How To Build a Community – Part 1 of 5

How To Build a Community – Part 1 of 5

Dear Ambera Family,

It’s been a long road, and there are only a few more yards to go before we cross the finish line – we will soon be able to release the details of our first project. We have come so close that we dare to say that we’ll be launching the news on the 20th November 2019, and we can’t wait to share everything with you!

We, the Ambera Founders and our team, have been working dedicatedly towards this goal for three years, based on an idea that had been growing in Jan Olav’s head for 20 years, and we want to give you a window into the process of developing the seed of a concept into a complete project.

How do you build something that hasn’t already existed before? What have we really been working on every single day for the past three years? Isn’t it as simple as buying a plot, building some houses, and starting sales?

We’re not just building a bunch of houses in Spain, selling them off, and leaving the unfortunate buyers to their own devices. We are creating an environment for a vibrant, active community where there is always something happening, and our residents have plenty of options for what to do. There will be natural meeting places where people can get to know each other through their shared interests. It will be possible to live and have a good time year-round, on your own terms.

In this five-part series, I want to go into a little more depth on what we’ve been working on up to now, what we’ve achieved already, and what we will achieve in the future.

 To make a successful Ambera project, we see five aspects as most important:

  • Defining what kind of community we wish to foster

  • Choosing the right plot of land

  • Building suitable facilities

  • Building high-quality homes

  • Filling our Ambera Community with life

Let me start this series by focusing on the first aspect.

Part 1 – Defining what kind of community we wish to foster

What is the goal?

Ambera is a new type of living concept, with a focus on the social aspects of living. We aim to be a platform on which our residents can form a tight-knit community that is run based on their wishes. Our starting point has been the key principles used by Americans since the 60s to build what they call “Active Adult Communities”. These have been enormously successful in the US, and have contributed to happier, less lonely lives for hundreds of thousands of people.

What have we done so far?

We have known since the beginning that we can’t just take the American concept 1:1 and copy-paste it into Europe. So, we’ve run focus group interviews, where we invited people from England, Germany, Sweden, and Norway, and asked them if they could see themselves living in this type of community, what they would like the most, and what they’d change or add if they could – both in terms of how it’s designed and in terms of how it’s run. In addition, we’ve had lots of extremely valuable input from our online community, by way of your emails and Facebook comments. Taken altogether, you’ve given us a really good foundation from which to decide what kind of plot we should look for, and what kind of project we should build there.

What happens next?

We see defining the type of community we want to build as a living process and believe our definition will continue to grow and evolve over the coming years, and continue to give us inspiration for future projects. For now, though, we feel that we’ve done our background research in all relevant areas, and are confident that we have the knowledge we need to plan and build the first Ambera Community.

Regards,

Falko Müller-Tyl

Ambera Co-Founder and CEO

Stay tuned for part two of our series where we discuss the process of finding the right land plot for Ambera! 

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