Buy Land or Build Community

The toss up choice when creating a regenerative village

In my work with

Regen Tribe

, we noticed 2 strategies to starting a community. We called the approaches “Land First” and “People First”.

Each strategy carries distinct advantages and challenges, and the choice can significantly influence the long-term success and sustainability of the community.

Either you focus on getting land with or without infrastructure so your vision feels more tangible, or you focus on collecting people who resonate with your vision and perform the land search together.

Whichever one you choose, your main focus should be on which one allows you to build enough momentum for your project to sustain itself.

Find out which one is better for you.

Land First

A land-first approach focuses on securing the physical space before gathering the community.

Since regenerative communities must necessarily be land-based, it follows that the land itself is the foundational element. The right piece of land provides the resources needed for the community to thrive.

Advantages of Land-First

1. Less Barrier to Join: For some reason, when starting a community, people generally say “call me when I can live there”. Co-founders and co-visionaries are hard to find. By securing land that aligns with the community’s vision, leaders make the invitation more tangible, and less of a future fairytale.

2. Quicker: Rather than wait around for others to be ready to buy-in, going the land-first route allows you to speed up the process of making the dream a reality.

3. Destination is Known: The land itself can become a magnet for like-minded individuals who are drawn to the specific environment and the potential it offers. It also reduces the potential for conflict over location preferences among community members.

4. Start Building Now: When the land is chosen first, you can start building now, if you have budget. The physical parameters are set, and you can focus on development. Not having land can feel like a big barrier to sparking the community to actually happen.

Challenges of Land-First

1. High Initial Investment: Acquiring land can be a significant financial commitment, especially in desirable locations. This may require substantial upfront capital or financing, which can be risky without a solid plan for community development or if you’re the only investor.

2. Uncertain Community Cohesion: Securing land before gathering a community can result in a mismatch between the land’s characteristics and the needs or desires of the future members. If the land is chosen without input from the community, it may not meet the expectations or requirements of those who eventually join.

3. The “Join My Project Syndrome” When you have land and you’re the sole owner, you might fall into a dynamic where it feels like you’re trying to sell the project to others to finance the full project vision. A lot of village visionaries get stuck at this phase. No one wants to buy in because it’s “yours”, and there feels like little room for co-creation.

This feels different than the process of selecting and co-investing in land together.

When you should consider going the land-first route

Whether by yourself or with a small group of co-founders, these are situations that tell you if you should go land-first:

• Your entire community concept is based around a destination such as a blue zone, an SEZ, or a specific bioregion

• Your project is time-sensitive, such as preventing deforestation or acquiring land that represents a sacred site

• You have a business plan, ownership model, and legal entity set up that will own the land

• You already have a sizeable network or community that could potentially support the land project once it’s acquired

• You already have the land

L’Arbre Qui Pousse is a regenerative village in Belgium

On a long flight from Colombia I finished reading “Creating a Life Together” by Diane Leafe Christian for the 2nd time, and here is an excerpt from a section titled, “Don’t Run Out and Buy Land — Yet”

Many people interested in starting a community assume the first thing you should do is buy land. Even though a beautiful piece of property can be tempting, buying your property first is generally not a good idea — and can be a huge risk for conflict later because all the necessary structures haven’t been put in place. I advise against it unless you’ve taken the following steps:

1. One person or a small group already has the necessary funds to buy it, and can cover its mortgage payments for a year or so.

2. The person or small group has set up an appropriate legal entity for property ownership, or sets it up soon after.

3. The documents of the legal entity (or other community documents) spell out the relationship of each future member’s financial contribution toward ownership and decision-making rights, whether people will have equity in the property, and other financial issues.

4. The individual or small group buying the property have agreed on the vision for the community and have created its vision documents, and anyone joining subsequently must necessarily agree to this vision. Or these will be created by the initial buyers and the people joining them soon after — but none of the new people will put their money in until the vision is fully agreed upon and written down, and everyone knows what it is they’re agreeing to join.

People-First

In contrast, the people-first approach emphasizes gathering a group of committed individuals or families before selecting the land.

This method focuses on building a strong social foundation, ensuring that the community's values, goals, and needs are clearly defined before any physical site is chosen. Rather than “build it and they will come”, you are coming together so you can build.

Advantages of People-First

1. Stronger Community Bonds: By prioritizing relationships and shared values, the people-first approach fosters strong social cohesion. When members have a say in choosing the land, they are more likely to feel invested in the community's success and sustainability.

Translation: when people feel like they have stake/ownership in the project, they are willing to put more effort into making the project work.

