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Village Homes: A Case Study In Community Design
Mark Francis
Mark Francis, FASLA is professor of
landscape architecture at the Univer-
sity of California, Davis. Trained in
landscape architecture and urban de-
sign at Berkeley and Harvard, his
work has focused on the use and
meaning of the built and natural
landscape. Much of this research has
utilized a case study approach. He
developed the case study method for
the Landscape Architecture Founda-
tion and serves on their Land and
Community Design Case Study Initia-
tive National Advisory Board.
Abstract:
Village Homes is one of the most publicized built examples of sustainable com-
munity design and landscape architecture in the United States. Designed and developed by
Michael and Judy Corbett in the 1970s, Village Homes consists of 242 single- and multi-
family residences on sixty acres. Houses are planned as energy-conserving buildings around
common open spaces with play areas and shared gardens. A sizable part of the development
is devoted to community open space, including orchards, vineyards, and play areas. Most
of the landscape is designed as an edible landscape and is owned and actively managed by
its residents.
Seen early on by local planners and bankers as a high-risk development, Village Homes to-
day is one of the most desirable and economically successful developments in California.
It offers many design and planning lessons useful for community design and landscape
architecture. While widely studied and well documented, its impact has not been fully
reviewed. The purpose of this case study is to make this knowledge available to practitioners
and researchers as well as to provide a critical review of the project’s successes and
limitations.
This case study follows a format developed for the Landscape Architecture Foundation
(Francis 1999a, 2001a). This is one of three prototype case studies being developed for
LAF’s Land and Community Design Case Study Initiative (Francis 2001b,c; Francis
2002). It is intended as a prototype place-based case study that will aid others in develop-
ing cases of natural and built landscapes.
Davis, California may be turning
into one of the most innovative
towns in North America in its cur-
rent search for new solutions to
low-energy community design.
(Thayer 1977, p. 223)
o begins Rob Thayer’s
award-winning article on
Village Homes published over twenty
years ago when construction of Vil-
lage Homes first began. Thayer sug-
gested (1977), and many studies have
since confirmed, that Village Homes
has become one of the most innova-
tive new neighborhoods built in the
United States in the past twenty-five
years. It has also made the commu-
nity of Davis, as Thayer suggested,
one of the leading examples of sus-
tainable design in the United States.
1
Village Homes may in fact be one of
the most innovative examples of com-
munity design since Radburn, New
Jersey, was planned in 1928. Village
Homes is a model community design
distinct from most current new ur-
banist proposals. It is especially use-
ful as an example of sustainable land-
scape architecture.
S
The Landscape Architecture
Foundation selected Village Homes
as the first place-based case study
for its Land and Community Design
Case Study Initiative for several rea-
sons. Most importantly, there is con-
siderable case study material already
available on Village Homes. This in-
cludes detailed case studies prepared
by the Local Government Commis-
sion, the National Association of
Home Builders, the U.S. Department
of Energy Center of Excellence in
Sustainable Development, the Rocky
Mountain Institute, and MIT’s De-
partment of Urban Planning. In ad-
dition, the project designers and de-
velopers have published extensive
information on the goals and per-
ceived outcomes of the project (Cor-
bett 1981; Corbett and Corbett 1979,
1983, 2000). Several studies, includ-
ing some useful postoccupancy eval-
uations, have been completed of
Village Homes over the years by re-
searchers, students, and governmen-
tal agencies interested in sustainable
development.
2
Much of this informa-
tion is already available but is scat-
tered in the literature on community
design, energy, and sustainable devel-
opment and located in archival doc-
uments, obscure web sites, graduate
theses, and local reports largely inac-
cessible to people interested in the
project.
Past research on Village Homes
may be helpful to understand its sig-
nificance as a model for sustainable
community development. For ex-
ample, residents report having twice
as many friends and three times
more social contacts than residents
in a nearby conventional neighbor-
hood in Davis (Lenz 1990). Further-
more, houses use one-third less en-
ergy than other neighborhoods in
Davis (Lenz 1990). When first pro-
posed, the developers and designers
had difficulty securing financing for
the project (Corbett and Corbett
2000). Village Homes is now “Davis’
most desirable subdivision,” with
homes selling at $10–25 per square
foot premium in 30 percent less mar-
Landscape Journal
21:1-02 ISSN 0277-2426
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Francis
23
ket time (Coldwell Banker Residen-
tial, cited in Wilson, 1998).
Despite its success and fame,
Village Homes has not been repli-
cated as a whole. While many of
its features, such as open channel
drainage and passive solar house de-
sign, have become more standard
practice in community design, its
holistic approach has not been
adopted. This raises the question of
the barriers that prevent innovative
community design from being more
widely implemented. In the case of
Village Homes, an understanding of
its design and development process
as well as impacts may help explain
its significance and potential for
landscape architecture and commu-
nity design (Figure 1).
