Decisions and uncertainties that must be resolved before the project can advance. Updated 2 August 2026 following the decision to build in Tuscany: see research/why_tuscany.md for that decision record.

CRITICAL PATH (Must resolve to proceed)

Q1. Where in Tuscany?

Resolved: the region. Tuscany, decided 2 August 2026. The country question is closed, economia civile's legal instruments exist only in Italy, and the ZES advantage that made Umbria competitive appears not to apply to the Orvietano site.

Still open: the sub-area. Valdarno (Figline / Reggello / Incisa) is the incumbent and the working assumption, not the conclusion. It met all four hard connectivity criteria and hosts the Scuola di Economia Civile at Loppiano. It must be re-tested against Mugello, Casentino, Val di Chiana, Valdelsa, Val di Merse, Maremma, the Colline Metallifere and Lunigiana.

Four factors that were never applied to the old comparison. Two of them now outrank connectivity.

• Existing building stock (see Q1c). The dominant criterion. A parcel with a derelict borgo or large podere complex is worth more than a better-connected parcel of bare land, because bare land cannot lawfully become 60–100 homes.
• Water risk, at sub-area resolution. Now researched (tuscany_water.md). Casentino and Lunigiana are the only areas with no flagged water body at all; Mugello is the best-buffered thanks to Bilancino; Valdarno is moderate with its surface bodies flagged and no collective irrigation network; Val di Chiana and the Colline Metallifere are the worst. For a project whose binding constraint is water, this may matter more than airport drive time.
• Geothermal, but it collides with water. The resource is real and unique to Tuscany, but it sits in the same place as the worst water problems. Boron and arsenic contamination of the Cecina and its aquifer is attributed to the Larderello field itself, and on the Amiata arsenic tracks the water table with about a year's lag, so drought years are bad for quantity and quality together. The question is no longer "is there resource" but "can we take the heat without the water problem".
• CER primary-substation geography. Revenue is paid on hourly coincidence between village generation and other people's consumption on the same substation. A village self-sufficient behind its own meter earns nothing. Still unchecked for every candidate, and note the capital side is currently worthless anyway: both the PNRR and Tuscan regional CER grant windows are closed with no 2026 successor.

What would resolve it: the sub-area research now in progress, then ground truth, visit the top two or three, meet municipal officials, walk parcels, check the GSE substation map against specific addresses, talk to Legacoop Toscana and to the Scuola di Economia Civile.

Domains affected: All

Q1c. The village as specified cannot be built on bought farmland, what replaces the model?

This supersedes every other question, including the sub-area choice. It is not a difficulty to be negotiated. It is a prohibition.

> L.R. Toscana 65/2014, art. 4 c.2: "Non sono comunque consentite nuove edificazioni residenziali fuori del territorio urbanizzato, fermo restando quanto previsto dal titolo IV, capo III."

Agricultural land is by definition outside the territorio urbanizzato (art. 64 c.2), and art. 4 c.5 expressly excludes scattered rural building and its curtilage from the perimeter. This applies identically in all 273 Tuscan comuni. There is no conference, no derogation and no negotiation available.

The single carve-out is Title IV Chapter III, a farmhouse for an imprenditore agricolo professionale via a PAPMAA. That route requires 1,728 agricultural working hours per year per dwelling (art. 4 D.P.G.R. 63/R), existing units included: 60–100 full-time farm labour units on 50–80 ha, against a realistic 1–3. Both doors are shut.

That this is real rather than theoretical is measurable: at 31 December 2024, new planning capacity outside the urbanised perimeter across all Tuscan structural plans was 20.11%, and all of it non-residential.

The three structures that remain:

1. **Buy an existing borgo, fattoria or hamlet** and work through recupero. Art. 71 permits restoration, ristrutturazione, sostituzione edilizia and ripristino of collapsed buildings with no PAPMAA, and these may increase the number of residential units. This is the most likely answer, and it changes the project from a build into a restoration.
2. **Buy land already inside a territorio urbanizzato perimeter** with live Piano Operativo capacity. Only ~32% of comuni have an approved PO at all, and its transformation rules expire after five years.
3. Split the scheme: residential inside a perimeter, labs and workshops outside via art. 25 copianificazione, which is available for non-residential transformations only, must be triggered by the comune, and carries a binding regional veto.

Almost certainly not Tuscany-specific. Every Italian region ties rural building rights to farming capacity, so the same constraint probably applies in Umbria and Veneto. It is not a reason to revisit the region.

