When it was time for Megan Keithly’s baby to try his first solid food, she took organic zucchini from the farm down the street and steamed it. A few years later, she’s making homemade diaper cream for her second child with Calendula flowers that also grow on the farm, a skill she learned from the farm staff. But this isn’t a tradwife rural fantasy made for Instagram. Keithly lives in a densely suburban area of Orange County in one of California’s agrihoods — a residential community built around a working farm.
As a new generation of aspirational homeowners looks to amenity-focused living, traditional luxuries like golf courses have gone by the wayside in favor of open space, trails and even farms. These agriculturally minded, master-planned developments have been gaining popularity, attracting new residents seeking community along with a life closer to the land.
California pioneered the creation of agriculture-centered housing developments more than 40 years ago. A local company even trademarked the term “agrihood” in 2016. No matter what you call them, more and more proposed planned communities in California integrate tenets of this concept, despite criticisms about land use and affordable housing. And as the state’s existing agrihoods increase in popularity, developers across the globe are using them as examples to improve the approach to this new kind of master-planned community.
‘I’m supposed to be here’
Keithly, 34, grew up in Orange County and knew she wanted to put down roots near her parents after getting married. She and her husband put their name on a list for new homes at Rancho Mission Viejo, a growing agrihood in an area she had always found beautiful, and moved there in 2022.
Her home is one of the more than 4,000 units now built on the family-owned, 23,000-acre historic cattle ranch. That land has slowly transitioned over the past four decades as the family, descendants of the original owners who purchased the property in 1882, has begun a new vision for the space. Planning began decades ago to develop roughly 6,000 acres while preserving about 75% of the land as open space, including professionally managed farmland.
Before they moved in, Keithly volunteered on the farm and later went to the grand opening of some of the new community’s amenities, which include hiking trails, picnic areas and an event space. She said she turned to her husband and said, “I’m supposed to be here.”
The mission of the community aligned with her values, especially her degree in nutrition, she said, and she loved how many families lived in the neighborhood. “I’ve fallen more and more in love with it since moving in,” she continued.
She now volunteers regularly at the farm, always taking home freshly harvested produce, and often takes her children along with her. She said it’s completely changed her family’s approach to food — one-third of the produce they eat at home comes from the farm, and for the rest, they eat much more seasonally. She said she had never heard of the term “agrihood” until she moved into Rancho Mission Viejo, but for her, it’s about more than just the food from the farm. It’s the friends she’s made while working there and the way it has changed her daily life, driving less to do errands and getting more from her local, more walkable neighborhood.
The development is unsurprisingly a big draw for families. But a growing “wellness push” in the U.S. is drawing a new kind of buyer to these developments, said Rancho Mission Viejo Marketing Director Stephanie Walker. About 70% of residents work remotely at least three days or more, Walker said, and she thinks that has also helped broaden the interest of new residents in the past five years.
“We’ve seen an influx of people not just from Southern California but from a much greater reach because they want to be in South Orange County, but it doesn’t feel like you’re in Orange County when you get here,” she said.
The company stopped using the word “agrihood” as often in marketing materials — even though it trademarked the term — and instead touts “community farms” integrated into its expansive open space. Walker said they saw a surge in interest during the COVID-19 pandemic and even tweaked their approach to planning future amenities based on the growing desire for more trails and open space. Rancho Mission Viejo plans for around 14,000 total homes by 2030, including thousands of units dedicated to housing for those 55 and over.
A California pioneer
The agrihood concept in California dates back to the early 1970s, before the trademarked term even existed.
That’s when Davis residents Mike and Judy Corbett began dreaming about building a sustainable, environmentally conscious housing development after learning about the growing threat of climate change. Their development would have solar power, a natural drainage system, streets that prioritized walking and biking, and a percentage of land dedicated to open space and community gardens. Instead of backyards, a shared common space between houses could be dedicated to any purpose, with agriculture being one option.
The Corbetts fought fiercely for years to realize their vision, Village Homes, eventually buying up an old 70-acre tomato field with the help of friends and family who bought into the idea. “I don’t think there’s any place else in the United States or any other city that we could have done this other than Davis,” Corbett said, detailing the hurdles they had to jump, from financing the project to convincing the Planning Commission and the City Council.
Today, Village Homes is known as one of the most innovative housing communities built in the U.S. in the last 50 years, and it was lauded as the “world’s best example of sustainable development” by Time magazine in 1999. On the communal property near her home, Corbett has an apple tree, a persimmon tree, a pomegranate tree and a pear tree, among others. While it’s not built around a farm, per se, it follows Village Homes’ guidelines to choose food-producing plants over ornamental ones. Corbett said she doesn’t know any homeowners who buy fruit at the grocery store; there’s just so much to eat on the property. Having common orchards “saves a lot of money,” she said, lamenting how much food prices have gone up recently.
She said it’s hard to estimate how much cheaper it is to live in a sustainable community like Village Homes, but she never buys fruit, her utility costs are “practically nothing,” and if you’re able to bike commute, you have few transportation costs. “The cost of living in a place like this is just so much less,” she said.
It’s also a sought-after place to live. While initial home prices ranged from $31,000 to $75,000 in the 1970s, the average home price now hovers around $843,640, according to Zillow, and homes don’t come up for sale often, according to Corbett.