This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
You might not expect there to be much for libertarians to like about a town that boasts a master plan, where design conformity is rigorously enforced across virtually every building and street, and whose admirers wax poetic about a building code that covers "everything from building materials to roof pitch."
But Seaside, Florida, often defies expectations. It's a town built on political contradictions: Its surfaces are planned and regulated down to the last nail, but it boasts of individual freedom in its building designs. It was founded on neo-hippie environmental and communitarian ideals, but it was privately built on explicitly capitalist notions of urban development. It's designed to feel like both a tiny town and a big city, with the comfortable intimacy of small village life and the walkable amenities of a major metro area. It's a haven for structural conformity, but it played an important role in bringing more choice in education to one of America's biggest states. It's a utopian architectural vision that resists pure utopianism.
