PODCAST
Using Radical Common Sense To Build Great Places
Chuck sits down with Serenbe founder Steve Nygren to discuss the process of developing the this unique biophilic community, Steve’s development philosophy of “radical common sense,” and his upcoming book “Start in Your Own Backyard.”
June 23, 2025
ARTICLE
Backyard Stories
Steve Nygren took a leap of faith when he sold his company and moved his family to a farm on the outskirts of Atlanta. In his book he chronicles his journey developing the serene community while cultivating an awe of the natural world, daily joy, and authentic community from his own backyard.
Modern Luxury
September 2025 Issue
ARTICLE
Adaptive Design: Not Just for Senior Housing Anymore
Adapting to new insights, they decided to integrate older adults into what Nygren calls “the broader intergenerational fabric of Serenbe.” The community now has townhomes, live-work spaces and small condo-style buildings for a total of 88 multifamily units. There are plans to add more to achieve what Nygren called a “highly pedestrian friendly, mixed-age and mixed-income village fabric.”
August 21, 2025
ARTICLE
2025 Master Plan of the Year: Serenbe
On the southwest edge of Atlanta in Chattahoochee Hill country, Serenbe has been widely recognized as an “agrihood,” but this pioneering development is far more than a residential community with a picturesque farm. It is the manifestation of a values-driven vision, one that began not with spreadsheets or zoning maps, but with a family weekend and a historic home in the woods
Builder Magazine
August 26, 2025
ARTICLE
Serenbe’s Radical Vision: The Agrihood That Rewrites the Rules of American Development
Rather than treating planning as a logistical problem of streets and lots, Serenbe approaches design as a framework for ecology, creativity, and community. Its founder, Steve Nygren, calls it “a place where art, food, wellness, and education aren’t amenities—they’re the foundation.”
August 29, 2025
ARTICLE
Start In Your Own Backyard
Concerned by trends of poor human health and a degraded environment, Steve Nygren was on a treadmill trying to effect change but going nowhere. He surrendered to hopelessness and retreated to the countryside on the edge of Atlanta to raise his family. After seven years of retirement while walking the trails, he realized the tentacles of dysfunction could destroy his rural paradise. Rather than retreat further, he launched an effort to save his own backyard expanding the effort to the surrounding 40,000 acres that is now a living laboratory for change offering solutions and hope to communities around the world who are curious about a better future.
September 8, 2025
PODCAST
The Power of Place: Real Estate with Purpose with Steve Nygren
If you're wondering how one person—you—can create meaningful change through real estate, this conversation will show you what’s possible.In this episode, I talk with Steve Nygren, founder of Serenbe, about how a single decision to “start in his own backyard” became a 21-year-old wellness community and a national model for healthy development.
Wellness Real Estate Podcast
September 22, 2025
PODCAST
Conversations with the Best Minds in Real Estate: Steve Nygren
In this episode of Conversations with the Best Minds in Real Estate, Managing Director Gregg Logan sits down with Steve Nygren, the visionary developer behind Serenbe, a pioneering biophilic community just outside Atlanta, that’s become a national model for sustainable, wellness-centered living.
September 30, 2025
PODCAST
Building a Sustainable Wellness Community
Integrating green spaces, agriculture, housing, and retail may be extremely challenging, but it is never impossible. Steve Nygren managed to pull this off by helping build Serenbe, a wellness community connected to nature on the edge of Atlanta. He joins Corinna Bellizzi to share how their responsibly developed, high-value community serves as a model for applying biophilic design in small and intentional ways, boosting regenerative practices everywhere. Steve also discusses what it means to rediscover awe in everyday moments, the unintended consequences of fast-paced living, and how individual choices can contribute to driving systemic transformation.
October 1, 2025
ARTICLE
Working for Wednesday
PICTURE THIS: Wholesome Wave Georgia honored Serenbe founder Steve Nygren at its Southern Chefs Potluck on Sunday. Nygren’s new book, “Start in Your Own Backyard,” about his experience creating the sustainable community at Serenbe, was released yesterday by Simon & Schuster.
Rough Draft Atlanta
October 8, 2025
ARTICLE
Start In Your Backyard
Start In Your Own Backyard is a book about the emergence of a place called Serenbe, a two-thousand-acre neighborhood community located in the city of Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia—and a pioneering model of biophilic living. But it’s also a book about empowerment, optimism, hope, and finding solutions rooted in simple common sense.