The Case Study Method
This case study utilized a
method prepared for the Landscape
Architecture Foundation (Francis
1999a, 2001a). The method was de-
veloped as a template to provide a
uniform and comparable way to doc-
ument and evaluate landscape archi-
tecture projects and issues. Three
types of case studies are being devel-
oped by LAF—place-based, issue-
based and hypothetical case studies
for teaching. This is the first place-
based case study developed by LAF,
with several others to follow.
3
The case study method involves
the collection and analysis of differ-
ent kinds of information, including
baseline data, role of key project par-
ticipants, financial aspects, project
goals, and the design and decision
making process. In addition, this case
documents use, perceptions, unique
constraints, project success, and limi-
tations.
The methods used to develop
this case study included archival re-
search of key documents on Village
Homes, published reviews of past re-
search and case studies on Village
Homes, internet searches, numerous
visits to the community over twenty
years, including behavioral observa-
tions and a short time spent living in
the community, and studies of chil-
dren in Village Homes (Francis 1981,
1985, 1988). In addition, awards or
special recognition descriptions, in-
terviews with the designers/develop-
ers of the community, and interviews
with residents and users, non-
residents, maintenance people/
gardeners were used.
Village Homes Case Study: Summary Data
4
Project Name:
Location:
Village Homes
Davis, California located in Central Valley,
Putah/Cache Creek Bioregion, 60 miles north-
east of San Francisco and 15 miles west of
Sacramento
1973–1975
Built in phases (50 units at a time) from
groundbreaking in 1975 to build out in 1982.
$434,000 (in 1974)
$2,329,241 (in 1974)
$313,107 for swimming pool, bike paths, land-
scaping
Sacramento Savings Bank
600–3,000 Sq. Ft. Also a nine-bedroom co-op
house has about a dozen residents
$38 per square foot (1976 dollars)
60 percent built by developer and 40% by
small contractors
$31,000–$75,000
$150,00–$450,000 (2000)
Resale $10–25 square foot higher than other
sales in Davis (1995); sold in 30–50% less time
(Coldwell Banker)
23% per annum for 13 investment partners
60 acres
4 dwelling units/acre (7.7 dwelling units/acre
not counting common landscape); 6,933
people per sq. miles
Vicinity density: 3–5 dwelling units/acre
Vicinity: 3,458 people per square mile
25% of site in public and community open
space
242 housing units (222 single family units, 22
apartments); 650 residents; Commercial Office
space: 4,000 sq. ft. with 15 small businesses in-
cluding consulting and professional firms;
Agricultural uses: 12,000 sq. ft.; 12 acres of
greenbelts and open space; 12 acres of com-
mon agricultural land; two village greens;
swimming pool; community center building;
restaurant, dance studio, and day care center
Approximately 4,000 sq. ft.
15 percent in Village Homes; 22 percent in
Vicinity
23 ft. in Village Homes; 44 ft. Vicinity
1.8 in Village Homes, 2.1 in Vicinity
Michael Corbett, Town Planners, Davis, Cali-
fornia
Michael and Judy Corbett
Village Homeowners Association
Date Designed/Planned:
Construction Completed:
Land Cost:
Development Costs:
Site Improvement Costs:
Lender:
Houses:
House Construction Costs:
House Building:
Initial Sale Price per Unit:
Resale Price per Unit:
Return on Investment:
Size:
Density:
Open Space:
Land Use:
Lot Size:
Land in Streets and Parking:
Street Widths:
Average Number of Cars:
Landscape Architect(s):
Client/Developer:
Managed By:
24
Landscape Journal
Figure 1. Panoramic view of Village Homes. Photograph by Tom Lamb.
Precedents and Historical Context
The design of Village Homes
was largely influenced by earlier con-
cepts and long-standing principles of
community design. Mike and Judy
Corbett, the project’s designers and
developers, give credit to earlier
greenbelt communities in Britain
and the United States (Howard 1965;
Corbett and Corbett 2000) including
planned communities such as Rad-
burn, New Jersey and Greenbelt,
Maryland. It was also inspired by cri-
tiques of failed efforts at urban devel-
opment and renewal in the 1960s
(Jacobs 1961). Village Homes was
planned well before the current in-
terest in smart growth and new ur-
banism. As a result, it serves as an
original and unique form of planned
community than is currently popular
(Duany et. al. 2000; Calthorpe et. al.
2000) (Figure 2).
