Builder
Esmeralda didn't begin with a site plan.
It began with a memory.
Growing up, Devon Zuegel spent summers in Chautauqua, New York; a place where lectures, concerts, front porches, and long conversations were woven into everyday life. Years later, after working in software and becoming immersed in housing and land-use policy, she found herself returning to the same question:
Why aren't we still building places like that?
That question eventually became Esmeralda.
The project proposes a new walkable town in Northern California, but the streets and buildings are only part of the vision. Devon often talks about the "hardware" and the "software" of a place. The hardware is the physical town: its streets, homes, parks, and public spaces. The software is everything that gives those places meaning: traditions, learning, friendships, institutions, and the rhythms that make people want to stay.
Most developments begin by asking what can fit on a piece of land.
Esmeralda begins by asking what kind of life the place should make possible.
That philosophy is already being tested.
Before the town exists, Devon and her team have spent years hosting Edge Esmeralda, a month-long pop-up village that brings together builders, artists, researchers, founders, families, and curious neighbors to experiment with the culture Esmeralda hopes to support. The goal isn't to preview finished buildings. It's to discover which traditions, relationships, and daily rituals are worth carrying into a permanent town.
Very few people get the chance to build a new town.
Even fewer begin by treating community as something to prototype instead of something to hope for after construction ends.
That's what makes Devon's work worth following.
She's building the culture before she's finished building the town.
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