Forward thinking investors should be looking at villages as the next major asset class. Cities are becoming more expensive and fragile in the face of global crises.

The old escape was suburbs or rural homesteads, and now some are building bunkers or isolated compounds. But isolation isn’t resilience.

History’s most enduring, healthy, crisis proof communities are villages—like the world’s Blue Zones, where people live long, connected, purposeful lives.

In North America this way of living is rare, and that’s the opportunity. RV parks and rural subdivisions can be transformed into smart villages with modern tech, shared wellness facilities, gardens, coworking, childcare, and event spaces.

Better than suburbs or gated communities, more resilient than isolated bunkers, networks of smart villages can have built-in economies of production, trade, services, and new models of membership and ownership.

The next wave of real estate isn’t skyscrapers or private compounds; it’s modern networked villages.