Daily life
Everything
5 minutes away.
No car. No commute. No insurance forms. One square mile holds your home, your doctor, your work, your school, and every place worth spending a Tuesday evening.
Why it feels like yours
The texture of the place is signalled, not specified.
Nothing here was chosen by a developer guessing at a market. The businesses, the buildings, the amenities and the layout all come out of what pledgers tagged and pinned.
What your signal decides
Who opens
Any verified business can pledge, and pledger rankings decide which of them actually gets a lease.
What gets built
Architects submit under their own name, and pledgers rate every design. That rating is a term in the architect's design fee — the fee formula is brand-blind, not the submission.
How it's laid out
Spice Tray layouts are chosen by minimising the distance between cohort demand signal and the achievable building mix.
Where things sit
Placement inside the town runs on ranking proximity — what you ranked lands nearest to you.
Which doctors practise here
Your household signals the medical specialties you want in town — never by individual, so nobody's health history is exposed to build the roster. The clinic is staffed to a higher-than-national-average doctor-to-resident ratio, and that signal shapes what those doctors focus on.
Where you travel
Tea Leaves scouts hotel locations from organic social signal, then stewards ratify before any acquisition.
Who your neighbours are
Selection weighs profile and preference fit, not pledge size. The cohort is assembled from the same signal.
A Blend is not a place you choose from a list. It is the graph of everyone who wants what you want.
5-min walk
Your doctor, school, café, employer, and grocery are all inside the town.
No car
No road grid. The infrastructure makes a car structurally unnecessary.
Spice Tray culture
24 named corridors. Up to 500 third-place buildings. Voted in by stewards every year.
DPC included
Direct Primary Care. Included primary visits. $0 premium. Your doctor lives here.
Professional LLC jobs
Employment inside the town. Professional LLC structure. No commute.
Rooftop gardens
Hydroponic rooftops. K–12 school behind privacy glass. Children's play above stone.
Daily life
Everything you need is already this close.
School, doctor, food, and a street worth walking — none of it requires leaving the block.
You walk down. Your children walk up.
School one floor above. Employer two blocks over. Doctor two corridors down. No car parks, no school lottery.
$0 premium
Direct Primary Care included in your monthly fee. No insurer, no deductible, no claims form — your doctor lives on your street.
500 third places
Cafés, galleries, and sunset terraces across 24 Spice Trays — every one voted in by the people who use it.
8 linear gardens
Eight linear gardens, eight Vosges squares, and hydroponic rooftops — what a square mile looks like without cars or parking.
K–12 on the roof
Rooftop school and daycare from 6 weeks — no lottery, no waitlist, all inside your monthly fee.
Mobility and food sovereignty are covered in full on Infrastructure →
Take a closer look
How daily life actually works.
01
Walking everywhere
Five minutes to anything. Nothing to drive.
Doctor, school, employer, grocery, café — all inside one square mile.
- The Form-Based Code makes a road grid structurally impossible, so the car is not discouraged or taxed. There is simply nowhere to drive and nothing to drive to.
- No payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance or parking — a line that never appears on your budget because there is nothing for it to pay for.
1 / 5
Walking everywhere
Five minutes to anything. Nothing to drive.
Doctor, school, employer, grocery, café — all inside one square mile.
- The Form-Based Code makes a road grid structurally impossible, so the car is not discouraged or taxed. There is simply nowhere to drive and nothing to drive to.
- No payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance or parking — a line that never appears on your budget because there is nothing for it to pay for.
Getting out
A pod to the edge. A car for the road trip.
Two ways out, depending on how far you are going.
- On-demand pods run point to point at 30 mph — anywhere in the 36 square mile Bouquet inside ten minutes.
- Your own car lives in The Commons, for the weekend and the long drive. The daily grind it used to be for no longer exists.
Healthcare included
Your doctor is your neighbour.
Direct Primary Care, paid from the monthly fee.
- No premium, no deductible, no insurer and no claim to file — the clinic sits on the Blue Tulip corner, two corridors from home.
- Four physicians per thousand residents, so an appointment is this week rather than next month.
School one floor up
No bus. No drop-off. No school lottery.
Rooftop knot-garden classrooms above the dwellings.
- Daycare from six weeks through a two-year associate at 22, taught by resident teacher LLCs competing for enrolment.
