For most of the 20th century, the aspirational suburban dream came packaged with a golf course.
The perfectly trimmed fairway. The clubhouse. The status symbol of greenery that most residents would never actually walk across.
Now something different is growing in its place — literally.
Agrihoods are master-planned residential communities built around working farms or community gardens rather than amenity centres or golf courses. The farm isn't a decorative feature; it's the centrepiece. Residents can help grow the food. The harvest comes to their door. The green space serves a purpose beyond aesthetics.
There are now an estimated 200 agrihoods across approximately 30 US states, with many more in development. Around 73% of them have been built since 2014. And the trend is spreading internationally — similar communities are emerging in Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and Australia.
**What an Agrihood Actually Looks Like**
The specifics vary, but the principle is consistent: housing is organised around agricultural space rather than alongside it.
Some agrihoods feature a professionally managed working farm that supplies a community-supported agriculture (CSA) programme — residents get regular boxes of produce grown metres from their homes. Others centre around a community garden where residents can claim plots and grow what they choose. Many have both, plus orchards, greenhouses, farm-to-table events, and outdoor community kitchens.
Homes are typically built to high environmental standards — solar panels, composting systems, high insulation — because the communities that attract agrihood residents tend to value sustainability across the board. Walkable paths. Community gathering spaces. Children's play areas integrated with the growing zones.
The contrast with a conventional suburban development is stark. The green space feeds people. The community structures are built around shared labour and shared harvests rather than privatised amenities. The identity of the neighbourhood is rooted in something alive and growing.
**Who's Moving In — and Why**
Agrihoods are particularly popular with millennials and Gen Z buyers — generations that have come of age alongside the local food movement, climate anxiety, and a documented sense of disconnection from community.
Surveys consistently show that younger buyers want three things traditional suburbs haven't always delivered: sustainability, unique experiences, and genuine connection with neighbours. Agrihoods are structured to provide all three.
But it's not just younger buyers. Older residents drawn to the slower pace, the physical activity, and the sense of purpose that comes from growing food have found agrihoods to be exactly the retirement communities they were looking for — without the antiseptic feel of conventional retirement villages.
**Food Security — and Food Culture**
There's a practical dimension too. Fresh, locally grown produce available at low or no additional cost to residents addresses food access in a direct and elegant way. In a period of rising food costs and growing awareness of supply chain fragility, having a working farm in your neighbourhood is not just pleasant — it's genuinely useful.
Communities report that shared growing and harvesting becomes one of the primary social engines of agrihood life. You meet your neighbours when you're picking tomatoes together. You exchange recipes. You end up at the same community barbecue because you all grew the same courgette crop and need to do something about the surplus.
The farm, in other words, does what golf courses rarely achieved: it actually builds community.
**The Bigger Picture**
Urbanists and planners are watching agrihoods with interest. The model challenges some basic assumptions about how residential development should work — what land is "productive," what counts as amenity, what people actually want to do in the spaces around their homes.
In a world grappling with food systems, climate change, loneliness, and disconnection from nature, agrihoods are a surprisingly practical answer to several problems at once. Not perfect, not for everyone, not yet affordable at every income level — but growing. Demonstrably, verifiably growing.
There is no golf course here. Just a field, some neighbours, and something worth tending together. 🌾🏡
*Sources: Good Good Good · The Portugal News · New Home Source · Farmonaut · West and Main Homes — 2026*
