Seeking a more wholesome community approach through exceptional design, avant-garde environmental regulations and—ahem—sacred geometry, Serenbe is redefining the American neighborhood.
By Laura Eckstein Jones
Looking around this picture-perfect place, you have to wonder why there are not more like it in the U.S. “This was a reaction to urban sprawl,” says Serenbe co-founder Steve Nygren of what spearheaded the project. “Our first goal was to figure out how to preserve the majority of the land, and [we] realized that the best way to do this was to come up with a new paradigm of clustering development.” After researching different communities around the world, Nygren, who consulted with leading sustainability experts on the overall plan, settled on the English village system. “The countryside of England has a high-density population, but still has a country appearance,” he explains. “Any development in America 100 years or older has those same principles.”