By Jennifer Kopf

On historic country farms and along beloved city streets, porches born of our American dreams fronted rustic cabins, clapboard Colonials, and Tudor-y brick cottages, shaded by oaks with limbs thick enough to hold a swing. For more than a half century we gathered, gossiped, broke up, made up, cracked up, and hung out there, weather permitting—until the post-war generation became obsessed with cars, enthralled with televisions, and moved the party indoors to sit and watch. Tract-house developers of the 1950s and '60s responded by replacing our grandparents' formal living rooms and front porches with cozy paneled family rooms and attached street-facing garages. From the stoop of many a childhood rancher, we caught only occasional glimpses of our neighbors as they pulled in, turned off the car, and closed the door behind them. That's why Marie and Steve Nygren, the visionaries behind Serenbe, joined an architectural revolution known as New Urbanism to take back the streets. The pedestrian-friendly development epitomizes the sort of small town, know-your-neighbor America that existed prior to World War II. Every one of its 220 homes features a porch, a place where residents—neighbors—accept their first housewarming pie, nip whiskey on summer nights, and connect the old-fashioned way: face to face instead of on Facebook.