The Revitalist

Picture the scene: it's 2025, and you and your family are living in a beautiful, leafy-green village that seems more 19th century than 21st, even though it has only been in existence for ten years and is just 20 miles from a major American city.You know all of the 150 or so souls in the village; you see them at the market where you pick up a box of locally-grown produce once a week. You see half of them in the morning as they board the commuter train for school or work in the city; the other half are the network warriors who work from home or, on warm days, use the free Wi-Fi in the village square.It all seems a world away from the crumbling old 20th-century suburbs people used to live in, if you could call it living. You shudder to think you could still be living there. Oh, and you see that really nice house just down the bicycle lane? That's yours, the fruits of your smart move to plunk down a payment on a piece of the hottest new trend in real estate.

CNN reports that "New Villages" like Hercules, CA are the wave of the future with the density and convenience of urban life and the bucolic friendliness of the countryside. This is essentially the transit-oriented village concept transplanted out into the more rural hinterland. The Center for Transit-Oriented Development notes that the demand for housing within walking distance of transit will more than double by 2025. The article notes that these developments are smart investments not just because of the increasing demand, but also because of the efficiencies in denser designs.

Sounds like a nice place to live. I guess if you're going to do greenfield development, it might as well be dense and smart growth. But how many greenfields are you going to be able to find that are 20 miles from a major urban center and on a rail line? Pretty soon we're going to have to consider demo-ing already built suburbs to create new pastoral environments that are close to the city - is that going to be feasible?