Is This Your Beautiful House?

And there's more: hot tubs, steam rooms, video-game arcades, batting cages, two sand volleyball courts, and space for in-line hockey. There's even a 32-foot-high climbing wall. These and other amenities are maintained by the Highlands Ranch Community Association (HRCA), the largest organization of its kind in the United States. Membership in the association is mandatory if you live on the Ranch. "Our purpose is to enhance and maintain the value of the members' properties," says Gary Debus, 41, community manager of the HRCA.

One way to help owners protect their investment is to create and enforce community standards by applying rules known as "covenants." Government authorities handle structural inspections of the houses in Highlands Ranch, and the county sheriff's office responds to criminal complaints, but covenant enforcement falls to Debus, who lives on the Ranch, and his team. "It's one of the hardest things that we have to do," he says. "Home values have appreciated greatly here. I see covenant enforcement as protecting my property from what might happen to the property next to mine."

Many of the covenants deal with aesthetics: Anyone who moves into Highlands Ranch must agree to abide by a long list of guidelines. Highlands Ranch isn't uniform, but it is highly ordered. The identifying house numbers can be no more than six inches from top to bottom without prior approval. Residents may not illuminate personal flagpoles. Children's backyard clubhouses may be no more than 24 square feet. No above-ground swimming pools are permitted, and hot tubs must be out of the neighbors' line of sight. White picket fences -- that all-American symbol -- are only allowed in a few select neighborhoods.

A six-member volunteer committee of Highlands Ranch residents is responsible for interpreting the covenants and for reviewing and approving submittals. Elaine Stoner, 50, and the five members of her full-time enforcement team handle the brunt of the day-to-day work. Almost daily, at least two or three of them go out on general patrol, and two team members devote most of their time to following up on complaints that Ranch residents file against one another. Roughly 40 objections are called in during business hours each day, and 40 more are usually waiting in their voice-mail system when the group shows up for work the next morning.

Taking a ride along with the covenant-enforcement team is the only way to appreciate the kinds of issues that emerge. Color, it turns out, is a persistent concern. "There's one light purple that went up that everyone hated," says Cassie Thomas, 23, a former architectural technician at Highlands Ranch, "and there were phone calls for days."

What kind of community spends so much time complaining about its neighbors to the design police? "There are over 27,000 properties here," explains Stoner, who owns one of them herself. "So it's a pretty small percentage that aren't in compliance. For the most part, people are happy with the rules. They believe in them and want them to be enforced."

Enforcing rules about color, however, seems to miss the larger issues of growth, design, and development. On these fundamental points, Blake, Debus, and other Highlands Ranch leaders feel proud of the job that they've done. By 2005, when the Ranch is completely built, there will be 90,000 people living in 36,700 homes spread across 34.4 square miles. A full 61% of the acreage will be reserved for open or nonurban space, off-limits to any sort of commercial or residential development. Eventually, much of it will become a nature preserve.

Prospect New Town: New Urbanism Takes Its Shot

It's not about the traffic in Prospect New Town. In fact, when passersby first see the houses there, they tend to stop in their tracks. Often, the cars turn off the highway altogether and head into the development to get a closer look. These automobiles have license plates from all over the country, and their occupants drive around trying to figure out exactly what the place is. It isn't a theme park or a movie set. Prospect is a subdivision. It doesn't look anything like Highlands Ranch -- indeed, the houses don't look anything like one another. For that reason, it raises an important question: Is there an alternative to the megasuburb? Is there a design approach and a developmental philosophy that comes closer to the espoused aspirations of this generation?

Prospect New Town sits on land that is owned by Kiki Wallace. Wallace, 45, who has worked as an onion farmer in Mexico and as an entrepreneur in the United States, bought the former Christmas-tree farm from his family so that he could develop it in his own way. What he had in mind was a development style that fits loosely within a relatively recent movement in the planning field: New Urbanism.