If you have heard the phrases network state or pop-up city and wondered whether there is room in them for a family, very little has been written for you. Network state families are still rare enough that most of what exists is written for a single adult with a laptop. This guide takes the parent's view: what daily life looks like with children, where education fits, what to evaluate before committing, and how to try one as an experiment, not a leap. We write as a worldschooling family that has lived it and now runs children's programming alongside these communities.
What is a network state, in plain language?
Strip away the jargon and the idea is simple. A network state is a community that forms online first, around shared values and a shared way of living, and then gathers in person in places its members choose. Instead of being neighbors because you bought houses on the same street, you become neighbors because you chose the same people on purpose, then chose a place together.
“A pop-up city is a temporary town built by an intentional community: for a few weeks or months, hundreds of people who chose each other live, work, eat, and learn in one place, then pack up and plan the next one.”
The pop-up city is the form most families will encounter. Some run for three weeks, some for a season, and a few have grown into standing campuses with no end date. The idea comes from the technology world, where communities form on the internet long before they meet in person, but nothing about daily life requires a technical bone in your body. What you find on the ground is an old idea rebuilt: a village, assembled deliberately, where the adults are unusually ambitious and the children live close to real work.
You will also hear the term startup society. For a parent, the words matter less than the pattern: a community that chose itself, a place, a defined window of time, and a shared daily rhythm of working, learning, and living.
Why families are drawn to network state communities
On paper, a gathering of founders and researchers sounds like the last place you would bring a seven-year-old. In practice, they offer several things worldschooling families spend years trying to assemble by hand.
- Proximity to real work. Children in a pop-up city watch adults build actual things: products, research, companies, art. Most children never see meaningful work up close, because modern life walls it off in offices. Here it happens at the next table, and curious children get to ask the person doing it.
- A mixed-age village. School sorts children into narrow bands of same-age peers. A pop-up city mixes toddlers, teenagers, parents, and grandparents in one shared daily life. Younger children stretch upward, older children practice responsibility, and adults become mentors instead of strangers.
- Ambition as an atmosphere. Children calibrate what is normal from the people around them. In a community where the default conversation is what are you building, that calibration quietly resets.
- The village feeling, on fast-forward. Most traveling families rebuild community from scratch in every new city. A pop-up city arrives pre-assembled: shared meals, shared spaces, and a few hundred people who opted into knowing their neighbors. Friendships that take months elsewhere form in days.
These are the same principles our own education philosophy is built on: lived experience, mentorship, mixed-age community, and children close to work that matters. Network state communities did not invent them; they created dense, temporary places where all of them happen at once.
What daily life can look like for a family
Every community differs, but a family's day in a pop-up city tends to follow a recognizable shape. Mornings start slow and physical: movement, a swim, breakfast somewhere communal where the children know half the room. During work hours, parents split time between coworking and talks, while children are in whatever the community offers that season: a structured children's program, a parent-organized co-op, or your own family's learning block at a shared table.
Afternoons and evenings are where these places earn their reputation. Workshops, demo days, communal dinners, music, and the kind of unplanned conversations that turn into projects. Children are usually welcome at far more of this than you would expect, and the best communities treat them as residents rather than a logistics problem.
The honest caveat: this picture varies a great deal from one community, and one season, to the next. Most of these gatherings were designed adult-first and are adding family programming as families arrive. One edition might run a full children's camp; the next might offer nothing but goodwill and a beach. That variance is the most important thing for a parent to understand, and it is why the questions below matter more than any general description.
The education question, answered honestly
Here is the question underneath every parent's research: do these places educate my children? The straightforward answer: most do not, and you should not expect them to. Network state communities are typically not schools. Some offer childcare, some enrichment, and a few run genuinely structured children's programs, but responsibility for your children's education stays where it was before you arrived: with you.
For a worldschooling family, this is not a flaw. It is the shape of the opportunity. Families who homeschool while traveling already carry a portable education: a protected daily block for the skills that compound, usually reading and math, with the surrounding world doing much of the rest of the teaching. A pop-up city is an unusually rich version of that surrounding world. Your morning practice travels with you; the afternoons hand your children mentors, mixed-age friends, and a front-row seat to real work. Our guide to homeschooling while traveling covers keeping that daily practice steady on the road, and our guide to starting worldschooling walks the path from first curiosity to a working rhythm.
