If Próspera were a normal town, Jorge Colindres, a freshly cologned and shaven lawyer, would be considered its mayor. His title here is “technical secretary.” Looking out over a clearing in the trees in February, he pointed to the small office complex where he works collecting taxes and managing public finances for the city’s 2,000 or so physical residents and e-residents, many of whom have paid a fee for the option of living in Próspera, on the Honduran island of Roatán, or remotely incorporating a business there. Nearby is a manufacturing plant that is slated to build modular houses along the coast. About a mile in the other direction are some of the city’s businesses: a Bitcoin cafe and education center, a genetics clinic, a scuba shop. A delivery service for food and medical supplies will deploy its drones from this rooftop. Próspera was built in a semiautonomous jurisdiction known as a ZEDE (a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development). It is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Now, the Honduran government wants it gone.
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My name is Rachel Corbett, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
This story is about a private city.
What is a private city, you ask?
It's just like a regular city.
People live and work there, make decisions about how they want to pursue their dreams.
Except the city is owned by a corporation.
It has all of the features of a government, but for a price, almost everything is privatized, private school, private security, private infrastructure, and they're often built in semi autonomous zones with their own laws.
That kind of freedom is especially appealing to foreign investors looking to circumvent certain regulations or taxes.
Historically, places like this already exist, like Shenzhen, Singapore, or Hong Kong.
But private cities are a growing movement.
About 30 have sprung up all over the world, sometimes in conflict with the very countries that host them.
My story from the magazine is about one private city being built by a us corporation on an island off the coast of Honduras.
And it's backed by a few Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman.