, sign up below). Ideally, they will form a team of people interested in the legalities of the Plat, sustainability, energy, social framework and structure, and other critical areas. 

This group will need to research several key elements, including land purchases, mineral and water rights, and community charters before selecting a site. They will also need to discuss the community application process for interested families. They will need to plan the infrastructure and create a curriculum for a boot camp to acclimate people to the new way of living. 

There is a lot of work to do. We look forward to working with other social entrepreneurs to more fully conceptualize the City Plat and work toward more sustainable communities that facilitate social change.

Next up—Chapter 11: Capacity for Change

Comments, questions, suggestions? Let us know on the post.

If you’re interested in joining the mastermind group or launch team for the John and Abigail Center or any of the partner organizations, contact us.