With her long blond hair blowing behind her and big sunglasses perched on her nose, Tiara Thurston looks natural on an e-bike as she pedals uphill in Seabrook, a master-planned beach community on the Washington coast. The bike is one of dozens she rents to locals and tourists through the shop she opened with her husband in 2023. After decades climbing the corporate ladder at companies like Tesla and Rivian, she now lives a slower life by the sea, along the same coastline where she spent summers visiting her grandmother, wandering the gnarled forests and empty beaches.

When her grandmother got sick and Thurston went to see her, she realized she wanted to relocate. She was burned out from living in big cities (Dallas, then Seattle) and traveling 80 percent of the time. Washington’s central coast offered a healthier, more balanced lifestyle measured less by quarterly targets than by tide charts, daily walks with her kids, and veggies in her garden.

“I’m hoping to live to 99,” Thurston, 44, says. “I’m planting my purple potatoes. I’ll reevaluate at 75, see how it’s going. It’s kind of funny if you can stop and think about your life at a halfway point—how do you rewrite the second half based off of what you accomplished in the first?”

She landed in Seabrook, a town founded some 20 years earlier by Casey and Laura Roloff on the principles of New Urbanism, a planning movement that emerged in response to postwar suburban sprawl. Its architects envisioned denser, more walkable communities that make you feel silly getting in your car, neighborhoods where everyday needs are within walking distance, and housing options serving a range of incomes and life stages. Whereas suburbs typically separate renters from first-time homeowners from retirees, a community like Seabrook blends them.

Instead of cul-de-sacs, sidewalks, and strip malls, the town is built around narrow roads and alleys, front porches, public gathering spaces, and footpaths that wind through Sitka spruce groves and dune grass. Homes purposely sit close together to foster neighborly interactions, and the town’s cafés, restaurants, and boutiques cluster across just a few blocks. Children ride their bikes in the middle of the street, families mosey to dinner, and older folks linger over coffee near the market. While the coastal town is still very much a vacation destination, unlike such enclaves as Black Butte Ranch and Sunriver it was planned with full-time living in mind. 

“We like to say it’s not a gimmick, it’s not a trend,” says Casey Roloff. “We’re just going back to the same design fundamentals that created the most beautiful towns, villages, and cities around the world.”

Casey grew up on the outskirts of Vancouver, Washington, and paid his way through the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma painting houses; Laura, from Portland, grew up in Sellwood and studied studio art at UPS. (They met on a blind date in high school.) After reading The Not So Big House series—about smaller-footprint, higher-quality design—they began dreaming of the kind of place they themselves wanted to live in.

As self-described “wannabe architects,” the Roloffs took out a high-risk loan to build their first home in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast. The craftsmanship and attention to detail drew interest from buyers wanting their own custom homes, and the Roloffs began imagining not just individual houses but an entire neighborhood shaped around the qualities they loved most. Gifted the playbook by the builders of Florida’s Seaside, often considered the birthplace of New Urbanism, they went on to develop and sell a small vacation rental neighborhood called Bella Beach, also in Lincoln City, before purchasing the first 250 acres along the Washington coast that would become Seabrook.

Catching up on email at Vista Bakeshop on my own summer visit to Seabrook, I felt a bit like I was in Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow when Casey Roloff strolled in and ordered a coffee before taking a seat nearby with two associates. (I recognized him from our video interview a few months prior.) He’s often seen having dinner at Koko’s, a restaurant and tequila bar, or hiking the trails on the town’s edges. He told me he wanted to build a place where everyday life felt a little like being on vacation.

Thurston admits outsiders might wonder if it’s a little too idyllic. As if the oyster-shell paths, buoy decor, and hydrangeas spilling over the white fences weren’t storybook enough, the cottages have names like Gnome Place Like Home, Forget Me Knot, and After Dune Delight painted onto wooden signs in looping script. I stayed with a friend in a cottage called Sea Breeze with a red door and Adirondack chairs on the porch. That carefully cultivated charm is part of what draws people—and also part of what raises suspicion.