- One teacher per twelve students, and your children walk up while you walk down.
Food that travelled one floor
The salad came from the roof, not 1,500 miles.
A three-layer food system inside the town.
- Rooftop hydroponics above, Spice Tray grocers at street level, and 20-acre working farms in The Commons around you.
- The farmers are real, the parcels are bid for competitively, and the food is sold directly into the town.
How URBAL housing works
Not a mortgage.
Stewardship.
The Proprietary Lease Covenant locks your cost to square footage, builds a sovereign wealth fund from day one, and cannot be revoked by a landlord — because there isn't one.
See every cost →4 PLC terms
2, 4, 8, or 16 years. Choose at signing. Lock your rate for the full term.
Cost locked to sqft
Your fee is indexed to square footage. Never to market value. Never to desirability.
Civic Anchor from day one
Escrow interest lands in your town's Civic Anchor Account on announce day — community capital, split equally per door.
No landlord
Your PLC is recorded on immutable ledger. No one can revoke it or raise it arbitrarily.
Renovation reimbursed
80% of approved improvements vests over 8 years. Improve your home, get most of it back.
Delta deposit
Upgrade anytime by financing the reserve difference — 20% down, 24 months, no drama.
Exit is mechanical
The lease terminates and the unit returns to the covenant allocation pool. No listing, no agent, no negotiation.
One unit, network-wide
One active unit per steward or family across every town. No portfolio, no second home.
Not renting. Not owning.
Nobody actually wants a deed. They want control and a bill that doesn’t move.
Ask someone why they want to own and you rarely hear about appreciation. You hear that they want to knock out a wall without asking permission, and they want to know what next year costs. Ownership is how most people are told to get those two things — but it delivers them badly, because the moment you own, your costs become variable: the tax reassessment, the insurance renewal, the rate reset, the roof. Stewardship separates the two things you wanted from the asset you were told to buy them with.
Renting
You cannot change anything, and any improvement you do make is a gift to the person who owns it. Your cost resets whenever the lease does.
Owning
You can change things — and you carry every variable cost that comes with the asset. Reassessments, premiums, rate resets, and the repairs nobody budgets for.
Stewardship
You can change things, and you are paid back most of what you spend. Your fee is indexed to square footage and locked for your term. Both, at once.
The perpetual lock
The land is in trust. The buildings are in covenant. Neither is for sale.
A Community Land Trust holds the land and a Cooperative Covenant holds the buildings. Together they close the door that every other affordability scheme leaves open.
Zero open-market sales
Neither the land nor the buildings can ever be bought, sold, flipped, or acquired — not by an outside investor, not by a bank, not by a corporate entity.
Speculation is eliminated
Not discouraged by policy, removed by legal structure. Entry stays fair and reachable for generations, because there is no market to bid up.
Growth decoupled from dirt
You build wealth in your Personal Account, not by speculating on land — and never by inflating what it costs your neighbour to live here.
Getting in
Three accounts. One of them is your rainy day fund, funded on day one.
Every steward's Sovereign Wealth Fund holds three separate accounts.
Your Rainy Day Account
Funded entirely by your entry contribution: twelve months of your own Ladder Fee and service fee, invested from the moment it lands. Conservative, capital-preservation focused — a full year of your real costs, sitting there, earning, before you've lived through a single one of them.
Your Personal Account
Funded automatically every month by the same formula as your Ladder Fee — 2.5% of state prior-year median HHI ÷ 12 ÷ 900 sqft — invested aggressively for long-term growth. If you share your unit with another adult, this account splits pro rata among everyone on the lease — 50/50 or by however many adults signed it — and each of you owns your share outright.
The Civic Anchor Account
The shared account. Job pledges, commercial yield, OCIO returns, carrying fees — and the escrow interest aggregated across the previous twelve months of raises, divided by the total number of dwelling units in the whole Bunch: seven towns and one city. Every door gets the same amount. A studio and a five-bedroom get the same dividend, because this money isn't yours to begin with — it's the community's, shared evenly.
Why a year in reserve. Lose your income tomorrow and your rent doesn't care. Here, it does. Your Ladder Fee doesn't move with the market, your healthcare stays tied to your address instead of your employer — and your Rainy Day Account is sized to carry both, in full, for twelve months, no matter what happens to your job. Draw on it if you need to, and your voting rights never change — not for a day.
