ABOUT INVENTEDCITY

History

Inspired by home exchanges we did in Paris, New York City, London, and Amsterdam using the classifieds in The Village Voice, we began InventedCity in 1991. In our first few years we produced a home exchange directory which we mailed to our members worldwide. In 1998 we moved to the web.

Our name

At the time we were planning the launch our home exchange club, we had the good fortune to read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities which became the inspiration for our name. This book is an imaginative dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which they describe fantastic cities. From the back cover of our edition: "Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of the cities he has seen around the empire; cities and memory, cities and desire, city and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities".

This dream-like storytelling captured our imaginations. To us the name InventedCity suggests travel as discovery -- as a journey and invention of the imagination, as well of course, as a change of physical location.

Florence, Fez, Jerusalem, Skiathos, Abuja, Ojai, Gotham City, Cheyenne, Nimes, Oz, London, Eudoxia. These cities are now at your fingertips. Invent your city!

First Home Exchange Alliance (FHEA)

InventedCity is a member of FHEA, an alliance of four home exchange agencies who share members' home exchange listings. All FHEA agencies adhere to strict privacy guidelines. When you join InventedCity, you have immediate access to listings from all FHEA agencies. This benefits you by offering a greater selection of homes to choose from and wider exposure to your exchange listing. There is no need to join more than one agency in FHEA.

FHEA members

Green Theme (United States)
Guardian Home Exchange (London)
Home-base Holidays (London)
InventedCtiy (United States)

Giving | Habitat for Humanity

InventedCity gives a portion of its profits to Habitat for Humanity. Habitat seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.

Habitat has built more than 300,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1.5 million people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter.