Neel Somani: Why Agenda 47's Freedom Cities Are The Most Intriguing Capital Allocation Bet No One Is Taking Seriously

According to the American Enterprise Institutes Housing Center July 4th is the target date for the Trump administration to name the sites of its first Freedom Cities masterplanned municipalities carved out of Bureau of Land Management land in the American West operating under a radically streamlined regulatory framework and built from scratch on undeveloped federal propertyThe proposal has been part of Agenda 47 since Trump first floated it in March 2023 and for most of that time it has been in limbo between a policy ambition and a thought experiment The White House has not formally responded to site proposals The BLMs acting director said as recently as last year that the bureau had not seen a specific proposal A source familiar with internal discussions told NOTUS in early 2026 that the idea had appeared dormantAnd yet the policy infrastructure around Freedom Cities has continued to build The AEI published a detailed blueprint in April 2025 Homesteading 20 that identified sites for 20 new cities on 600 square miles of BLM land projecting 15 million homes and 100 billion in landsale revenue to the TreasuryA draft Freedom Cities Act authored by Chapman University law professor Tom W Bell outlines a legal pathway for these jurisdictions The Charter Cities Institute and the Frontier Foundation are both actively promoting the concept Paul Dans the former head of Project 2025 described Freedom Cities in April 2025 as the construction phase that would follow the administrations demolition of the administrative stateWhether the July 4th announcement comes or not Freedom Cities have moved from campaign rhetoric into a serious policy and investment conversation The question worth asking now is not whether it is politically viable The question is whether the economic thesis underlying it is soundNeel Somani has been thinking about exactly that question His answer laid out in a recent essay called The BLAST Playbook is that new cities represent not just a housing policy but something far more significant the most structurally compelling largescale capital allocation opportunity available right nowWhy the Timing Is Not a CoincidenceSomanis argument starts with a problem that has nothing to do with housing policy The venture capital model that has dominated institutional investing for the better part of two decades is being squeezed from both endsOn one side AI development tools have made software dramatically cheaper and faster to build which means the best founders increasingly have no reason to take outside capital They can get to revenue without giving up equity On the other side anything that can be built quickly can also be copied quickly which means software revenue is losing the defensibility that justified the valuations and return assumptions baked into most fundsThe consequence in Somanis framing is stark somewhere between 500 billion and 1 trillion in annual investment capital is flowing through a model that no longer works as well as it did Funds will underperform Managers who do not adapt will eventually close And a significant pool of institutional capital will need to go somewhere elseThe BLAST Thesis and Why Land Is the AnswerSomanis proposed alternative for where that capital should flow is what he calls the BLAST thesis an acronym for Boredom Loneliness and Scarcity The underlying reasoning is that the most sustainable investment opportunities are the ones rooted in human psychology rather than in any particular technology cycleBoredom does not go away because software gets cheaper People will always spend on distractions entertainment and novelties Loneliness doesnrsquot disappear because platforms multiply People pay for status and for the feeling of being seen and valued Scarcity does not erode because digital goods become abundant Physical rarity holds its premium specifically because it cannot be replicatedThe challenge with these is not that they lack value It is because deploying institutional capital into them through existing vehicles is tricky Buying into incumbent consumer brands does not generate the kind of returns that justify the risk Investing in existing real estate funds does not provide the upside that venturescale pools seek The category is real but the instrument has been missingSomanis answer is that an entirely new city is the purest expression of the BLAST thesis available Land is inherently scarce The scarcest land compounds in value over time precisely because supply cannot grow to meet demand A new city built on that land is not just a real estate play It is the infrastructure through which every other BLAST asset can be delivered at scaleThe asset stack he describes is deliberate and layered Luxury housing generates the capital density at the foundation Elite private schools exclusive fitness facilities highend wellness clinics and curated social venues layer on top Each of these absorbs meaningful investment while directly serving the loneliness and boredom legs of the thesis A resident paying for membership in a private club is not paying for a physical space They are paying for access status and community which are among the most ironclad products in the economyWhat Freedom Cities Actually ProposeThe mechanism Agenda 47 foresees is a contest that awards private development rights to build on federal land The AEIs Homesteading 20 blueprint the most detailed implementation proposal publicly available calls for selling 600 square miles of BLM land to create 20 new cities each averaging about 30 square miles and capable of housing around 100000 homes when fully built out over a 40 to 50year timelineThe locations identified by AEI are primarily in the American West near the outskirts of existing metropolitan centers in Nevada Utah Idaho Arizona and Colorado as well as other states with BLM holdings The 850 total square miles involved represents just 03 percent of the BLMs lower48 landholdingsProponents envision jurisdictions operating outside most federal rules including major environmental laws labor protections and existing tax frameworks Bloomberg Law described the end goal as hightech company towns free from state law and most federal rules The AEIs own materials describe a lighttouch rulesbased backdrop designed to allow flexible marketdriven growthFor critics this is the most alarming part of the proposal Environmental groups have raised concerns about BLM land privatization and the exclusion of conservation protections Urban scholars have questioned whether cities designed from scratch around deregulation can achieve the social and economic diversity that makes cities function The Wilderness Society has described the broader public land push as a real threat to federal public landsFor proponents it is precisely the point The argument is that the regulatory environment in existing cities has made housing unaffordable and economic dynamism so difficult to sustain Starting with a clean charter removes the constraints that have stalled development elsewhereA July 4th Deadline and an Open QuestionWith the potential announcement of Freedom City sites now months away the concept is passing from the speculative into the operational phase Whatever the White House announces this summer the policy infrastructure is in place the site analysis has been done the model legislation has been drafted and the investment thesis has been articulated in serious institutional termsThe question Somanis BLAST framework raises is not whether Freedom Cities will work as a political project The question is whether the economic logic of building new intentionally designed jurisdictions on scarce land layered with services that meet permanent human needs holds up as an investment thesis His response is that it does and that the displacement of software capital will ultimately make that case much harder to ignoreThe capital has to go somewhere Land that cannot be replicated communities cannot be copied and experiences that no software product can manufacture may turn out to be exactly what its all about

Neel Somani: Why Agenda 47's Freedom Cities Are The Most Intriguing Capital Allocation Bet No One Is Taking Seriously

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Neel Somani: Why Agenda 47's Freedom Cities Are The Most Intriguing Capital Allocation Bet No One Is Taking Seriously

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