Since Esmeralda was mentioned: I hadn't heard of it and am glad to see the emergence of cities/neighborhoods starting from scratch. We need more experiments to jump start strong culture as existing cities and towns decay. Hopefully these places offer a very human experience.
I think as people start to have kids it would be less appealing, but people seem to be doing that later these days (or not at all).
According to the article the quality of the pool matters. If you want a neighborhood feel, the challenge is to come up with 8-40 people who are going to jive. Devon noted that (at least one) FoaF experience didn't work out. I think it is great if you have the social sense to select such a chill group but I'd be surprised if many people could accomplish organizing a successful large group.
As for having lots of friends… I don’t know how rare that is. I could easily find 10 people, 20 would be a stretch. And I’m far from the most social person I know.
I dig this idea a lot. I hope we can expand more on remote work, make great use of new freedoms for such excellent purposes.