Project Developers and Planners
The developer’s background in
architecture, town planning, ecology,
and environmental psychology helps
to explain their goals in designing
the project. Michael Corbett is prin-
cipal in the consulting firm Town
Planners and author of
A Better Place
to Live
(Rodale 1981). He served as
mayor of Davis in the late 1980s. In
1999, he was named, along with Judy
Corbett, as a “Hero of the Planet” by
Time
magazine. Judy Corbett is the
founder and for the past twenty years
has served as Executive Director of
the Local Government Commission,
a nonprofit membership organiza-
tion made up of almost one thou-
sand mayors, city council members,
county supervisors and local govern-
ment staff from throughout Califor-
nia and the Western States. She has
co-authored several books and guides
for policymakers on implementing
more livable land use patterns. A
1974 graduate of the Ecology Gradu-
ate Group at the University of Cali-
fornia at Davis, Judy Corbett has
served as a board member of the
Congress for the New Urbanism
since 1995.
Project Background and History
Mike Corbett describes their
early experience developing the Vil-
lage Homes project. “When I first
presented the concept plan for Vil-
lage Homes to the then City Plan-
ning Director for the City of Davis,
she sat back in her chair and started
to laugh. ‘This goes against every-
thing I learned in planning school.
Change all of it and come back and
then we can talk,’ she responded.
What is remarkable, I was able to get
about 90 percent of what was on that
original plan.”
5
Judy Corbett has
stated, “we basically had to break al-
most every code in the city to get Vil-
lage Homes approved” (Owens 1993,
p. 19) (Figure 3).
And so begins the story of Vil-
lage Homes in Davis, California.
What started out as a visionary plan
combining healthy doses of ecology
and sociology eventually became an
internationally recognized built ex-
ample of community design. Re-
garded by some as a one-of-a-kind
community and by others as a model
for sustainable community develop-
ment, Village Homes is now well
known as an experiment of commu-
nity planning in the ranks of Rad-
burn, New Jersey; Reston, Virginia;
Greenbelt, Maryland; Sunnyside Gar-
dens, New York; and Milton Keynes
in Britain (Howard 1965; Lang 1994;
Stein 1989).
Interviewed some twenty years
later, Senior Planner Doris Michael
of the City of Davis commented, “I
think the strengths of the design are
the sense of community and the feel-
ing of belonging to a neighborhood.
I like the fact that there’s a sense of
recognition and that people care
about who you are. People in this
community know each other” (Fitch
1999, p. 15). The fact that city plan-
ners have done a complete reversal
of attitude toward the project reflects
both its significance in the local com-
munity and the changing culture of
development today.
Genesis of Project
Village Homes began as the de-
velopers’ vision in making what they
call “a better place to live.” Born out
of social and environmental con-
cerns of the 1960s and 1970s, Village
Homes was intended as a reflection
of the values of these times—envi-
ronmental sensitivity and social re-
sponsibility. It began, according to
developer Judy Corbett, with a small
group of families meeting for a year
to try to create their own community.
The Corbetts later set up a booth at
the first Whole Earth Festival held on
the University of California Davis
campus with sign-up sheets for any-
one interested in joining them. More
than thirty families met for about a
year, but the group eventually fell
apart. “People decided we couldn’t
get enough money,” Mike Corbett re-
called (Fitch 1999, p. 2).
Writing in their book on Village
Homes some twenty-five years later,
the Corbetts describe their early ex-
perience developing Village Homes:
When we set out to design and
build Village Homes in 1972, it
seemed unlikely that we would be
successful. We had no financial as-
sets and no track record in devel-
opment. We were embarking on a
large-scale project that incorpo-
rated numerous untried and inno-
vative features. The most likely out-
Francis
25
come, and the one we expected,
was that we would not succeed but
would be able to publish a book
about our experiences and de-
scribe how a forward-looking com-
munity could be designed. Our
planning concepts and design
ideas might then be useful to oth-
ers. Luck was on our side. It took a
great deal of tenacity and persever-
ance, but in the end we were able
to overcome multiple obstacles and
build Village Homes. (Corbett and
Corbett 2000, p. xiii)
The developers describe their
two interrelated goals for the com-
munity of “designing a neighbor-
hood which would reduce the
amount of energy required to carry
out the family’s daily activities, and
establishing a sense of community”
(Corbett and Corbett 1983, p. 1).
These goals are based on a number
of philosophical ideals, many com-
bining human and natural ecology
(Corbett and Corbett 2000) (see
Table 1).
In the early phases of Village
Homes there was a strong pioneering
sense. Judy Corbett observes, “We
did a lot with community work par-
ties, building paths and foot bridges.
