charter cities

Charter cities are special reform zones. They let governments quickly adopt innovative new systems of rules. A charter city’s formal rules, and the norms that they encourage, can differ markedly from a country’s prevailing system of rules. The concept is very flexible, but three elements are common to all charter cities:

1. An uninhabited piece of city-sized land, provided voluntarily by a host government.
2. A charter that specifies the rules that will govern the new city.
3. The freedom for would-be charter city residents to move in or out of the reform zone.

Charter cities are based entirely on voluntary actions—no person, employer, investor, or country can be coerced into participating. Only countries that want to charter new cities will free up the land to do so. The use of unoccupied land ensures that only the people who want to live and work under the new rules will move to the reform zone.