People often wonder what actually sets Hendrick Farm apart. Step foot in the neighbourhood and it will immediately be clear that something feels different. There is no space wasted on huge driveways that overtake the front of the house. There are no colossal garage doors that feature more prominently than the front door. The streets seem more intimate somehow, not like the wide open spaces in all the other suburbs attached to larger cities in North America. You can find people sitting on their front porches and chatting with neighbours walking by to get their mail. You can find groups of children playing in the parks that are sprinkled throughout the houses, or zooming by on their bicycles.

That feeling—of walkability, of intimacy of outdoor spaces, of community—can all be boiled down to our urban planning and architecture. Through these, Hendrick Farm has rejected today’s automobile-dependent, cookie cutter suburbs and reclaimed traditional village design, embodying the best aspects of some of the world’s most sought-after neighbourhoods.

How? Hendrick Farm developer, Landlab Inc. partnered with world-renowned urban planning firm DPZ Co Design to design a neighbourhood for people first.