Sometimes called a residential airpark, an airport community is an airport that includes permanent living quarters for several families.
As with any neighborhood, each airport community will have its own personality. Some airport communities are simply a neighborhood tacked onto a commercial airport ("through-the-fence"), while others are designed specifically as an airport community and may or may not have local public services and facilities. Some allow "industrial strength" hangars, with just an apartment built in the hangar, while others foster a more traditional neighborhood appearance. Some are rustic and some are extremely high class. Some simply have houses down one or both sides of the runway, others provide taxiways for access to the runway. Some provide streets separate from taxiways, some share automobile and aircraft traffic on the same thoroughfares.
As you can tell, there are quite a few variables and variations on each theme, each pilot must decide what will work best for him- or herself and their family and choose accordingly.
One thing's for sure: once a pilot has experienced the sense of community at a good residential airpark, they'll never want to live anywhere else!
It's easy to understand the convenience and economy of an Airport Community:
But the best reason to live at an Airport Community is to have all your neighbors share a strong common interest:
This results in a neighborhood that is more than a neighborhood -- it's a community!