Do you long for the sight of children playing in the empty lot at the end of the small street? Or the joy of your neighbours helping each other’s big projects? Mid-summer cookouts? Basically all the stuff that makes rural life such a joy? This is generally impossible today. Rural settlements are essentially roads and parking lots and widely spaced-out places. This way of doing things is only about 100 years old and almost exclusive to North America. In almost every other part of the world, people living out in the countryside end up congregating closer together to make it easier to look out for each other and to enjoy family and friends. There’s no doubt that there are some people who enjoy rural life for the potential for solitude, and almost everybody wants at least some amount of that. But for many others, choosing a rural life means sacrificing their desire for close proximity to friends & family, and all the other needs in life – and this is what we would like to help with. Because the truth of the matter is, there are ways of designing our rural settlements that retain their private, quiet and nature-surrounded way while still keeping the needs of the social life nearby. And for those who abhor the idea of people nearby and “that’s why you don’t live in cities”, we understand that and are sympathetic to your desire for distance and solitude. We just believe that there are rural places where the residents love the combination of close proximity to their friends & family, and to the nearby farms, ranches and countryside. And we’re here to help with the design of the specific tried and tested details that are unfortunately uncommon in North America – we bring the best of the world’s rural places to help rural places North America be the best they can be.