There was a real strong ‘spirit of the
pioneers’; we were doing something
different, for ourselves. The rest of
Davis thought we were a bunch of
nutty hippies. The process was very
unifying socially” (Owens 1993 p.
20). She says, “We put everything
into the vision and making it work”
(personal communication, 2000).
Design, Development and Decision-
Making Process
Design Process.
The designers
and developers used a participatory
approach to develop the initial plan-
ning concepts for the community.
They brought together a group of
friends and interested families to dis-
cuss how the project should be de-
signed. “The goals of this original
group, who called themselves “the
Village,” were visionary:
The discussion centered on a
shared sense of dislocation, discon-
nection, and powerlessness and on
a concern for the environment. We
wondered whether it would be pos-
sible to recover some of the homier
aspects of village life within the con-
text of a modern neighborhood.
We believed it should be possible
to design a community so that one
might live more lightly on the land.”
(Corbett and Corbett 2000, p. 23)
Figure 2. Aerial view of Village Homes in the mid 1980s.
Yet the group disbanded after a
year, frustrated by the lack of a site
and funds to realize their dream. The
Corbetts retreated to develop their
own plan and find willing investors.
The final plan was their own vision, a
blend of Judy Corbett’s background
in environmental psychology and
Mike Corbett’s interests in architec-
ture and ecology. The plan was one
of the first to combine natural ecol-
26
Landscape Journal
ogy and social ecology into an inte-
grated vision of people, nature, econ-
omy, and community.
Decision-Making Process.
When
the Corbetts submitted their plan to
city officials in the early 1970s, it met
with considerable resistance and hos-
tility. As Judy Corbett describes the
process, “Everyone had a problem.
The police department did not like
the dead-end cul-de-sacs. The fire de-
partment did not like the narrow
streets. The public works department
did not like agriculture mixing with
residential. And the planning depart-
ment picked it apart endlessly” (Jack-
son 1999, p. 78).
Even the federal government
found cause to question the merits of
the project. “While this office is most
Figure 3. Site Plan of Village Homes. Courtesy of Mike Corbett.
Table 1. Assumptions of Sustainable Development. Source: Corbett and Corbett 2000,
pp. 53–60.
1. Every living thing survives by numerous and subtle relationships with all living things
and with the inanimate environment.
2. Ecosystems and parts of ecosystems composed of a wide variety of species tend to adapt
better to environmental changes or human tampering than do those composed of
fewer species.
3. Part of the ecosystem is a complex system of energy transfers that depends, ultimately,
on energy input.
4. In the long run, every one of the humanity’s physical needs must be satisfied either
without the use of nonrenewable resources or through recovery and reuse of those
resources.
5. Although humans seem to be the most adaptable of living things, we still have certain
inherent physical and psychological needs that must be met by the ecosystem, the
human-made physical environment, and the social environment.
6. Humans are for the most part genetically adapted to the environment that existed
about 200 to 20,000 years ago. This adaptation involves not just the physical makeup
but also the modes of perception and behavior and relates to the social environment
as well as the physical environment.
7. The relationship between people and the environment goes both ways: humanity
shapes and is shaped by its environment.
8. Humans can adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions, but the results of the
adaptation to inhospitable conditions is temporary or chronic stress.
sympathetic with your objective con-
cerning energy conservation and en-
vironmental concerns, we feel the
proposal requires further study,” said
Richard D. Chamberlain, area direc-
tor for the U.S. Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development at the
time, in a letter to Mike Corbett.
Chamberlain questioned having
apartments in the midst of single-
family housing, providing parking
bays instead of on-street parking, and
the orientation of lots. He said the
common areas seemed ill conceived,
provisions for runoff of storm water
inadequate, and the idea of having a
homeowner association growing agri-
cultural products questionable. “It
could well be that the same objective
can be obtained by enlarging individ-
ual lots and substantially eliminating
much of the common area,” he said,
noting such a change would provide
individual homeowners with space
for garden plots (Fitch 1999, p. 2).
The Corbetts responded with
the persistence of missionaries rather
than the pragmatism of developers.
Not taking no for an answer, “they set
up traffic cones in an empty parking
lot to show the fire department that
emergency equipment could easily
navigate the narrow streets, even past
parked cars. They convinced the po-
lice department that putting side-
walks behind the houses rather than
in front and eliminating throughways
would make residents feel safer, and
Village Homes’ low crime rate has
proved this point” (Jackson 1999,
p. 78) (Figure 4).
While city staff fought virtually
every design concept, it was the polit-
ical process that rescued the project
Figure 4. Judy and Mike Corbett used
large-scale maps and models to develop
the plan for Village Homes. Courtesy of
Judy Corbett.
Francis
27

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