What would resolve it: a written opinion from a Tuscan planning lawyer (urbanista or a studio legale doing diritto urbanistico). Send them two specific things, the prohibition in art. 4 c.2 of L.R. 65/2014, and the requirement of 1,728 farm-labour hours per dwelling in art. 4 of D.P.G.R. 63/R, and ask one question: by what lawful route can a community of 60–100 households be built in Tuscany? Do this before viewing a single parcel, because the answer determines what to look for: existing buildings, not hectares.

Domains affected: everything. The masterplan assumes new-build clusters; the financial model assumes construction costs rather than restoration costs; the phasing assumes greenfield sequencing; and the architect brief asks for a framework that the law does not permit to be applied to bare land.

Q1b. Cooperativa di comunità in Toscana: RESOLVED, mostly

Answered: yes, Tuscany has one. It is art. 11-bis L.R. 73/2005, inserted by L.R. 67/2019: a three-article amendment to the 2005 cooperative-system law rather than a standalone statute. Key features:

• Recognises cooperatives serving mountain and inner areas, and (via art. 2 L.R. 67/2019) also metropolitan areas and urban peripheries with weak accessibility and thin services. The village does not have to be in a depopulating mountain comune to qualify, which widens the viable sub-areas considerably
• The Region and local authorities may grant the use of unused public property, directly relevant to the building-rights problem in Q1c, and to the patto di collaborazione route
• Membership may include natural persons, legal persons and Third Sector organisations
• Gating requirement (art. 2 L.R. 73/2005): entry in the Albo delle società cooperative and revisione cooperativa certification under D.Lgs. 220/2002
• Implementing act: DGR 51 del 27 gennaio 2020, a cooperation protocol between Regione Toscana, ANCI Toscana and the Centrali Cooperative (Legacoop, Confcooperative)
• Tuscany has actually spent money on it: EUR 740k in 2020, and a later "Cooperative di comunità digitali" call at up to 80% intensity (closed October 2025, no 2026 successor found)

Honest comparison: Umbria's L.R. 2/2019 is a stronger instrument on paper, a standalone organic law, and the subject of the Constitutional Court judgment that established amministrazione condivisa. Tuscany's is thinner. But it is real, it is funded, and for an economia civile project the practical difference is small: both give recognition, a route to public-asset use, and a hook for targeted calls. This is no longer a cost of the Tuscany decision.

Still open: whether a Tuscan regional register of cooperative di comunità exists and what its entry criteria are; whether Regione Toscana has adopted implementing guidance on art. 55 CTS co-progettazione (load-bearing, and one of the first questions for counsel); and which Tuscan comuni have adopted a regolamento sui beni comuni for patti di collaborazione.

Domains affected: Legal, Governance, Business Model

Q2. Who are the co-founders?

Why it matters: An Italian cooperative needs a minimum of 3 members. The legal entity cannot be formed, land cannot be purchased, and incentive applications cannot begin without at least 2-3 committed co-founders.

What we need: People with complementary skills, Italian legal and tax expertise (specifically cooperative and third-sector law), sustainable construction experience, and agricultural knowledge. Now that the region is fixed, the search is narrower and easier: it is a Tuscany search, and the Scuola di Economia Civile, Legacoop Toscana and the Polo Lionello Bonfanti are all plausible starting points. The founder pipeline remains the single biggest bottleneck.

What would resolve it: Active outreach in ecovillage networks, permaculture communities, remote work forums and Italian expat communities. Now that the region is fixed, three Tuscan starting points are concrete: the Scuola di Economia Civile and Polo Lionello Bonfanti at Loppiano, Legacoop Toscana, and RIVE. A clear project brief (not the full website, a 1-page pitch).

Domains affected: All

Q3. What is the personal financial commitment?

Why it matters: Phase 1 is estimated at EUR 3.5-7.65M. The founder's contribution determines the funding mix, the scale of Phase 1, and the degree of external partnership needed.

The question: How much personal capital is available? Is this a full-time commitment? What is the acceptable personal financial exposure?

Evidence: Funding stack is projected as 30-40% grants, 20-30% member equity, 15-25% crowdfunding, 10-20% impact debt. But grant capture rates are uncertain, and the equity portion must come from somewhere real.

Domains affected: Business Model, all downstream decisions

LOCATION-DEPENDENT DECISIONS (Answer changes by site)

Q4. What is the founding legal structure?

Why it matters: Cannot buy land, apply for incentives, or enter contracts without it. The country question is closed, so this is no longer a menu of national options. It is a sequencing decision inside Italian law.