Critics have likened these carefully controlled communities to The Stepford Wives, The Truman Show, and Disneyland. (They’re not wrong: Disney’s Main Street heavily influenced New Urbanism, and the Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show, about a man who learns his entire life has been a TV show and everyone he knows is an actor, was filmed in Seaside.) They point to a sense of artificiality, exclusivity, lack of diversity, dependence on second homes, and design driven by nostalgia and aesthetic rather than core urban issues. One Marxist urban theorist writes, “the idea of the urban village or of some kind of communitarian solution to our urban ills worms its insidious way into public consciousness, with the New Urbanism as one of its forms of articulation.”

On my visit, I noticed that the garden beds and lawns were certainly more manicured than I’m used to in my Portland neighborhood, and the trees were still spindly. King of Dill pizza from Frontager’s gets three out of five stars (it was a little floppy). The house names are kinda corny, but they made me laugh. And, I’ll admit, I found myself oohing and aahing whenever we ran into a blooming bush or a particularly cute house. My travel companion wondered if her mom in Arizona would consider living in Seabrook to be closer.

Right outside the postcard, there’s a different side of coastal living. Nearby Pacific Beach and the surrounding Grays Harbor County struggle with many of the same pressures other small towns and rural regions face across the Pacific Northwest. The median household income is significantly below the state average. The closest hospital is 40 minutes inland. The county reports high rates of opioid and fentanyl-related overdoses, and some of its public schools are among the lowest performing in the state.

Despite Seabrook’s idyllic image, Thurston says, “the reality is there are real people living there with real lives.” Only 10 to 15 percent of homeowners are full-time residents, which can hinder community building but which the Roloffs hope to increase as the area develops. A master plan includes investing in  infrastructure meant to support both the broader region and residents at every stage of life. Less than a mile from Seabrook’s town center, a $40 million state-funded elementary and middle school is under construction alongside a planned $150 million recreation center and walk-in medical clinic backed by the Seabrook Community Foundation, the town’s nonprofit arm.

Soon, homes in a Maker’s Village will be up for sale alongside small-scale retail spaces designed for handcrafted goods from ceramicists, woodworkers, glassblowers, and other artisans. (One of the Roloffs’ daughters makes jewelry in Portland. Casey tells me, “The most rewarding thing is seeing my kids wanting to come back as they become adults.”) 

Within the next two to three years, Seabrook aims to have almost everything someone might need to make a life there—or, at least, enjoy an eventful weekend visit. A vacation rental starts around $100 a night, while recent real estate listings range from an ocean-view penthouse for more than $3 million to a 600-square-foot cabin for under $500,000. The broader plan includes building a 70-room luxury hotel with an additional 40 residential units and oceanfront beach club, par-3 and 18-hole championship golf courses, and expanded senior and
independent living facilities. 

There are no gates, no security guards, no Keep Out or No Trespassing signs, meaning anybody can enter and is welcome, even just to enjoy a picnic at the beach without spending a dime. “You don’t need to be a millionaire to enjoy Seabrook,” Casey Roloff says.

Part of Seabrook’s philosophy is that because it is unlike most modern developments, a person must experience it before they can imagine living there. That’s why there are Town Tours every Thursday through Sunday starting at the sales office in the village center. I joined a tour and learned that the streets are angled in such a way that there’s always a point of interest at the end—a roofline, a statue, a garden—inviting you to follow your curiosity and wander more. 

For three days, my friend and I did just that. Trusting Thurston’s advice, we didn’t even lock up the e-bikes we rented from her shop. At some point, landmarks started feeling familiar: the wooden fish-shaped sign where we turn left, the house with the pretty roses. We also agreed on a favorite cottage: a cedar-shingled two-story with teal trim, a lime-green door, and daisies blooming out front, on a hill with a view of town. Later, I looked up the address and found that it’s called Sea Mist Memories. 

Next time I need some time by the sea, I know a place I’d like to stay.