Lakes, Groves and Greenbelts: A Field Guide to Gilbert's Neighborhoods
Val Vista Lakes, Power Ranch, Agritopia, the old town grid — Gilbert is a federation of master plans, each with its own landscape and loyalties. How to read the town by its neighborhoods.
Nobody in Gilbert gives directions by street alone; they give them by community. The town is a federation of master-planned neighborhoods, each built as a complete landscape with its own character — and November, when the whole federation is outdoors at once, is the month to read it whole.
Val Vista Lakes, in the town's northeast, is the water community: a system of lakes threading the subdivisions, with a clock tower, a beach-and-tennis club and waterfront homes arranged around the proposition that a desert town can live lakeside. Power Ranch, in the southeast, is the greenbelt community — a vast former ranch parcel built around parks, trails and fishing lakes, with some of Gilbert's most family-dense subdivisions and a trail system that functions as its second street network.
Agritopia, at the town's center-west, is the farm community — the working-farm neighborhood that made Gilbert famous in planning circles. The Islands, in the northwest, wraps its homes around lakes and a community park near the Chandler border. Morrison Ranch, in the east, kept its silos and groves as design elements across a series of farm-themed villages. And beneath them all, the old town grid around the Heritage District holds the pre-subdivision Gilbert of smaller lots and older trees, the town's memory in street form.
The federation runs on homeowners' associations — the private governments that maintain the lakes, greenbelts and walls, enforce the design codes, and levy the assessments that are, in effect, Gilbert's second property tax. Their elections, budgets and reserve studies are civic documents; this desk will read them when they matter, which is oftener than residents expect.
What unifies the federation is the town around it: the schools, the Riparian Preserve, the Heritage District, the shared identity of a place that planned its growth and kept its standards. November in Gilbert is the federation at ease — lakes glittering, trails full, farm stands open. It is a good month to learn the map, because in Gilbert, the neighborhood is the hometown.