The shape is settled, and it follows from economia civile rather than from tax:

The three things actually still open:

1. Can the cooperative hold impresa sociale status while controlling a profit-distributing SRL? This is the load-bearing question. Impresa sociale requires "the absence of profit-making purposes"; the SRL Società Benefit exists to distribute profit. If the answer is no, the two-body structure collapses and the project has to choose between the art. 55 seat at the table and the licensing revenue. Get this in writing before anything is registered.

2. Lightweight vehicle first, or the cooperative from day one? An SRL Società Benefit can be incorporated by a single founder with EUR 1 of capital, quickly, with the beneficio comune in the object from the start. A cooperative needs three members, so it cannot exist before the co-founders do (Q2). The likely sequence is SRL first, cooperative once there are three, but confirm that forming the SRL first does not prejudice the cooperative's later impresa sociale qualification.

3. Entity choice is now also a financing decision. An agricultural cooperative taxed on reddito agrario forfeits the 2026 Iperammortamento, which is worth roughly EUR 432k nominal on a robotics-heavy Phase 1. A plain cooperativa di comunità without cooperativa sociale or impresa sociale status cannot reach art. 55 at all. The tax-efficient structure and the co-design-capable structure are not automatically the same one.

Worth understanding before recruiting members: mutualità prevalente brings the riserva indivisibile, which makes the village non-cashable. Accumulated value cannot be distributed to members during the cooperative's life, and on winding up it goes to the cooperative movement's mutual funds rather than to members. That is the point of the instrument, and it caps what founders can extract. See Q22.

Domains affected: Governance, Business Model, Legal

Q5. Can we build on agricultural land? RESOLVED, see Q1c

Answered, and the answer is no. This question has been superseded by Q1c, which should be read instead.

Art. 4 c.2 of L.R. 65/2014 prohibits new residential building outside the territorio urbanizzato, in every Tuscan comune, with no derogation. The only carve-out is a farmhouse for a professional agricultural entrepreneur via a PAPMAA, and that requires 1,728 farm-labour hours per dwelling, which a 60 to 100 home village cannot demonstrate.

What remains possible: recovery of existing rural buildings under art. 71, which needs no PAPMAA and may increase the number of residential units; land already inside an urbanised perimeter; or splitting housing from workshops. See Q1c for the detail.

Domains affected: Legal, Site Selection, Built Environment

Q6. How does the CER actually pay?

Why it matters: Energy is the most reliable long-term income stream, and the Italian CER framework is among the most generous in Europe. But the mechanism is easy to misread, and misreading it would put a hole in the financial model.

How it actually pays. The tariff is paid on ***shared* energy for 20 years, where shared energy is the hourly minimum of community generation and member consumption inside the same primary substation** (cabina primaria). It is a payment for matching, not for generating.

The rate is tiered, not flat. A fixed 80 EUR/MWh below 200 kW, 70 from 200 to 600 kW, 60 from 600 kW to 1 MW, plus a variable component indexed to the hourly zonal price, with overall caps of 120 / 110 / 100. Model at 80 to 100 EUR/MWh. The 119 to 120 figure that circulated in earlier project data is the theoretical ceiling, reached only when zonal prices are low. Above 1 MW no tariff is paid at all.

The consequence, which inverts the self-sufficiency instinct: a village that generates and consumes its own power behind its own meter shares nothing and earns nothing. The revenue exists only insofar as non-village households and businesses on the same substation consume the surplus. Including the neighbouring comune is what makes the CER pay.

Three things to check before buying land, not after:

• Which primary substation serves the parcel, and where its boundary runs. GSE publishes a map; DSOs must publish boundaries under D.Lgs. 199/2021 art. 32(3)(b)
• How much non-village consumption sits inside that boundary, and what its load curve looks like. Evening-peaking domestic demand complements midday solar; a substation area of nothing but other farms does not
• The comune's population. The PNRR capital-grant threshold was widened from 5,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, which brings effectively every Tuscan candidate comune inside it. Earlier project data saying 5,000 is out of date

The tariff is open. The capital grants are not. The tariff runs to 31 December 2027 or until the 5 GW national quota fills, and the quota is nowhere near binding: only about 209 MW had been admitted by May 2026 against a EUR 2.2bn allocation. Treat 31 December 2027 as the real deadline.

