Is This Your Beautiful House?

One common New Urbanist-community feature is housing that is designed for people of all income levels. Apartments, townhouses, and detached homes are all part of the mix. Designs favor community, which means that front porches, not garages, face the street. Density is high: When residents can walk to school and to the store, real neighborhoods exist. Diversity and mixed uses can make life more interesting, according to New Urbanist principles.

Since Wallace first started building Prospect in 1997, he has tweaked the formula a bit, with help from town designer Mark Sofield, 41, who moved from New England to help build the development. "New Urbanism felt like a practical, aesthetically pleasing thing, like building a neighborhood," Wallace says. After growing up in McAllen, Texas, which has the dubious distinction of topping the Sierra Club's list for the worst sprawl in a city of its size, Wallace didn't want to build a traditional subdivision. Taking a New Urbanist approach seemed like the most reasonable alternative.

As Prospect has grown, Wallace and Sofield have stuck with some architectural tenets of New Urbanism and have deviated from others. The development is quite dense, zoned for 585 units on just 80 acres, compared with Highlands Ranch, which now has 27,000 individual units (including a few apartments) on 5,020 acres. So far, 100 houses are either inhabited or are in various stages of completion. Few houses have any front yard to speak of, but there are numerous squares and parks throughout the development. The design philosophy here is a combination of pragmatism and communitarianism: Since most homeowners don't actually use their front yards very often, if each home sacrifices most of its private outdoor space, there can be terrific public spaces for all residents to share.

Although Wallace and Sofield seem to follow the total urban-planning philosophy of New Urbanism, they tend to diverge when it comes to architecture. "We went around and looked at some other projects early on," Sofield says. "In the end, we both felt strongly that we needed to break out of the 'cute' mode." In the first ring of houses that were built in Prospect, the homes are fairly traditional, although the styles range from Queen Anne to Tudor to Craftsman Bungalow. Sofield himself lives in a Craftsman Bungalow in Prospect that was moved from a lot down the road.

As they've filled in the second ring of houses, Wallace and Sofield have started employing various forms of modern architecture. Sofield has designed some of the new houses himself, and he called on local talent and friends from Yale Architecture School to come up with ideas for others. "It's an expression of our deviant philosophy," Sofield says. "Real places accommodate the real differences between people and give them physical expression."

How do they decide exactly what gets built? Formal rules have given way to Wallace's and Sofield's internal compasses. "We've changed our review process some," Sofield says. "We used to hand out the rules, and as long as people followed those rules, we wouldn't bother them. Now it's more like school. Everything is good as long as it can exist on its own terms." Wallace attempts to clarify this further: "You can build any type of house as long as it's true to its type."

This loose standard can create some confusion. Wallace and Sofield figure that 70% of all architectural plans that builders submit to them need extensive alterations. Another 25% need at least moderate changes. As houses go up, they're subject to an additional, ad-hoc review process. "That's crap," Wallace observes, walking by a newly erected fence. "It sounds harsh," Sofield says. "But somebody's taste has to prevail, or else it would be anarchy."

How do Wallace and Sofield resolve the color issue that confounds the covenant officers at Highlands Ranch? "Beige or any other color that you might see at Highlands Ranch automatically gets rejected here," says Sofield, who has never actually been to the Ranch, but who nevertheless uses it as a benchmark for what he does not want to create. In fact, Prospect has its own color committee: It consists of Sofield's wife, Kelley Feeney, who serves as the committee's director, and Wallace. "When I moved here, there weren't colored houses anywhere in this state," Wallace says. "Builders think that if they paint a house with a color that evokes an emotion then buyers will run scared. I say go bold, and you'll grab somebody who will buy it." So far, none of the spec houses in Prospect have been on the market for more than two months without being sold.

What sort of people want to live in this community? While Republicans outnumber Democrats at Highlands Ranch, the only political signs in Prospect during last year's election were for Ralph Nader. Prospect has its share of upwardly mobile young families, but there are also people with lower incomes who live in apartments over the houses' garages. "You have your classic white trash here, which I love," Wallace says.