It turns out the dream house can look pretty empty if the block around it does, too. That’s what Kiara Aponte and Samir Husain concluded after two years living in a tidy Tudor in the Houston area, where the sidewalks were empty, the neighbors anonymous and no one ever came to borrow sugar. “It’s like smile, wave and move on,” Husain told the New York Times of their interactions with other residents. The couple ended up selling at a loss and taking out a larger mortgage (and a smaller house) to move 15 minutes away to Indigo, a master-planned community that sells something different: “community as amenity.” In Indigo, residents trade larger single-family homes for smaller cottages, duplexes and shared walls, as well as walkable streets, social clubs and a coffee and wine bar that doubles as a town square.
Developers are betting that offering a vibrant alternative to loneliness and social isolation is now as important to buyers as granite countertops once were, building places with working farms, game nights, “belonging” settings, and even federal health research that tracks how connection affects residents’ bodies. “I don’t even think about the fact that I’m paying a lot more on the mortgage,” Husain says. “Because everything has been nice and happy.” The work explores whether these planned neighborhoods can actually create friendship – and what happens when the inevitable neighborhood conflicts begin. More here to see how Indigo and similar projects are trying to reimagine suburban living.
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