What’s An Agrihood & Why Are We Building One?
The term agrihood is a portmanteau of neighborhood and agriculture. It refers to a neighborhood which has a farm located within its boundaries. The farms on some agrihoods have animals, some only have crops and some have both. The neighborhoods in some agrihoods are single family zoned only whereas others have multifamily homes as well as businesses. Some agrihoods are large and some are small. Some have community gardens for the residents while others don’t.
Simply put, agrihoods come in all shapes and sizes!
But the farm component needs to be a focus of the development and allow for resident involvement. It cannot be pushed to the periphery and neglected. Great agrihoods center their farms by strategic physical positioning of the homes in relation to the farm wheras others have opportunities for residents to be involved in agriculture and even offer CSA’s.
For many agrihood residents, being in close proximity to food sources and involved in food production just feels like home.
A Brief History Lesson on Agrihoods
Agrihoods are a new-ish but also kinda not. Many communities of the past were developed around agricultural enclosures. But as far as modern developments go, one of the first agrihoods was Village Homes located in Davis, CA. The pioneering 60 acre community broke ground in the 1970’s and featured orchards, community gardens and other edible landscaping. No other US development would even be built until 1992 with Prairie Crossing near Chicago. In fact, Village Homes was so ahead of its time that the term agrihood didn’t even exist when Village Homes was created.
The term agrihood was first coined in a 2009 academic journal article to describe a new trend in the handful of developments which were built in the years just before the Great Recession. In 2014 the term was trademarked and began to see its first mentions in the press as it was noted how property values in these agrihood developments bucked the national trend and actually appreciated through the Great Recession.
Theorists point to the similarities between housing built along golf courses: people love to live near open green spaces and this supports demand for such real estate.
Agrihood as (partial) Panacea?
Following agrihoods’ debut on the national stage, these developments have seen rapid growth with an estimated 200 in existence or under development in 2025!
It’s no surprise that this is the case when you consider how agrihoods are at least a partial solution to soooooooooooooooooo many problems.
I guess I’ll just rattle them off:
Problems Farmers Face: Farm profits, property tax burden, farmer age and succession issues, development pressure, etc.
Problems Food Consumers Face: Standard American Diet (SAD), Nutrient Decay Curve, High food costs, etc.
Problems the Environment Faces: Top soil loss, loss of pollinator habitat, biodiversity loss, groundwater contamination, fertilizer runoff, Carbon footprint of food, etc.
Problems Residents Face: Lack of safe, affordable, desirable housing, lack of community and belonging, lack of housing near employment, etc.
I’m not aware of any other development model which can address even 1/3 of the problems above. When the problems multiply at a break-neck pace, we’ve got to devise solutions which can walk and chew gum at the same time aka can solve multiple problems at once. This is why the agrihood concept is so promising.
Summarizing
So when I heard from my friend Kay that our mutual friend, Jim, may be thinking about selling his property. I knew that we needed to get to work designing an agriculture development. It’s been an outstanding experience thus far and we’re only just beginning. The best part about this is the opportunity to work on the development from a holistic standpoint and with so many other talented people in our Participatory Design Series!