A "development" to many people means standardization, homogeneity, mass production. A town, on the other hand, might house the same number of people, and even the same mix of activities—a few restaurants, a grocery store, a hardware store, an art gallery or two, and so forth—but it's a lot more organic. A town is built over time, and with an eclectic architectural mix as a result. A town engages the person walking in a sense of discovery and progression as they round a corner to see what is around the bend–knowing it won't be more of the exact same.

How many of us in modern America live in cities that are comprised almost 100% of "developments"? The residential subdivision on one side of the road, the slightly different (but internally just as uniform) residential subdivision on the other side of the road, the retail plaza anchored by a big-box store at the intersection of two main roads?

This is the landscape of America's suburban experiment. And its inexorable march into the Georgia countryside south of Atlanta is what convinced restaurant entrepreneur Steve Nygren to become, as he puts it, a "developer by default"—as a determined effort to do something different and better and, in the process, save a piece of land he and his family loved.

The Ambitious Experiment of Serenbe