Hello Mr. Wolf, won't you please sit down?

[Hotzcatz]

A lot of the current lack of community is caused by the way our "communities" have been built in the past three decades. We no longer have "centers" to our communities; public areas where folks can come together, meet and interact. Anyone ever visit a town with a town square? The typical village green with a bandstand, park benches scattered along the walkways through the green, a statue of someone on a horse, a fountain and the town clock, etc.? Previously, each village was centered around a particular reason for that village to exist, a grain mill, a harbor, a cheese factory (which in the case of my relatives has turned into a pizza factory so now many folks are making frozen pizza instead of cheese, but it's all the same thing), etc. Each community would have a reason for existing, a central community owned area where folks can meet for various reasons and have community events and festivals as well as other community owned public areas for folks to interact. Things like parks and shady sidewalks. A community garden is another good interaction area. Houses should be built with a welcoming face to the street, not a gaping garage door and no visible front door in sight. There should be a visible face to the house, with a social interaction area (front porch) between the private house and the public sidewalks. Cars should be relegated to a back alley and not the most visible thing in front of the house. With these things in place, you will have community otherwise all you have is an assortment of bedrooms clustered in the same geographical area with no reason for them to come out from behind their cars and TV.

HPP has more than enough population base to become it's own village, but it doesn't have the space to do it in. If in the middle of the sub, there was a place for a town square, a cluster of shops and some economic endeavor for the folks to engage in, then you would have a true village and the "community" would become defacto instead of merely wished for.

A village of 2,000 people can support a small grocery store, a cafe, a bar, a gas station, a farm and garden store, a small entertainment area (putt-putt golf, theater, video arcade, pool hall, etc.) perhaps as well as a few other places, but the folks need to have some jobs in the village or they will take their business outside the village and then your village becomes bedrooms in lala land again. Of course, some the required jobs will be in the village businesses but there should be some sort of light manufacturing or processing so something that can be sold outside the village will bring in outside-the-village-revenue. Tourists are not dependable and they should be considered dessert, but not the meal which keeps the village fed.

Try for arcadian utopia, you may miss the mark, but at least it will be better than useless houses clustered off in the middle of nowhere.