Santa Fe Community – Aldea
GaiaQuest originally created and launched our former New Mexico headquarters at Aldea de Santa Fe, where it provided a base for GaiaQuest’s consulting services and Online Center.
Aldea de Santa Fe was originally master planned by Andres Duany to become a an iconic new urbanist mixed-use community. Aldea’s quaint pedestrian-oriented residential neighborhoods are successful and almost completely built out, with a wholesome variety of existing homes, parks, substantial open space and trails. Unfortunately the original developer sold off and failed to develop most of Aldea’s mixed-use commercial center property that remains an undeveloped fiasco, due to developer’s failure to deliver what was promised and a flawed village center master plan.
Working with other Aldea commercial stake holders, home owners and investor candidates, GaiaQuest and associates provided a more viable regeneratively sustainable commercial solution for Aldea’s village center that features demonstration Permaculture landscaping, eco-system enhancements, community based food production opportunities, demonstration aquaponics greenhouse, garden-to-table restaurant, full-service boutique hotel, affordable euro-style hostel accommodations, community market, commercial conveniences and a world class center for health, fitness, arts, culture and lifestyle programs. Housed in university-style campus facilities connected by beautiful regeneratively-sustainable food forests and gardens, this alternative vision could provide a demonstration of how an existing community with a failed commercial center can evolve into the vibrant successful new urbanist eco-community that Aldea was originally master planned to be.
The Aldea community has formalized the permaculture initiative originally introduced by GaiaQuest into an ongoing permaculture committee effort that shows promise to help Aldea evolve productively in the future.