The two capital grants are a different matter. The PNRR 40% grant closed on 30 November 2025, though a successor exists under art. 27 of D.L. 19/2026 (converted by L. 50/2026), a programme of roughly EUR 795m whose reopening date has not been established. The Tuscan regional 40% grant (Azione 2.2.4, EUR 500k cap) closed on 18 September 2025 with no regional successor found. So capital support is zero today, but the national leg is expected back.

Domains affected: Energy, Business Model, Site Selection

Q7. What are the water rights and availability?

Why it matters: Water is the binding physical constraint, and it varies more across Tuscany than any other factor. Now researched per sub-area in tuscany_water.md.

Where the risk sits:

• Casentino and Lunigiana: the only two sub-areas with no flagged water body at all. Casentino also has the highest verified summer rainfall of any candidate, 255 mm at Camaldoli
• Mugello: best buffered, because Bilancino holds 69 Mm³ with drinking-water priority
• Valdarno: moderate. Its surface bodies are on the criticality list and there is no collective irrigation network
• Val di Merse: karst, so no bulk aquifer at all. Storage, not wells
• Val di Chiana: groundwater in poor status in both the shallow and deep bodies, a nitrate vulnerable zone, and a determined balance deficit. Offset by the only expanding irrigation supply, from Montedoglio
• Maremma: driest verified location, 600 mm/yr at Grosseto with a recorded summer minimum of 8 mm, and an aquifer taking 2 to 3 Mm³/yr of seawater intrusion
• Colline Metallifere: worst combination. Multiple aquifers in poor status, plus boron and arsenic contamination attributed to the Larderello geothermal field

Rights, not just availability. A village of this size abstracts as uso agricolo, which needs a full concessione di derivazione with published notice and competing-application rights, not the light declaration available to households. In flagged water bodies, which includes the Valdarno, new concessions realistically proceed only under narrow exceptions, one being abstraction under 3,000 m³/yr.

Two things that hold everywhere in Tuscany:

• Design for a 30 to 50 mm summer, not the 100 to 140 mm mean
• An independent non-potable system is a regulatory necessity, not a preference: DPGR 29/R/2008 forbids mains drinking water for irrigating gardens over 500 m², filling pools or feeding cooling

Action needed: hydrological assessment on any specific parcel, and a request to servizio.idrol.geologico@regione.toscana.it for the tabulated station rainfall normals, which are published only as chart images.

Domains affected: Water, Site Selection, Food, Legal

DESIGN DECISIONS (Shape the village regardless of location)

Q8. How many initial residents in Phase 1?

Why it matters: Determines scale, infrastructure sizing, financial model, and community dynamics.

Trade-off: 15-20 units (30-40 people) = less capital, less risk, slower break-even. 25-30 units (50-60 people) = faster break-even, stronger community, but more upfront capital and committed families needed.

Research says: Financial break-even requires 50-60+ units. Community cohesion optimal at 25-40 households (Dunbar). Critical mass for services is ~30-40 people.

Q9. What is the target resident profile?

Why it matters: Determines housing design, community services, governance complexity, and recruitment strategy.

Options: Remote workers, families with children, retirees, innovators/entrepreneurs, or mixed (most resilient but hardest to design for).

Key sub-question: Is the community primarily English-speaking international, or native to the host country? This affects governance language, legal documents, municipal integration, and recruitment pool.

Q10. Governance: sociocracy from day one, or evolve?

Why it matters: "The single greatest determinant of intentional community success or failure" (Governance report).

Research says: Sociocracy 3.0 balances inclusion with efficiency. Consensus creates decision fatigue at scale. Auroville is a cautionary tale. Dancing Rabbit's 8-step membership process is a model.

Question: Adopt S3 formally from day one (requires training investment) or start simple and evolve?

Q11. Building standard: Passive House mandatory?

Why it matters: Passive House (15 kWh/m²/yr) reduces energy system sizing by ~90%. It is the single highest-impact decision for energy self-sufficiency.

Research recommendation: Mandatory for all buildings. Living Building Challenge as aspirational target for showcase buildings only.

Regulatory sub-question: can natural building materials pass structural certification under NTC 2018? Hempcrete is not codified in Italian standards, so it needs a performance-based approach and non-structural use, with CLT or timber frame carrying the load. Seismic class matters here and varies by sub-area: most of Tuscany is Zone 3, where standard CLT is adequate, but parts of the Apennines and Lunigiana are Zone 2 and need post-tensioned CLT or an engineered frame. Find a structural engineer with both natural-materials and Tuscan seismic experience.

