Comment by cjoh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjoh | Hacker News Reader

I live in a community called Serenbe. (http://serenbe.com) which has taken a much different approach to suburban new urbanist development. It's built around an organic farm rather than a golf course, it's got miles of green space and trails, and a fantastic commitment to ecology and the environment -- for example the outdoor irrigation system is built from gray water from the homes in the community.

Also: it's got some great restaurants and about 80% of my diet comes from food that's made within 25 miles of where I live now. To get to a restaurant, we take a brief stroll through the woods.

Smartest thing I ever did was move here. I've spent my whole life trying to work with governments (mostly federal) to use technology to improve service delivery and if I'm honest with myself, it's been mostly discouraging. But since I've moved here, I've met with the mayor and we're beginning to do amazing things.

What makes an amazing place to live, though isn't the lack of automobiles (as the author of this post seems to believe), or great architecture -- but rather an attitude of community. That you all have a shared role in the success of each other's life environment. Human beings are wired for that, and both urban and suburban environments tend to separate us from that.

Wow that is fascinating. Your community has a pretty excellent website. Slick design, lots of high end photography. Which means someone spent a lot of money on it. Meaning someone is raking in big bucks by promoting the town.

Took a look at real estate prices relative to the area, confirmed - wow 4x higher prices than anything else in the area. Pretty amazing feat of real estate marketing to turn a chunk of rural Georgia into the equivalent of California home prices by leveraging sustainable growth. If developers can build a community like that and turn a profit at the same time that's a pretty promising future

Developers need to get a clue and copy this model or else they are going to be unable to sell suburbs to Millennials. The only reason it's so expensive there is because this is such a rare type of place to live.

Yea exactly. There are a bunch of news stories floating around about how developers are in crisis struggling to sell homes to younger homebuyers, and as someone in the demographic of who they're struggling with, its such an obvious reason as to why.

A large portion of the generation who grew up in cookie cutter 90's exurbs have absolutely no desire to live their adult life in areas with those types of development patterns. Developers and city planners need to get with the program or the american suburbs are going to go through serious decline soon

Actually, not just money. It means that the community is able to draw in lots of talent, and the entire community is committed to the success of the community. So I'm not certain, but those high end photographs could have been taken by a resident who just wanted to make the website that much more awesome.

And this speaks to my overarching point: Small, dense communities work. Dunbar's number. When you have a group of people, all of whom know each other's names (we're wholly organized on Facebook, actually), the social cost of being an asshole is REALLY HIGH (as a recovering asshole myself, it's part of the reason I moved here). You can't honk your horn at somebody without the risk of that being your neighbor.

But most people don't have horns. They get around by foot, bike, or sometimes even a golf cart.

That looks like a pleasant enough development, but the commute to any employment center with jobs allowing you to service a half-million dollar mortgage seems rather unpleasant. And, of course, all that driving offsets a lot of other environmental benefits.

Sure. If you have a job where you have to commute in every day, I can see how this wouldn't be a great place to live. But there are enough people -- especially the self-employed -- who can sustain this community it seems.

That's a really cool place. Something that's been a continuous source of frustration for some people in my neighborhood are HOA rules preventing us from putting up solar panels on our roofs. I think it's up for review this year, but it seems like it would be a natural thing for this community.

Is the farm run like a co-op?

The farm is an independent organization that's funded by additional closing costs (1%) of housing transactions, and by its own revenue stream. It's now a profitable business selling produce to a lot of the restaurants in Atlanta.

More about Serenbe here: http://terrain.org/2012/unsprawl/serenbe/

Dang, that looks really cool. How does membership work? Do you just need to pay rent to live there? Do you know of other similar communities?

It's a great community. There's not really any membership. You can just show up and live here like you live anywhere else. And should you choose to buy food from the farm, you go to market on Saturday. Or you join the CSA.

We visited Serenbe recently. It was lovely. But we wondered--what is the employment base for the homeowners? Do people live there year round?

A lot of people are telecommuters -- my wife and I both work out of our home, and what matters to us more than proximity to office is proximity to airport. It's a 20 minute, no-traffic ride to a world-class airport from here.

Lots of consultants, a few commuters (people carpool) and even a few farmers -- my neighbors are making a killing raising sheep at ManyFold Farm.

This looks really interesting but very family oriented. Do they have real-estate that would be appropriate for single people?

No, not yet. They're building a rental property very soon -- http://serenberealestate.com/?property=textile-lofts . I suspect this will start attracting some singles. But it's mostly true, you're not going to fire up Tinder and find a date at Serenbe.

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