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Duany and Plater-Zyberk are not anti-development. Indeed, businesspeople seem to like them and their notions of enlightened self-interest. Joseph Alfandre, the man behind Kentlands and Belmont, had been a very successful developer of rather routine suburban pods around Washington. In 1988 he was considering land-use plans for the 352-acre Kentlands site. Then he heard about Duany and Plater-Zyberk, became a convert, canceled his plans and started over.
In northern California developer Phil Angelides underwent a similar epiphany. He and some partners had conventionally developed 4,000 acres near Sacramento when, in 1989, Angelides met architect and planner Calthorpe. Now 1,045 acres of the vast development has been redesigned and replanned by Calthorpe as a traditional townlike place called Laguna West. Two double rows of trees will make the streets appear narrower, and the houses will be set unusually close to the sidewalks, 12 1/2 ft. instead of 20 ft. or more -- thus decreasing the usual distance between facing houses and creating outdoor space that feels cozy and communal. (Naturally, traffic engineers at the Sacramento County public works department complained about the density, and about the fact that Angelides and Calthorpe are planting so many trees.) Half the houses at Laguna West will have front porches, and none will be more than half a mile from the town center. Do contemporary Californians really want to live in such a throwback? Although the first model homes will not open until late July, almost half the lots have already been sold to builders.
Any sort of strictly enforced urban planning has come to seem somehow anti- American over the past half-century, and especially during the laissez- faire decade just ended. To create neotraditional towns requires that residents surrender some bits of individualism (no picture windows, no chain- link fences, no raised ranch houses) for the sake of overall harmony -- yet many neighborhood homeowners' associations already have rigid rules regarding lawns and paint colors. Some critics disparage the nostalgia that fuels the traditional-town movement -- as if all suburbs weren't in some measure nostalgic exercises, attempts to indulge middle-class Americans' pastoral urges. ;
But what worries Duany and Plater-Zyberk most are their pseudo followers, developers and architects who apply a gloss of ye-olde-towne charm without supplying any of the deeper, more fundamental elements of old-fashioned urban coherence. Calthorpe agrees emphatically. "You can have nice streets, and you can put trees back on them, and you can make beautiful buildings with front porches again, but if the only place it leads is out to the expressway, then we are going to have the same environment all over again."