Builders Want to Bring Back Small Town Living
Builders are creating housing developments that offer a small town feel — which they believe many buyers are seeking in a community nowadays.
Read more: A Model for the Future
A growing number of traditional neighborhood developments are looking to recreate village life, offering up old-style communities with “leafy streets of historic-looking homes with porches and sidewalks, shared green spaces and shops,” The Wall Street Journal reports. This marks a shift away from posh, gated golf-course communities.
Instead, builders say they want to give home owners a stronger sense of home and a community that fosters greater mingling with neighbors and community, with neighborhood coffee shops and the town dentist all within walking distance of residences. As the WSJ reports, “Picture Andy Griffith’s Mayberry with high-speed Internet.”
One such development is Old Town, a $45 million mixed development in Columbus, Ga., which is modeled after a historic textile mill town with 19th and 20th century architectural styles. Its town hall – located over its town green — is designed like a white-clapboard chapel with antique longleaf pine floorboards, WSJ reports. The residential lots that surround it are being sold for between $125,000 to $150,000.
“We’re trying to bring back the DNA of towns and small cities that has been lost – in some ways, it’s storytelling,” Andrew Cogar, president of the Historical Concepts architectural firm, which designed Old Town, told WSJ.
Source: “America’s New Small Towns: Housing Developments That Recreate Village Life,” The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 5, 2016)
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