More important than the individuals who have settled in Prospect is the development's sense of community, stimulated in part by design disputes. The issue: Some original buyers thought that there would never be modern houses in Prospect. Now that new houses are starting to go up -- some of them right next door to Tudors and Victorians -- these people are unhappy. Some residents have aired their feelings publicly at homeowners' meetings, yielding productive community discussions. "That part is pleasing to us," Sofield says, "because it means that people are taking ownership of the project."
What Wallace and Sofield are seeking to achieve is admittedly tricky. "It's our feeling that a community is a group of individuals that in some ways is greater than the sum of its parts," Sofield says. "That's what we're trying to give expression to in the variety of buildings. In many New Urbanist projects, there is such an architectural homogeneity that there necessarily is a homogeneity in the inhabitants as well. These are extremely engaging issues for me. I expect to be pondering them forever."
It's still about the traffic. People sit in their cars, with their radios tuned to news programs and talk shows that explore the question of how to keep Colorado from becoming another southern California.
Some Coloradans believe that there's still an opportunity to make a difference -- to design a future that works. Soon, the land just a few miles from downtown Denver where Stapleton Airport once stood will become a mixed-use community of housing, businesses, and retail stores. The decommissioned Lowery Air Force Base, a few miles south of Stapleton, already has new houses on it, and so far they represent a happy medium between Highlands Ranch and Prospect. Lowery and Stapleton give Denver a rare gift: a chance to ask and answer questions about land, lifestyle, and legacy. It's unusual for a city to get a chance to start from scratch with one large urban tract, let alone with two. Unlike Highlands Ranch and Prospect, where a lack of plentiful public transportation options requires many households to have two cars, Stapleton can be integrated more easily into existing bus lines.
But for Denver, the question of how to build a pride-inspiring future remains unanswered. Highlands Ranch takes the suburban lifestyle that has spread across the country in the past 50 years and carries it to new heights -- or depths. The houses are larger, the tract more expansive, the development more commercially viable. But it is hard to look at Highlands Ranch's design philosophy or its car-centric version of community and find a future to embrace. Prospect New Town, for its part, speaks the language of community and celebrates authenticity. But it hasn't yet had enough influence on mainstream developers to alter the direction of urban growth. So what will Denver -- or Austin, Atlanta, San Diego, or Seattle -- have to offer in a decade?
Those who fear for Colorado's future have one hidden advantage that may guarantee some relief from the pressures of growth: The federal government owns 36% of the state's land. But Thomas Clark, professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Colorado at Denver, still worries about emerging demographic trends. "In the next 25 years, 40% of the gain in the American population will reside in just eight states in the Rocky Mountain West," he says. With the right amount of forward thinking, maybe the Denver of the future will be able to accommodate all of that new growth and still preserve the environment and lifestyle that make it so attractive in the first place. Or maybe the city will look like Los Angeles. Maybe the trajectory of development in the future will finally change. Or maybe it will stay the same. The same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Only much, much bigger.
Ron Lieber (rlieber@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Learn more about Highlands Ranch and Prospect New Town on the Web (www.highlandsranch.com; www.prospectnewtown.com).
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