It is also worth saying plainly: a multi-week stay in a pop-up city is a meaningful decision about your children's learning, not a vacation. The families who do it well answer the education question before they arrive, not after.
What to evaluate before bringing children
Because these communities are young and family programming shifts season to season, the useful preparation is not reading descriptions. It is asking direct questions about the specific edition you would attend and verifying the answers before you commit money or months. These are the ones we would ask every time:
- Ages: what ages are served, and are families with similar-age children confirmed for this edition?
- Children's programming: is there a structured children's program this season, who runs it, what does a day look like, and what happens on days it does not run?
- Childcare: is drop-off care available, during which hours, and how are the people providing it selected?
- Housing: can families get rooms suited to children, and how close is family housing to the community's shared spaces?
- Health: how far are the nearest clinic and hospital, and how do resident families handle a sick child?
- Duration and pace: how long does the gathering run, and is there enough unstructured time for children to settle rather than spectate?
- Community norms: what are the expectations around children in shared spaces, evening events, and quiet hours, and do they match how your family lives?
None of these questions have universally right answers. A community that is wonderful for teenagers may be a poor fit for a toddler, and the same community can change character between editions. Ask directly, ask about this edition, and trust specifics over enthusiasm.
Where Edventures fits
We came to this world the same way you might: as a worldschooling family deciding whether communities built by ambitious adults could also be good places to raise children. Our answer, lived rather than theorized, is yes, with eyes open. Edventures now runs children's programming in this world and points families to the communities we know firsthand.
Our programs include an Edge City experience: Edge City India, a three-week popup village on Mandrem Beach in North Goa that is multigenerational by design, partners, children, and grandparents all welcome, with a beach-facing coworking hub at the center of village life. We also recommend Network School, a standing campus community in Forest City, Malaysia, next door to Singapore, where parents work and learn while children follow a full, structured day of their own, with drop-off running seven days a week. Network School is a recommendation rather than a formal partnership, and we do not speak for either community: verify details for the season you are considering directly with each of them, the same standard we just asked you to hold everyone to.
And we run our own season. The Edventures Hoi An Season gathers worldschooling families for six weeks in Hoi An, Vietnam, with mentor-led programming for children ages 8 to 15, younger siblings welcome alongside the family, and cohorts kept small. It shares the network state world's best ideas, chosen community and children close to real work, in a setting built family-first from the beginning. Our directory maps 600+ worldschooling hubs and programs across 68 countries if you want to see the wider landscape.
Who thrives, and who should wait
Families who thrive here tend to share a few traits. They already own their children's education and can run it anywhere. Their children are comfortable with novelty and mixed-age company, or their parents are ready to coach them through the adjustment. At least one parent genuinely wants to participate rather than observe, because the value of these places is participation. And the family treats the stay as a chapter with a defined shape, not a solution to an unsettled home life.
Consider waiting if your family is in the middle of another large transition, if your children need heavy routine to feel settled and you have not yet built a portable rhythm, or if you would be relying on the community for schooling, childcare, or structure it has not confirmed for your dates. These communities amplify whatever a family brings. A steady family gets steadier and richer. A stretched family gets more stretched. It is a fine plan to build your rhythm somewhere forgiving first and arrive next year with it in hand.
How to explore one as an experiment, not a leap
You do not have to reorganize your life to find out whether this world fits. Treat the first visit as a bounded experiment. Choose a shorter gathering, or a defined slice of a longer one, and decide in advance what you are testing: do our children light up here, can we keep our learning rhythm, do we like who we are becoming in this room.
Then stack the deck the way experienced families do. Arrive with your daily learning practice already running, so the community is an addition rather than a disruption. Get your children into whatever children's programming exists in the first days, because early friendships change everything that follows. And at the end, hold a family debrief before the glow fades. If the answer is yes, you will know what to look for in the next one. If it is not yet, you will have spent a few weeks living in an interesting village. Either way, you will have replaced speculation with experience, the only currency that matters in decisions about your children.