Vaughan, Canada — The homes come with separate living rooms for men and women. Streets are named Bashir, Zafrulla Khan, and Abdus Salam. And every house has a view of the mosque, visible from miles around.
This is Peace Village, a residential housing development in a Toronto suburb that caters to Muslims -- but is open to anyone.
It grew around a small mosque that sprouted in the early 1990s in a corn field along a desolate highway in this nondescript suburb of Toronto, Canada's largest metropolis with five million residents, where one in two people are immigrants.
Built by a handful of devout Ahmadiyya Muslims -- a sect founded at the end of the 19th century in what is now Pakistan, but considered heretics by some -- the mosque is today the centerpiece of this emerging neighborhood.
Initially, "the main motivation was to bring worshippers close to the mosque," developer Naseer Ahmad told AFP d. Born in Pakistan, the 54-year-old immigrated to Canada in 1976.
From each residence, homeowners have a clear view of the central mosque. Each home has a double garage and a green lawn to trim in summer.
Officially started in 1998, the village is now home to more than 260 upper-middle class families.
The area streets borrow names from Pakistan's official language, Urdu, or honor famous Pakistan nationals such as 1979 Nobel laureate Abdus Salam.
Every kitchen is equipped with an extra powerful ventilation system to help clear the air when preparing extra spicy or smoky ethnic dishes.
And homes are designed with two living rooms -- one for men, and another for women.
Adil Malik, a businessman, has lived with his wife in Peace Village since 2001.
"My children are growing up here. It is really positive for them," Malik said of his three sons.
"I have seen other kids (grow up here). Now they are teenagers and they are very productive members of society ... going to university," he said.
"We look at it in the point of view that it is a community that supports each other."
A house here costs about 500,000 dollars (Canadian, US or 345,000 euros) and strong demand has forced developers to add a second phase, now under construction.
"It have given true meaning to (Canada's) multiculturalism concept," said the developer Ahmad, photographs of himself with leading Canadian politicians littering his office.
But even if it was conceived for Muslims, Peace Village is open to anyone, he said.
To date, only Muslims have bought homes here, leading some to accuse Ahmad of having created a Muslim ghetto or a segregated community within a vastly multicultural society.
"It is a very good neighborhood," he insisted, not a place where poor immigrants are forced to live in squalor.
"There were some fears at the beginning" of it becoming a Muslim ghetto, he said. "But the time has proven that it has not become a ghetto. The property values are very high. There is no violence and the streets are clean."
Patricia Wood, an associate professor at York University who has researched multiculturalism and immigration, also defended the housing development, noting that while some aspects of the project may seem new, the creation of ethnic or religious-based neighborhoods "is actually a very old practice" on this continent.
"If you look at the history of North America, some of the earliest settlements have specific groups coming and establishing their own communities with their own buildings and their own institutions in very close proximity to one another."
There are very few immigrant groups that did not create their own neighborhoods within larger cities, and historically it has been good for them and society at large, she said.
Wood concedes that some people may have some difficulty with the concept, which can also be seen in an all Catholic village in Florida called Ave Maria.
Some people have "a more generalized fear of the Muslim community" since the attacks of September 11, 2001, that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, she said.
Whether it be the Muslim Peace Village, or Vancouver's century-old Chinatown, "there is so much mutual support in these communities that would not necessarily be available in Canadian society."
"It's been a very important part of successful migration in Canada and the United States," she said.