Note the interaction with Q1c. If the project becomes a restoration of existing buildings rather than new build, Passive House becomes much harder to reach: you inherit the envelope, the orientation and often a heritage constraint on external insulation. EnerPHit, the Passive House retrofit standard, is the realistic target for recovered volume, with full Passive House reserved for whatever new build is permitted.

Q12. Livestock: which animals, and when?

Why it matters: Integrated crop-livestock systems provide soil health benefits but add complexity.

Research says: pastured poultry in Phase 1 as the lowest-complexity start, small ruminants in Phase 2, cattle only if the land supports it, and black soldier fly larvae for waste-to-feed. Sheep and goats suit the Tuscan hill landscape, and sheep grazing under panels is the standard agrivoltaic pairing.

Two Tuscan constraints on the answer. Stocking is bounded by the art. 5 D.P.G.R. 63/R minimum land areas, where pasture and woodland require 30 ha against 4 ha for specialised olive, so livestock is land-hungry in planning terms as well as agronomic ones. And in the Val di Chiana the Canale Maestro nitrate vulnerable zone constrains manure management directly.

Community question: Does the founding group have ethical objections to meat production?

Q13. Battery chemistry: deploy LFP now, or wait?

Research recommendation: Deploy LFP now ($70/kWh, proven). Design containerized infrastructure for chemistry swapping. Reserve space for iron-air long-duration storage (2027-2028, $20/kWh target). This is not really an open question, the answer is clear. Execute.

FINANCIAL QUESTIONS

Q14. What revenue stream to activate first?

Why it matters: Cash flow before full occupancy determines viability.

Agriturismo and the CER in parallel, because both earn from the site itself while building work proceeds, and neither waits for full occupancy.

Two constraints shape the order:

• Agriturismo is capped by law, not by demand. The tourism activity must remain connected and subordinate to the farming activity, on a prevalence test set by regional law. Separately, annessi built under a PAPMAA can never become agriturismo, so the buildings intended for hospitality must be identified before any farm-improvement programme is drafted
• The CER cannot be switched on alone. It needs members outside the village on the same substation, so recruitment of neighbouring households is a precondition for revenue rather than a later nicety

If the site turns out to be a restoration of existing buildings (Q1c), hospitality can start earlier than a greenfield model would allow, because some habitable volume already exists.

Q15. How to fund Phase 1?

Research says: EUR 3.5-7.65M needed. Projected mix: 30-40% grants, 20-30% member equity, 15-25% crowdfunding, 10-20% impact debt.

Open questions:

• Can Italian Ener2Crowd (EUR 56.6M raised, 6-10% returns) be used for the energy infrastructure?
• Which Italian platforms are realistic for a CER raise beyond Ener2Crowd?
• Are EU structural funds (PNRR, PSR, Horizon Europe) realistically accessible for a new entity with no track record?

Q16. Are incentives stable enough to plan around?

Why it matters: Italian incentives move fast. The Superbonus went from 110% to 65% in three years. Within the last twelve months both CER capital grant windows closed, Transizione 5.0 was replaced by a deduction rather than a credit, and the Tuscan regional CER grant ran once and stopped. The PNRR CER grant has a successor under art. 27 D.L. 19/2026, but with no reopening date yet. The ZES benchmark this project was originally sized against was itself cut to 17.7% by pro-rata in 2024 before being restored.

Practical approach: Model Phase 1 to work without incentives, with higher equity or a smaller first phase, and treat recovery as upside. The honest planning number for Tuscany is 20 to 25%, not the 33 to 35% nominal that an optimally engineered stack reaches. Note also that a fifth of the nominal recovery is non-cash, arriving as a deduction that is worth nothing without taxable profit.

COMMUNITY & IP QUESTIONS

Q17. What is the IP framework for village innovations?

Why it matters: Residents will develop technologies using community resources. Who owns what?

Research recommends 4 tiers:

1. Personal IP, yours, on your time
2. Collaborative IP, uses community resources, open-access obligation, commercial rights retained
3. Village commons, operational processes and knowledge
4. Open-source contributions, village gives back to global commons

Open question: Revenue-sharing model? This needs legal design specific to the host country's IP law.

Q18. Privacy vs transparency: where's the line?

Why it matters: IoT monitoring, smart energy, water budgeting, and agricultural automation all generate resident data. Community governance requires transparency. But people need privacy.

Question: What data is collected? Who has access? What is the village data governance policy? This is a design question, not a technology question.

Q19. Who owns what the village invents?

