Peter Young

Peter is the Managing Director of the Free Cities Foundation, where he oversees project delivery, communications, and the Foundation’s flagship Free Cities Conference.

His interest in alternative governance models began during a decade spent living in China, where he studied how Special Economic Zones were used in the 1980s to shift the country toward a market-oriented economy. During that time, he held roles at the British Embassy in Beijing, the British Consulate-General in Wuhan, and the UK’s Catapult Network, focusing on trade, innovation, and international collaboration.

He is one of the Foundation’s most frequent public voices, appearing as the guest on the very first episode of its own podcast and since on programmes from Adopting Bitcoin to the New Cities Summit. The case he makes there has two halves: that special economic zones already changed one of the poorest countries on earth beyond recognition within a single working lifetime, and that the next round of them can be built to a far higher standard than the ones China used.

He has also argued that the missing piece is financial rather than legal. A new jurisdiction that runs its treasury and its payments through the banking system of the country it is trying to differ from is not meaningfully separate from it, which is why he takes an interest in Bitcoin as infrastructure rather than as an investment.

Peter now travels widely to emerging zones around the world, building partnerships and sharing insights from the Free Cities movement.