Reference example, at a $75,600 state median HHI
Iris
1BR ADU · 338 sqft
$3,346
Apricot
1BR · 900 sqft
$8,910
Cherry
2BR · 1,300 sqft
$12,870
Pear
3BR · 1,800 sqft
$17,820
Plum
4BR · 2,400 sqft
$23,760
Mulberry
5BR · 2,700 sqft
$26,730
Figures scale with your state's actual median household income — $80K is a reference point, not a fixed number.
20% upfront
The entire cash barrier to entry.
80% in installments, over 24 months
A fixed two-year schedule, the same for every steward.
Full share from day one
Installment stewards receive their complete pro-rata share across all three accounts immediately — not phased in as they pay.
10% carrying fee on the deferred balance
Charged for the town carrying the balance, not the balance itself. Every dollar goes into the Civic Anchor — never to a bank.
Worked example — a Pear 3BR at $80K HHI
| Full contribution → your Rainy Day Account, invested | $18,040 |
| 20% upfront | $3,608 |
| Deferred balance | $14,432 |
| 10% carrying fee on deferred → Civic Anchor (not your account) | $1,443.20 |
| Spread over 24 months | $661.47/mo on top of the service fee |
Young families bring the energy a town runs on. A large cash barrier upfront would select against exactly the people you want.
Unit changes
Upgrade or downgrade, whenever your life does.
Upgrading?
Your current Rainy Day Account has to be fully funded first. Pay the difference in cash and you jump the line. Finance it — 20% down, 24 months, same 10% carrying fee — and you're processed right after everyone who paid in full.
Downgrading?
No conditions, ever — and if you're going through a hard time, you move to the front of the queue. Your reserve target shrinks instantly, any surplus above the new target lands straight in your Personal Account, and there's never a carrying fee on the way down.
Either way: new unit, new Ladder Fee, no drama.
Wealth accumulation
What you build stays yours, and your fee stays where it started.
Your PLC fixes your cost to square footage, Direct Primary Care sits inside your monthly fee, and the town is built so that daily life needs no car. A conventional household pays mortgage interest, insurance premiums and a car note on top of its housing; here those are simply not part of what living costs. And your capital is held in your own account throughout, separate from the community's reserves, so leaving is a transfer rather than a negotiation.
No mortgage
Your PLC fixes cost to square footage. There is no interest to pay.
No car
The road grid is structurally absent. No payment, no insurance, no fuel.
No premium
Direct Primary Care is inside your fee. No insurer, no deductible.
SWF seed
Every first-cohort steward is seeded into the town fund on announce day.
When you leave — two of three accounts travel with you
Personal Account
100% yours. Always.
Fully portable, no exit penalty of any kind. On your death, transfers in full to your named beneficiaries in cash.
Rainy Day Account
Refunded, less what's owed.
Returned pro-rata on exit, minus any unpaid deferred installments or repair costs beyond normal wear and tear.
Civic Anchor Account
Stays with the town.
Non-refundable, permanently rooted in the town fund. It was never your money to begin with — it's the town's, shared evenly across every door.
Moving to another URBAL town is a different event: both of your personal accounts travel with you, in full. You only leave the community's capital behind if you leave the network.
Community integrity
Nobody can accumulate here. The money is auditable. Moving on is a threshold, not a ranking.
Three separate guarantees, all enforced by the ledger rather than by policy or discretion.
01. Zero portfolios
A steward or family holds exactly one active unit across every URBAL town at any time — no portfolio, no second home, no short lets. The limit is enforced computationally, not by policy, and it applies to every steward equally.
A unit isn't an inheritance either — it returns to the allocation pool when a steward transitions out, and the SWF balance transfers instead.
02. Real-time maintenance audit
The maintenance line you pay each month sits on the immutable ledger — any steward can audit the actual balance at any second, not wait for a quarterly statement. A funded repair and its execution both reconcile on-ledger; a gap is public.
Maintenance money cannot be diverted to another line item — the escrow structure gives it nowhere else to go.
03. Objective covenant check
When your term ends or your household size changes, the only question is whether you kept the covenant to look after your home. It reads the ledger — maintenance fees and unit condition — with no inspector's opinion and nothing a neighbour can weaponise against you.
