Art Finch

Art Finch is the founder of the League of Free Cities, a venture studio that coordinates investment, incubation and legal protection for special economic zones, aiming to fund dozens of new Free City projects worldwide. He has worked on projects across Asia, including originating the concept behind Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City.

Between 2020 and 2023 he developed the concept for a charter city at Gelephu in southern Bhutan, pitching officials on turning the town on the Indian border into an experimental economic zone. Bhutan took up the idea and is building Gelephu Mindfulness City without the original venture: a special administrative region with its own legal framework, an airport and a masterplan by the architects BIG.

That outcome is instructive about how these projects actually happen. The concept was adopted, the promoters were not, and the state kept control of the thing it had been persuaded to want.

The League of Free Cities is his response. It is meant to supply the pieces an individual project cannot assemble alone, coordinating investment, incubation and legal protection so that founders are not each negotiating from scratch with a government that can change its mind.