The Citymaking Circle
One hundred and fifty members. The number is Dunbar’s.
A year-round community for anyone with a stake in how cities are lived in — planners and architects, yes, and equally investors, artists, operators, clinicians, educators, civil servants and community organisers. Members work across the themes we programme: adaptive neighbourhoods, urban software, and placemaking & legacy. The Circle is not the largest membership we offer; it is the one that carries the others.
This is our inaugural year, and we are building the Circle in the open. Read the note.
Three things to know
It stays small.
One hundred and fifty members. Beyond Dunbar's number, a community becomes a list.
It moves at the pace of the work.
Applications are welcomed on a rolling basis and reviewed as they arrive. Places are taken up as the right people arrive, layer by layer.
It is joined by conversation.
Every layer comes by invitation, and every invitation begins with a conversation. Nothing is sold on this site; dues follow the invitation.
“The size of human social groups is naturally limited to about one hundred and fifty individuals — beyond that, relationships stop being personal and become administrative.”
The Circle is capped at one hundred and fifty. The number is not arbitrary.
What a Circle year looks like.
The Circle convenes through in-person gatherings, online sessions, and the longer thread of introductions and private conversation. The festival anchors in Singapore every two years; between festivals, the Circle travels.
The Art of Citymaking Festival
One day, one room. Held biennially — Singapore in 2026 and 2028, travelling in between. The festival is the cohort's convergence.
Salons between festivals
Intimate gatherings hosted in member cities across ASEAN and the Asia Pacific — Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Mumbai, and beyond. The Circle travels in the years the festival doesn't.
Leadership for Cities programmes
Priority access to In Residence, Studio, and Labs — convened annually alongside the Circle.
The work between
Introductions. Briefings. Private conversation. The long thread of relationship that makes a community more than a list.
What the Circle carries.
The Circle is not a larger version of the Fellowship. It is the part of the community that supplies the rest: the rooms we gather in, the bursaries that widen who can join, and the mentoring given freely to Fellows who ask for it.
That is what membership here means. Not a level of access, but a share in holding the work up — and the standing that comes with having done so.
What each layer carries
Six ways to support the work of making cities worth living in. Each brings a different level of contribution to a shared purpose: sustaining the conversations, connections and programmes that help people shape better cities.
The Circle holds 150 memberships, with 25 places in each layer. Every membership begins with a conversation.
Your presence, perspective and curiosity. Citizens help build a community that pays attention to how cities are lived in, and to what might make them better.
Invitations to LfC salons and convenings, priority booking for programmes, and recognition in the published member roll. One place at the next TAoC Festival Week.
Support for encounters that turn shared interests into relationships. Placemakers help create the conditions for people to meet, exchange ideas and find possibilities for working together.
All Citizen benefits, with two places in total at the next TAoC Festival Week, so you can bring someone into the conversation.
Support for continuity: keeping useful ideas in circulation, relationships growing and the wider LfC community connected as the work develops.
All Placemaker benefits, with three places in total at the next TAoC Festival Week, and an opportunity to contribute ideas and advice to future festival programmes.
Support that helps LfC sustain its programmes and convenings. Stewards bring a longer view, helping the community build on what it begins.
All Custodian benefits, with four places in total at the next TAoC Festival Week, and acknowledgement from the TAoC Festival stage.
Capacity to take promising ideas further. Catalysts help LfC develop new initiatives, bring people together around emerging questions and create opportunities for collaboration.
All Steward benefits, with five places in total at the next TAoC Festival Week, and named recognition as a Catalyst in festival materials.
Substantial support for LfC's long-term development. Patrons help create the confidence and continuity to plan ahead, deepen the work and sustain its contribution to citymaking.
All Catalyst benefits, with six places in total at the next TAoC Festival Week, and prominent recognition as a Patron in festival materials, with priority placement and greater visual emphasis.
Members are welcome to mentor LfC Fellows voluntarily. Recognition is always with member consent.
Festival Week allocations include the member and are provided once per two-year festival cycle. They do not accumulate on annual renewal. Priority booking provides early access to reservations; programme fees apply separately where relevant.
A small Circle. A year-round practice.
Every seat begins with a conversation. Tell us who you are and what you have made, and we will take it from there.
The LfC Fellowship is for individuals. The Circle is for those who carry a city, an institution, or a portfolio.
Friend · SGD 18.80 a year — Fellow · SGD 188 a year, by application
A membership for people who care about how cities are made. Friends and Fellows share full access to the Commons; Fellows step closer to the work, with priority and exclusive access to selected gatherings, salons and experiences.
About the Fellowship →One hundred and fifty seats · dues on request
The Circle is not another tier of membership. It is stewardship that helps carry the wider ecology — sustaining the rooms, bursaries, mentoring, and initiatives that allow the Fellowship to meaningfully grow.
You are hereField Notes
Correspondence from the people building better cities.
Occasional notes on the festival, the field, and the Circle. Unsubscribe any time.