How It Works
Everything happens
in one app.
The app is the control center for the entire ecosystem — sign up, pledge, and every merchant tag, architecture vote, and reward you earn from there happens in one place.
Six roles take part in every raise — pledgers, counties, businesses, landowners, banks, and architects — and each one gets its own view of the same raise. Switch between them below.
Your view of the app
Pledge · Town 001
In escrow- Monthly pledge
- $150.00 / 2BR
- WFG Rider
- +50% · $225.00
- Held by
- OCIO custodian
- Refundable
- 100%
- Draft stage
- Stage 4B · Vine Garden
- Rewards tier
- Tier 2 · engaged
Selection scores on profile and signal. Pledge amount is capped.
County bid · Raise 001
Assembling- LOI acreage
- 19.2 / 16 sq mi min
- PILOT rate bid
- $0.0180 /sqft/mo
- PILOT activates
- Year 8
- SPV economic stake
- 51%
- 529 allocation
- $100M · all enrolled
- Development fee
- $150M / raise won
Announced Labor Day. No upfront cost — a failed raise refunds in full.
Spice Tray bid · Town 001
Gathering tags- Steward endorsements
- 3 / 5 to qualify
- Jobs pledged
- Up to 49 · ACA cap
- Job pledge fee
- Inverse to salary
- Rewards offered
- Tier 1 + Tier 2
- Lease renewal
- December steward vote
- Demand data
- Aggregate only
Endorsements are a qualification gate, not a score. Selection weighs pledger rankings and job pledge strength 50/50.
Parcel · LOI submitted
Under bid- Parcel
- 640 acres · 1 section
- Price per acre
- You set it
- Annuity rate
- You set it
- Ownership held
- 12 mo minimum
- Entity
- Named individual only
- Entitlement
- Handled by URBAL
Keep farming The Commons after the sale — bid a rent rate per 20-acre parcel.
OCIO mandate · Raise 001
Open bid- Escrow under custody
- $5.00B
- Management fee
- Your bid
- Escrow terms
- Your bid
- Draw schedule
- Milestone-verified
- Pre-announce interest
- → Civic Anchor
- Mandate
- 12 raises / yr, each rebid
Decided on the bid alone. No panel review, no county involvement.
Submission · Outer Wall
In review- Facade section
- 80 ft
- Style code
- 1 of 8 permitted
- Cornice + bay
- Fixed by code
- Material palette
- Stone · timber · lime · zinc
- Cost visibility
- Blind — none shown
- Licence
- Copyleft · public catalogue
Fee is formula-derived: dwelling sqft × pledger rating × machine time.
The pledger's path
Sign up. Pledge. Curate. Compete.
Six steps from creating an account to being drafted into a town. Counties, businesses, landowners, banks, and architects each run a different path through the same raise — see the stakeholder model for how each one wins.
1 · Sign up
Create your URBAL account — it's the one account you'll use across every raise, reward, and vote in the ecosystem.
2 · Create your profile
Pick the dwelling type and size you want — Courtyard, Wild Flower Garden, Orchard Garden, or Vine Garden — and build out your preferences. Pledging runs 1BR to 4BR; 5BR and 6BR homes are earned during the raise, not pledged for.
3 · Pledge to earn rewards
Lock your spot from $100/month, fully refundable in independent bank escrow. Rewards start the moment you pledge — businesses competing for a lease in your town put real offers in front of you years before a stone is cut, and the top tier is held for stewards who get selected.
4 · Curate & rank
Tag the merchants, architecture, and third places you want in your town, then rank the rewards they are offering. Ranking is not a wishlist — your selections are half of how every business is scored, so the offers you pick decide who actually gets a lease.
5 · Engage
Respond to URBAL polls and posts. Ongoing engagement counts toward your profile the same way tagging does — it's a running signal, not a one-time form.
6 · Compete
You're ranked only against other pledgers who asked for the same number of bedrooms — a 2BR competes against 2BRs, never against 4BRs. The best-matched, most-engaged profiles in that pool are selected first, and the draft places them zone by zone.
The reward loop
You don't just receive the rewards. You rank them — and the ranking picks the businesses.
Rewards from day one
Every business competing for a lease has to put a reward on the table that reaches every pledger — not a coupon at opening, an offer you can use while the town is still being built. A second tier is reserved for stewards who are selected.
Your ranking is half their score
Rank the offers you actually want and that ranking becomes 50% of how the business is scored — the other half is the jobs and salaries it pledges. Businesses compete by offering you more, which is the whole point. See it from their side →
Then: the raise closes, and the build starts
Once the raise crosses $5B, escrow releases and the winning county is announced on Labor Day. Construction runs about 36 months. On Move-In Day your Proprietary Lease Covenant activates for the term you chose — 2, 4, 8 or 16 years — and the app carries you straight into the December votes that decide what stays in the town. See what living there is like →
Your move