Why it matters: The plan rests on residents producing innovation as part of daily life, and on the village capturing that value through IP licensing, Patent Box and R&D credits. Economia civile puts the obvious question directly: if knowledge is produced collectively, by whom is it owned, and on what grounds does the enterprise enclose it? A resident who improves the harvesting rig on a Tuesday afternoon has not signed an employment contract assigning invention rights.

Getting this wrong in either direction is fatal. Full enclosure makes the village an employer wearing community clothing, and the reciprocity story collapses. Full openness forfeits the licensing revenue the financial model depends on.

The options, roughly: assignment to the cooperative with a resident dividend on licensing income; a patent-pledge or open-source-plus model where core IP is free and services are paid; individual ownership with a village right of first refusal; or a tiered framework that treats platform infrastructure differently from applications built on it.

What would resolve it: A decision on the IP framework before the first resident arrives, written into the statute rather than negotiated after the first valuable invention. Needs Italian IP counsel, and it interacts with Q4: if the IP sits in the SRL Società Benefit while the cooperative holds impresa sociale status, the licensing revenue and the co-design standing end up in different entities.

Domains affected: Governance, Business Model, Legal

Q20. What are we deliberately not going to commodify?

Why it matters: Relational goods lose their value when priced. The plan currently monetises hospitality (agriturismo), food (CSA boxes, direct sale), energy (CER), knowledge (licensing) and space (co-working). Some of that is straightforwardly fine. But childcare, shared meals, mutual aid between neighbours, and the informal teaching that makes an innovation community work are relational, meter them and they stop being what made them valuable.

Question: Which activities are explicitly outside the revenue model, and how is that protected when the village is under financial pressure and someone proposes charging for them?

What would resolve it: A short, explicit list in the founding documents, plus the governance rule for changing it.

Domains affected: Community Services, Governance, Business Model

Q21. What does the village owe the comune it lands in?

Why it matters: A well-capitalised group of incomers buying 50-80 ha and building a showcase settlement is a familiar and often resented pattern. Economia civile's answer, horizontal subsidiarity under Art. 118 co. 4, amministrazione condivisa and patti di collaborazione, treats existing residents as co-designers with legal standing rather than neighbours to be managed. Italy has real machinery for this, and it is one of the reasons the region is Italian.

Two Tuscan specifics. Check whether the target comune has adopted a regolamento sui beni comuni: if it has, a patto di collaborazione can be signed in weeks, and if not, funding its adoption is a good first act. And art. 11-bis L.R. 73/2005 lets the Region and local authorities grant a cooperativa di comunità the use of unused public property, which is both a gesture and a possible answer to the building-stock problem in Q1c.

Question: What do surrounding residents get that they would not otherwise have, and what say do they have over the village's decisions that affect them? Is there a formal instrument, or only goodwill?

What would resolve it: Early conversations with the target comune about a patto di collaborazione or equivalent, before land is optioned rather than after.

Domains affected: Governance, Site Selection, Legal

Q22. Surplus: distribute, or lock into indivisible reserve?

Why it matters: Italian cooperatives with mutualità prevalente must allocate a large share of surplus to an indivisible reserve (riserva indivisibile) that no member can ever withdraw, in exchange for significant tax treatment. This is the civil-economy mechanism that stops a co-op being quietly converted into a private asset by whoever is a member when it becomes valuable. It also means founders cannot extract the value they build.

Question: How much surplus is locked, what does that do to the founders' personal financial case (Q3), and does the answer change which legal structure is right (Q4)?

Domains affected: Business Model, Governance, Legal

UNVALIDATED ASSUMPTIONS

These underpin the research but have not been verified:

1. 150 residents is the right target: not validated against founder capacity or financial constraints
2. EUR 900-1,800/month per resident is affordable: not validated against target demographic's willingness to pay
3. Tourism will generate meaningful revenue: based on industry averages, not validated for a new operation
4. Co-working demand exists in rural Mediterranean: limited data points
5. Incentives will remain stable: they historically haven't (Superbonus)
6. The founding team will materialize: no co-founders identified yet
7. Natural building materials are insurable: not verified with insurers in any candidate country
8. Grid connection is available at candidate sites: assumed but not verified for any specific parcel
9. Reciprocity scales to 150-300 people: the civil-economy literature is strongest on small groups and weakest exactly here; this is the standard critique of the tradition and the project is a direct test of it
10. Residents will contribute innovation without employment contracts: the closed research-to-daily-life loop assumes voluntary contribution holds at scale and over years, through at least one downturn