Housing Developments

We often talk about community. I have attended entire conferences dedicated to that word. What is a community? What makes a community? How does one navigate through a community? As I continue this series on flying, I often see these ‘communities’ set within the environment. Tracts of green or brown land and then gradually, tens, sometimes hundreds of homes, built in some pattern, interconnected by roads and all approximately the same size.The roofs are typically the same color, and from an airplane, the houses all seem white for some reason. Did the developer think about how this ‘community’ would appear from a plane? Though I personally believe communities are created at a pedestrian level, when looking down on a housing development from above, one cannot ignore the impact that all of the roofs and winding roads and spattering of pools has on the definition of community. It’s the 30,000 foot perspective of not living alone.

~Barron Schimberg, AIA, LEED AP