The dream house, it turns out, can feel pretty empty if the block around it does, too. That’s what Kiara Aponte and Samir Husain concluded after two years in a tidy Houston-area Tudor where the sidewalks were empty, the neighbors anonymous, and no one ever showed up to borrow sugar. “Just like a smile, wave, and move on type of situation,” Husain tells the New York Times of their interactions with other residents. The couple ended up selling at a loss and took on a higher mortgage (and a smaller home) to move 15 minutes away to Indigo, a master-planned community that sells something different: “community as an amenity.” In Indigo, residents trade bigger, detached 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 sort of town square.
Developers are betting that offering a living alternative to loneliness and social isolation is now as important to buyers as granite counters once were, building places with working farms, game nights, “belonging” frameworks, and even federal health research tracking how connection affects residents’ bodies. “I don’t even ever think about the fact that I’m paying way more in mortgage,” Husain says. “Because everything has been pleasant and happy.” The piece explores whether these engineered neighborhoods can actually manufacture friendship—and what happens when the inevitable neighbor disputes begin. More here to see how Indigo and similar projects are trying to redesign suburban life.