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Infrastructuring Pop-Up Cities with "Social Layer": Designing Serendipitous Co-Livings for Temporary Intentional Communities

Danwen Ji, Botao 'Amber' Hu

TL;DR

The paper investigates how to design infrastructures for serendipity in temporary intentional communities (pop-up cities) by introducing Social Layer, an unconferencing platform that balances openness with trust. Through a research-through-design process across five real deployments, it shows how privacy-preserving identities, lightweight event initiation, visibility cues, and portable memory enable scaffolded spontaneity and emergent co-living. Macro- and micro-level findings reveal substantial self-organization (69.7% of events) and cross-disciplinary weak-tie interactions, with micro-cases like Counting Rice illustrating playful, low-friction initiation that seeds collaboration. The study contributes a concrete infrastructural pattern for facilitating serendipity in time-bounded urban experiments and offers design implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to cultivate inclusive, dynamic, and interactive temporary communities.

Abstract

After the pandemic, a new form of "pop-up city" has emerged -- co-living gatherings of 100-200 people for 4-8 weeks that differ from conferences and hack houses. These temporary intentional communities leverages existing urban infrastructure, blending daily life (housing, meals, care) with self-organized activities like learning, creating, and socializing. They coordinate bottom-up programming through an "unconference" system for identity, calendaring, RSVP, and social discovery that fosters spontaneous, serendipitous, enduring ties. This paper examines the design of "Social Layer," an unconferencing system for pop-up cities. We studied its real-world deployment in ShanHaiWoo (Jilin, China, 2023), muChiangmai (Chiangmai, Thailand, 2023), Edge Esmeralda, Edge Esmeralda (Healdsburg, CA, USA, 2024), Aleph (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2024), and Gathering of Tribe (Lisbon, Portugal, 2024). Our findings distill: (1) the strong concept "scaffolded spontaneity" -- infrastructural affordances that balance structure with openness, amplifying participant agency while maintaining privacy and lightweight governance; (2) design implications for design researchers working on pop-up cities.

Infrastructuring Pop-Up Cities with "Social Layer": Designing Serendipitous Co-Livings for Temporary Intentional Communities

TL;DR

The paper investigates how to design infrastructures for serendipity in temporary intentional communities (pop-up cities) by introducing Social Layer, an unconferencing platform that balances openness with trust. Through a research-through-design process across five real deployments, it shows how privacy-preserving identities, lightweight event initiation, visibility cues, and portable memory enable scaffolded spontaneity and emergent co-living. Macro- and micro-level findings reveal substantial self-organization (69.7% of events) and cross-disciplinary weak-tie interactions, with micro-cases like Counting Rice illustrating playful, low-friction initiation that seeds collaboration. The study contributes a concrete infrastructural pattern for facilitating serendipity in time-bounded urban experiments and offers design implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to cultivate inclusive, dynamic, and interactive temporary communities.

Abstract

After the pandemic, a new form of "pop-up city" has emerged -- co-living gatherings of 100-200 people for 4-8 weeks that differ from conferences and hack houses. These temporary intentional communities leverages existing urban infrastructure, blending daily life (housing, meals, care) with self-organized activities like learning, creating, and socializing. They coordinate bottom-up programming through an "unconference" system for identity, calendaring, RSVP, and social discovery that fosters spontaneous, serendipitous, enduring ties. This paper examines the design of "Social Layer," an unconferencing system for pop-up cities. We studied its real-world deployment in ShanHaiWoo (Jilin, China, 2023), muChiangmai (Chiangmai, Thailand, 2023), Edge Esmeralda, Edge Esmeralda (Healdsburg, CA, USA, 2024), Aleph (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2024), and Gathering of Tribe (Lisbon, Portugal, 2024). Our findings distill: (1) the strong concept "scaffolded spontaneity" -- infrastructural affordances that balance structure with openness, amplifying participant agency while maintaining privacy and lightweight governance; (2) design implications for design researchers working on pop-up cities.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 32 sections, 6 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Intentional Communities, Temporary Urbanism, and Pop-up Cities
  4. Serendipity and Groupware
  5. Infrastructuring for Unconferencing, Events, and Temporary Co-living
  6. Method
  7. System Design: Solar Layer
  8. Design Principles
  9. Identity and Trust
  10. Unconference-Style Event Initiation
  11. RSVP and Presence Cues
  12. Memory and After-life
  13. Architecture and Interfaces
  14. Coordinator Dashboard
  15. Participant Interface
  16. ...and 17 more sections

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: Solar Layer is a modular infrastructure for the design, scale, and sustainability of pop-up communities and cities.
  • Figure 2: Coordinator Dashboard from Solar Layer
  • Figure 3: Event Creation Process from Solar Layer
  • Figure 4: Shared Schedule and Map View from Solar Layer
  • Figure 5: Moments in ShanHaiWoo
  • ...and 1 more figures