Canada has a reputation for being a cold country, not the place you would expect a world leading solar-thermal community to be but the Drake Landing Solar Community in the town of Okotoks, Alberta Canada is just that. The community, with an average annual temperature of 4⁰C, is the first of its kind in North America and is unprecedented in the world in providing 90% of the space heating requirements of each of the 52 homes in the community with solar energy. A mixture of water and glycol absorbs the sun’s heat as it passes through the solar panels on the garages in the community and transfers this heat to the soil in a large underground thermal energy storage system. In the winter months when the homes in the community need to be heated, cool water is pumped into the thermal energy storage system where it reabsorbs the heat stored in the soil before being circulated to heat the homes. Beyond proving that the successful use of solar energy is within reach of even the coldest urban and suburban settings, the Drake Landing project also demonstrates the results of effective planning in the design of new communities.