November 1, 2025
ARTICLE
What Serenbe Taught Me About Designing Community Around Nature
When I arrived at Serenbe , it was really the land that greeted me first–tall trees swaying in chorus, the smell of morning dew, the hush between homes and a softness in the air that felt like a deep breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. In a world where speed is the norm, Serenbe offered stillness.
August 8, 2025
PODCAST
How to Design a Biophilic Community
Set among acres of preserved forests and meadows with miles of nature trails that connect homes and restaurants with arts and businesses, Serenbe is is a real-world example of Biophilic Design in a community development that can help us reimagine urban and town planning.
August 11, 2025
ARTICLE
Why Chattahochee Hills is Atlanta’s Most Intentional, and Enchanting, Rural Retreat
When suburban Atlanta began expanding rapidly in the late 20th century, a group of residents, landowners, and environmental visionaries (including Steve Nygren, founder of Serenbe) pushed for a bold alternative: to preserve the rural landscape while allowing for smart, sustainable growth. The result was a city charter built on the principle of Transferable Development Rights, a first in Georgia.
August 22, 2025
ARTICLE
Meet the Man Behind Serenbe, America’s Most Inspiring Wellness Community
Few people have reinvented their lives—and the lives of others—as radically and impactfully as Steve Nygren. From pioneering Atlanta’s casual fine dining scene in the 1970s to founding Serenbe, a biophilic wellness community nestled in the hills of Georgia, Nygren’s journey is one of vision, values, and a deep commitment to living in harmony with nature.
The Manual
August 27, 2025
ARTICLE
Chickens, Compost and Community: Life Inside America’s Agrihood
Serenbe, about 30 miles southwest of Atlanta, features New Urbanism design that is a blueprint for future neighborhoods to be built with sustainability, creativity, and togetherness in mind. Its distinct neighborhoods provide everything from bespoke medical care and high-end thrift shops to juice bars and a full-service spa. Serenbe’s mission is to foster a culture of curiosity, engagement, and a shared belief in a better way of living, or vacationing.
September 1, 2025
ARTICLE
6 Senior Living Leaders Weigh In On Future Development Outlook
At Serenbe, we plan to break ground on a new village model of 97 units. The design emphasizes social life within the club while placing most services along the street, creating an active and engaging streetscape. This stands in contrast to the conventional institutional model where all services are centralized under one corporation.
September 11, 2025
PODCAST
Reinvention Room with Allison Hare
What if the cure for our collective heartbreak isn't therapy or medication, but completely reimagining where we live? Steve Nygren, founder of Serenbe and author of the new book "Start in Your Backyard," discovered this truth when he stepped off the treadmill of life 30 years ago and accidentally created one of the most revolutionary sustainable community living models in America.
September 25, 2025
PODCAST
Nature, Transformation & Radical Common Sense with Steve Nygren
Modern life often leaves us on the treadmill of constant striving, chasing markers of success that don’t necessarily bring fulfillment. But what happens when you step off that treadmill and reimagine what’s possible?
September 30, 2025
ARTICLE
Dewberry Speaks; Serenbe Book; Krog Street Sale; More!
Atlanta restaurant legend and Serenbe inventor Steve Nygren is out with a new book called Start in Your Own Backyard (Oct. 7; Matt Holt Books) that documents the creation of the growing, biophilic communal experiment spread across 2,000 acres about 25 minutes from Atlanta’s airport.
October 3, 2025
NEWS SEGMENT
Start In Your Own Backyard: Founder of Nature-based Community Releases Book
Nygren came to Atlanta News First to talk about “Start in Your Own Backyard.” The book chronicles his approach to green living and the rise of Serenbe, a pioneering community with features like walking trails, blueberries at every crosswalk and organic farming.
October 14, 2025
PODCAST
From Farm to Future:A Model for Sustainable, Intergenerational Living
n this episode, AgingIN CEO Susan Ryan welcomes Steve Nygren, visionary founder of Serenbe, a pioneering biophilic community outside Atlanta that blends sustainability, wellness, and human connection. Beginning in 1991 as an impromptu farm purchase, Serenbe has become a decades-long experiment in how people can live harmoniously with nature—and with each other.
Elevate Eldercare
November 12, 2025