Charter Cities

Hedcut illustration of A charter city begins with rules negotiated up front, often documented as a legal framework governing a defined territory. The modern proposal associated with Paul Romer argues that choice of governance can shape economic outcomes. — A charter city begins with rules negotiated up front, often documented as a legal framework governing a defined territory. The modern proposal associated with Paul Romer argues that choice of governance can shape economic outcomes.

Charter cities are new settlements founded on a distinct set of governing rules, negotiated in advance and applied within a defined territory. The modern proposal, associated with the economist Paul Romer, holds that poor governance keeps people poor, and that a city built under better rules can attract residents who are more likely to prosper. Related experiments run from special economic zones to seasteading ventures and proposed settlements on the Moon and Mars, each examining whether communities can be systematically designed rather than organically inherited.

Cities Built From a Plat

Joseph Smith drew the plat of the City of Zion in 1833, specifying blocks, lot sizes, temple placement, and the ratio of farmland to dwellings. Later settlements from Nauvoo to hundreds of towns across the Great Basin followed variations of that template. The law of consecration functioned as a charter, defining property, obligation, and mutual support. Scripture supplies the precedent in Enoch’s city, whose people “were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness” (Moses 7:18), and in the New Jerusalem that prophecy still awaits. The tradition treats a city as an instrument of sanctification, not merely a place to live.

Rules That Make Room for Agency

The theological interest lies in what a charter does to agency. Doctrine and Covenants 121 warns that authority collapses when exercised by compulsion, and common consent requires that those governed ratify the arrangement. A charter city can honor that principle, since residents arrive by choice and the rules stand published for inspection. It can also violate it, if a distant authority imposes terms on the powerless, extracts labor, or removes exit. Mormon history knows both outcomes. Its settlements built genuine solidarity and also, at times, concentrated power in ways that harmed dissenters and displaced prior inhabitants. Any new charter deserves the same scrutiny.

Frontier Governance

The idea grows in weight as humanity moves outward. Settlements in orbit, on the Moon, or on Mars will require constitutions written before arrival, since no existing sovereign governs there and physical constraints make dissent costly. Space habitats concentrate life support, communication, and mobility in whoever controls the infrastructure, which makes decentralized governance a matter of survival rather than preference. Mormon transhumanist thought approaches such projects as chances to practice Zion under new conditions: to write charters that distribute power, guarantee exit, care for the vulnerable, and treat consent as the foundation. The pioneers platted cities in a desert. The next generation may plat them among the stars.