2. Community-Led Development: With a clear understanding of the community’s needs and preferences, the group can collectively select a site and design a community that best suits their goals.

This can lead to a more tailored choice that meets the social, economic, and environmental criteria established by the community. Two words — participatory process.

3. Mobilizing More Resources: Whether financial resources for down payments or network effect of combining your email lists, you may be more effective as a group.

When the community is formed before land acquisition, financial responsibilities can be distributed among members, reducing individual risk and making it easier to secure funding for the purchase.

4. “Built-In” Community: When you finally do get land, you aren’t going around begging others to join. If you’ve already built your circle of community members, then getting to the feeling of community comes much quicker. You may even move in together before moving onto the land in order to start working together in proximity.

Regen Tribe at Community Lab in Mexico. Pictured: Sonia Wendorff from Regen Tribe and Alex Keehnen from Gaianet. For example, if Gaianet wants to start a regenerative network state, they will already have a built-in audience.

Some examples I’ve seen of community movements evolving into physical community spaces include MomentOM Collective’s village in Costa Rica, KA, or Future Thinkers Smart Village in Canada evolving from their podcast audience.

Challenges of People-First

1. Coordinating Land Selection Finding land that meets the diverse needs of a group can be challenging. Opinions can diverge.

Involving many voices in the land selection process can complicate or delay decision-making. The process may involve compromises, leading to dissatisfaction or conflict.

As DLC shares, there’s often a bunch of people who sign up as interested to the community vision, but when it comes time to put in for a down payment, only 2 come through. So compromising for others doesn’t always pan out.

2. Building Hope As I’ve seen with different projects, occasionally you plant hope that never comes to fruition. The usually stems from coordination failure, or diluting the original community vision with everyone’s ideas for what it could/should be. Maintaining a strong core vision group is essential.

You have to make expectations clear. This is achieved through hyperspecific vision documents and clear financial expectations.

3. Early Community Burnout Reaching consensus on a single piece of land may be difficult, particularly in larger groups.

You may even get exhausted because you’re working with a misaligned group that slows you down, when all you want to do is find land and pop-up a tiny home.

When you should consider going the people-first route:

• If your personal networks are large, go people first because you already have that social capital ready for you.

• If you’re building a startup city, network state, or other expensive project, you’ll need to prove concept by having a whitelist of people who’ve expressed interest and “signed up”.

• If you are personally limited in access to capital/financing, consider recruiting others that can help move the project along with pooled resources.

• If your vision is still forming and could use the feedback of others, consider going people first. Careful with diluting the vision.

Take Cabin DAO’s supper clubs as a great example of a people-first approach. They focused on bringing people together to create the bonds of community.

A Hybrid Approach

While land-first and people-first approaches each have their merits, some regenerative community projects could benefit from a hybrid strategy. This involves a preliminary search for land options while simultaneously building a core group of committed individuals.

Your community members can perform the land search together while vetting the additional co-founders and key movers that you need.

By engaging in both processes simultaneously, the community can ensure that the land aligns with their vision while maintaining strong social bonds and shared decision-making.

How to Hybrid

Balancing Both Missions

When going hybrid, you have to community manage and project manage.

One way to approach this is to distribute the project tasks as much as possible, such as the effort of land search and vetting properties. Celebrate together often, and make the shared work fun.

Core Vision / Core Group

For the most part, I think that consolidating a core vision based on your shared values is an important first step. From there, you can observe and respond to market trends, new information, and changing desires within the group, while staying true to the original essence of the community.

In this sense, even if you take a hybrid approach, keep your core group of visionaries below 12 people.

Iterative Process

Treat the search for land and the formation of the community as iterative processes that inform and refine each other. Allow the search for land to inform the group's vision and vice versa.

You might also experiment with pop-up villages, event activations, and coliving as part of deciding what kind of land you want and if the people involved are really your people.

Take notes from Anton and Morgane at Selgars. They bought the property themselves and started testing with coliving and activating with events like Enchanted. That’s me in the middle :)

Choosing between a land-first or people-first approach—or opting for a hybrid strategy—is a fundamental decision in the creation of a regenerative community.

Each approach offers unique opportunities and challenges, and the best choice will depend on the specific goals, resources, and values of your community.

Which approach are you using in the development of your community?

One of my affiliated partners, Community Finders, run by Cynthia Tina, offers services for people seeking ecovillages or building ecovillages. I highly recommend you join one of her courses to uplevel your ecovillage journey.

Use the code TERRENITY for $100 off your ecovillage tour.