About

About Now City.

A real estate developer and operator, founded to accelerate the transition to regenerative, resilient and equitable communities and cities.

Mission · Our story · Team · Advisors · Values · Our brands

Our mission

Regenerative, resilient and equitable communities.

Now City's mission is to accelerate the transition to regenerative, resilient and equitable communities and cities.

Regeneration

Restore the natural systems that sustain daily life (clean air, water, soil and food), improving personal health while rebuilding ecological function at the neighborhood and district scale.

Resilience

Homes, mobility, energy, food and social systems designed to perform under stress, from climate to economic disruption, strengthening household security and community stability.

Equity

Designing around caregiving, childhood, aging, independent mobility and access to opportunity improves daily life and makes communities more stable, connected and inclusive.

A timber market hall with produce stands and people shopping.

A timber market hall with local produce. Concept rendering.

Our story

Why the name Now City.

Cities take decades to build, and the people who live in them experience them every day. Our work is to shorten the distance between long-term place-making and the daily quality of life residents feel from the day they move in. The "now" is a commitment to that.

Now City builds on the work of the community builders and industry veterans who came before us, and plans on a horizon of decades.

A daylit living room with tall windows, timber and plants.

A daylit home with tall windows and timber finishes. Concept rendering.

Team

Founders.

We hire carefully and bring partners in at the right stage of each project.

Erik Gillberg

Co-founder & CEO

Erik has spent 30 years inside the operating reality of property: how buildings live, age and serve the people in them. Alongside it he built a 20-year career in technology, business development and startup leadership, designing systems and aligning teams around outcomes. Now City brings the two together: districts treated as living systems, with capital, design and operations engineered together from the start.

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Ritchie Ju

Co-founder & COO

Ritchie leads design, development and operations. B.Architecture from Carnegie Mellon, MS in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia, MBA candidate at Johns Hopkins. Previously a mobility planner at Lyft in New York, where he led bike-share expansion, and later supported the capital raise and development of a 1,000-unit multifamily mixed-use project in New York City.

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Advisors

Senior advisors.

We work with senior advisors whose expertise is central to the work.

Michael H. Shuman

Local economies

Michael is an economist, attorney, and one of the architects of the 2012 JOBS Act. Adjunct Professor at Bard Business School. Author of Put Your Money Where Your Life Is, The Local Economy Solution, and others. He advises Now City on community-rooted ownership, local capital formation, and finance models that keep wealth in place.

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Neal Payton

Urban planning & design

Neal, FAIA, FCNU, directs the western U.S. urban and architectural design practice at Torti Gallas. His work focuses on master plans, form-based codes and the public realm, especially the revitalization of urban centers, brownfields and older suburbs. He advises Now City on urbanism, master planning and entitlement strategy.

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Values

Six values.

Our values guide our design process and our decisions, and help us find the people who want to build this with us.

Cultivate curiosity

We ask big questions. Where are the healthiest, happiest people and places in the world, and what can we learn from them? How do we build and live better, everywhere? How do we move faster on climate, equity and resilience? We chase the answers.

Catalyze creativity

Creativity is how we learn, grow and solve problems. We need it at full strength to design better places and to work on the questions that are still open.

Be courageous

We try to see through other people's eyes. We face the hard internal and external challenges. We act for the good of the whole, and build and live in new ways that are better for people and planet.

Develop diversity

We value diversity because it is right and because it works. Diverse communities of people, species and ideas are healthier, more resilient and more alive. We design for it, hire for it and build for it.

Build trust

Trust is how a team, a neighborhood and a partnership stay coordinated. Transparency builds it, and we choose transparency when it feels uncomfortable too.

Begin regeneration

Regenerative work leaves a place better than we found it. We work on repair, renewal and growth.

A sunlit commons with people gathering among gardens and shade trees.

A neighborhood commons with gardens and shade trees. Concept rendering.

Our brands

How the company is organized.

Now City Inc. is the parent company of four brands. Each brand covers one part of the work.

Brand	What it is	Where
Now City Inc.	The parent company: a real estate developer and operator.	nowcity.co
Now City Neighborhoods	The neighborhoods we build and run, and where residents follow along.	nowcity.life
Now City Labs	Our services arm: owner's representation and strategic advisory.	Services
Now City Homes	A catalog of homes built from a shared, factory-made frame. In development.	Now City Homes
NowCity.ai	Now City Regenerative Development Intelligence: expert human and AI systems that extend development teams, taught to your team, built to your specification, or run with you.	nowcity.ai

A raised timber walkway above garden beds, leading to a large timber hall.

A raised timber walkway over garden beds. Concept rendering.

Contact

Get in touch.

Landholders, cities, partners and press can reach the team directly. For news of the neighborhoods themselves, follow Now City Neighborhoods at nowcity.life.

Contact the team → Follow at nowcity.life →