A threshold, not a ranking: you either kept it or you didn't, and standing carries forward toward your next home. Voting history is never an input.
Take a closer look
The covenant, in full detail.
2-year term
Choosing your term
2, 4, 8 or 16 years. Chosen at move-in, never a factor in selection.
Every term locks your Ladder Fee at the state median household income on the day you sign — the longer the term, the longer that year's number keeps working for you, and the longer your Personal Account compounds. You choose at move-in, after the draft is already decided, so a short term costs you nothing in selection and a long one buys you no advantage. Most first-cohort stewards choose four years.
Leaving
Declare vacancy and go. Your money goes with you.
Declare vacancy and the lease terminates; the dwelling returns to the allocation pool for the next qualified pledger. There is no sale and no listing, because it was never a tradeable asset. Your Personal Account is released in full, your Rainy Day Account refunded pro-rata less anything deferred, and the Civic Anchor stays with the town. Move to another URBAL town and both personal accounts travel with you to the receiving town's bank — you only leave the community capital behind if you leave the network.
Renovating
80% reimbursed, vesting over eight years. No loan.
Approved capital improvements to your dwelling are reimbursed at 80% of cost, vesting quietly across eight years. No debt, no loan application, and no argument with a landlord about whether you were allowed to.
Moving up a size
Two routes to a 5BR or 6BR, both earned.
The pledge ladder stops at 4BR, so the larger homes are reached rather than bought. Evelyn Rose's Ruby (5BR) and Diamond (6BR) go to nominated bar raisers and the highest-ranked individuals in a raise. The other route runs through the walls: pledge 4BR without the Wild Flower Garden Rider, tick the 5BR option, and if you are selected for a Courtyard 4BR you are offered a 2,700 sqft Mulberry or Morning Glory instead. Ticking it costs nothing, and your fee follows whichever dwelling you end up in at the same rate per square foot as everyone else.
When the children leave
Four years' grace, then list the room or pay the surcharge.
Once your youngest turns 18 or finishes school a four-year grace period begins. After that, unused bedrooms carry a surcharge of 15% of your Ladder Fee every six months, with no ceiling. The escape valve is the internal marketplace — list the room for a waitlisted pledger, a relocating steward or another steward's adult child, and the surcharge pauses while it is listed. Density is protected without anyone being forced out.
Why there is no catch
Written before you arrived. Runs like clockwork.
A community whose members feel trapped is not a community. Every exit, upgrade and reimbursement above was written into the covenant before the first stone was cut, applies identically to everyone, and is recorded on a ledger nobody can quietly edit — including URBAL.
Steward Perks
Where you go. How you get there.
URBAL is where you live. Tea Leaves is where you stay — a global network of steward-exclusive boutique hotels. Samara Air is how you get there — business-class aviation, steward-only. Both funded debt-free from the raise, both included in your monthly fee.
Tea Leaves — Steward Hospitality
Five-star quality at two-star cost.
A global network of steward-exclusive boutique hotels, 20–80 rooms each. No chains, no franchise flags — capitalised at raise time, not decades of retained earnings.
$0.0261/sqft/mo
Included in your monthly fee — ~$34/month for a 1,300 sqft home. No nightly fees, ever.
2% of every raise
$1.2B/year across 12 monthly raises, funding twelve intimate properties acquired, renovated, and opened annually. Fully cash-cleared before any property opens — no debt, no investor pressure to cut quality.
Demand-driven, steward-ratified
Instagram and Pinterest activity maps demand; scouts identify buildings; no acquisition happens without a direct steward vote. Your home town gets 48–72hr priority booking, and surplus revenue flows to your town's SWF.
Samara Air — Steward Aviation
Business class. One cabin. One standard.
Named for the maple's winged seed — flight that works because of how it's built, not brute force. No public seats, premium lie-flat seating across the entire cabin.
$0.0353/sqft/mo
Included in your monthly fee — ~$46/month for a 1,300 sqft home. Funds the fleet itself; flights carry their own member-exclusive fare on top.
Fares from $250
Starting fares of $250, stepping up with each flight you take over the year — still a fraction of buying business class in the open market.
You vote the destination
Vote on your town's destination city during the raise. Eight aircraft tagged to the seven towns and the city, not a yield-optimizing route planner.
Your move