I found a small Towny and SMP server that is meant to be friendly and relaxed but still a little competitive. The big thing here is no griefing no stealing and they say there will never be resets so you can build long term.
The community is active across AU EU and US timezones. At busy times it can hit around 20 players so it does not feel empty.
You can claim land with Towny and grow a town with other players. It also has jobs mcmmo and in game ranking plus dynmap. There are player warps player shops and a sell only server shop. It runs on 1.21.x and it also supports Bedrock on a separate port.
