Stephen Brooks at AUREA: Write the Criteria, Find the Land

Stephen Brooks was 21, driving a rental car through a banana plantation in Costa Rica, when a crop duster came over the road low enough that he thought it would hit him. His eyes and face started burning. Then he watched the same plane fly over a playground of indigenous children playing soccer.

"I literally right then I pulled the emergency brake on my life," he told the AUREA I room. He has spent the thirty years since on one question: who is designing our world, and can it be done better?

How to find land by writing the criteria first

His method for finding land is the most portable thing in the talk, and it is deliberately unglamorous: write down every condition before you start looking. He wrote his out one line at a time, and each line cut the map smaller.

The list was specific. Costa Rica, because it has no army and the climate is right. Less than one hour from the airport in San José. Between 400 and 800 meters above sea level, which he says produces the ideal climate both for living and for growing food. A crystal-clear river he could swim in every day, a criterion he added after a week at a rainbow gathering spent baking on hot boulders and rolling into the pools below. And land that had already been radically disturbed, so the project would regenerate cleared ground rather than clear standing forest to make room for itself.

"The clearer you are with your criteria, the better chance you're going to find what you're seeking," he said, and extended it past real estate: a job, a partner, a community, anything. With the list complete, the whole world narrowed to one country, then to a ring around a city, then to a band of elevation, then to a river. He went straight there and found the land.

Why sustainable is not a high enough standard

Brooks refuses the word sustainable, and his objection is that it describes survival rather than improvement. He tested it on the room with a question about a relationship: if you asked how someone's marriage was going and they answered "sustainable," you would be worried for them.

The standard he holds instead is regeneration. Land, ecosystems, and the surrounding towns should be measurably better because the project arrived. "We need to do way better than to just sustain. We need to thrive. We need to regenerate."

What Punta Mona was, and what it became

Punta Mona began in 1995 on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, past the end of the road, reachable only by boat. Brooks started it to show visiting high school students both the destruction (rainforest loss, indigenous cultural erosion, industrial agriculture) and the alternatives.

He describes himself as an ethnobotanist, which he defines as someone who studies the relationship between humans and plants, and the obsession is genuine. The farm grew enough unusual species that meals were regularly assembled from ingredients that, as he put it, had never met before in the history of humanity. He took his permaculture course in 1999, began teaching in 2001, and has since taught tens of thousands of people, later moving much of it online through a program called Ecoversity.

The part he is proudest of is the bridge the place became. His neighbor Patty, born there in 1928, introduced himself by pointing at the yard and saying his umbilical cord was buried in it. Brooks watched younger generations grow embarrassed of their own culture and start losing their languages, and made honoring that knowledge the center of the work.

How three Costa Rican communities got built

The first, La Ecovilla, was co-founded in 2006 after Brooks convinced his father, a dentist of 35 years who was ready to retire, to raise money and buy land with him. It now holds 45 families from 22 countries and 60 children in a school the parents created themselves.

The design choices are the argument. Roads made from recycled plastic. Septic converted to methane. No golf course, and instead more than a hundred species of fruit trees planted along the roads themselves. The second community, Tacotal, came out of a hard, dusty 2007 Burning Man when his camp dissolved and the group bought 70 acres up the street. The third, four years ago, is 170 acres between the other two. Its launch coincided with a Netflix show featuring Zac Efron that filmed there, which Brooks credits with the timing more than the strategy. They sold 141 of 145 lots to buyers from 36 countries.

The gardens now send out baskets of food every Saturday. It is the homeowners' association fee doing the work a golf course usually does.

How they kept it affordable for Costa Ricans

Two structural decisions, both made deliberately at the deal level rather than left to good intentions. The first was a waterfall in the investor agreement: past a certain return, a percentage of both investor and founder earnings is redirected into a community fund. That fund currently holds $500,000 for projects in the surrounding area, governed by a board that includes local leaders.

The second was pricing. They discounted many lots heavily and offered the best financing terms they could so that Costa Rican families could actually live there. Brooks's warning case is what he has watched happen in Tulum, in Playa del Carmen, in Cancún before that, and now in places like Ibiza, where he heard that restaurants cannot open because there is nowhere affordable for the waiters to live.

Why intentional communities lose their young people

The failure mode he watches for is generational. Kibbutzim in Israel, Findhorn in Scotland, Damanhur in Italy, The Farm in Tennessee: remarkable places founded in the sixties and seventies whose children grew up and left for New York, Milan, Berlin, Tel Aviv.

His proposed fix is culture at scale. Five or six festivals a year on the land, with music that keeps evolving and speakers on the subjects young people actually want, so there is a reason to stay that belongs to them rather than to their parents. Brooks co-founded the Envision Festival and has been going to Burning Man since 2001, and he is direct about why: he likes building experiences that crack a mind open. A woman told him at AUREA that there was a before-Envision and an after-Envision in her life.

The line between a visionary and a liar

Brooks named the risk in his own method out loud. There is a fine line between being a visionary and being a liar, and the thing that keeps you on the right side of it is speaking the vision early and then watching hard.

His practice is to say the vision out loud, observe which parts land, stop saying the parts that do not, and say more of the parts that do. He showed the room the first hand-drawing of a garden with a Fibonacci spiral and a twenty-meter dome, then the drone shot of it laid out in lime on bare ground, then the finished garden photographed from the yoga deck he and his partner had imagined while standing on the empty hillside.

The next chapter is a venture called Eterna, built with his partner Andrea, to replicate the model past Costa Rica: agriculture, community, conservation, and event space on the same land. They have property in escrow at San Juanillo north of Nosara, 100 acres on the beach, and are looking at 336 acres near Ostional, one of the world's great sea turtle nesting beaches. Projects in Colombia, Portugal, and Homestead, Florida are in progress.

He closed by picking up a guitar, well outside his comfort zone, and singing a few verses. Then the line he actually ended on: "If not now, when? If not you, who?"

Watch the full talk above and learn more about Stephen Brooks's work at Punta Mona.

Frequently asked questions

What were Stephen Brooks's criteria for the land?

Costa Rica, for its lack of an army and its climate. Less than one hour from San José. Between 400 and 800 meters above sea level, which he considers ideal for both living and growing food. A crystal-clear river he could swim in daily. And land already cleared or degraded, so the project would regenerate damaged ground rather than clear intact forest.

Why does he reject the word "sustainable"?

Because it sets the bar at survival. He tests it by analogy: if you asked how someone's relationship was and they said "sustainable," you would hear it as a problem. His standard is regeneration, meaning the land, the ecosystem, and the surrounding towns should all be measurably better off because the project exists.

What is Punta Mona?

A farm and education center Brooks started in 1995 on Costa Rica's southern Caribbean coast, past the end of the road and reachable only by boat. It began as a place to show visiting students both the damage from industrial agriculture and the working alternatives, and grew into a permaculture teaching center and a bridge to local indigenous knowledge.

How did they keep the community affordable for Costa Rican families?

Two deal-level decisions. A waterfall clause redirects a percentage of both investor and founder returns past a threshold into a community fund, which now holds $500,000 and is governed with local leaders. Separately, they discounted many lots heavily and offered favorable financing specifically so Costa Rican families could buy in.

Why do intentional communities struggle to keep young people?

Brooks points to Findhorn, Damanhur, The Farm, and the kibbutzim: places founded decades ago whose children left for cities. His read is that the founding generation's culture does not transfer. His proposed answer is running several festivals a year on the land, with evolving music and relevant speakers, so young people have a reason to stay that is genuinely theirs.