Eli passed along information today about Prospect, Colorado’s first New Urbanist community. Viewed under a microscope, it is a very cool looking place — well-designed houses, a community business district with home-grown businesses, trees and parks. But, when viewed as a part of a whole, the project seems to seems to fail at one of its core purposes: reducing sprawl. Examine the map to see where exactly Prospect is, and you’ll see that instead of renovating an existing community in the New Urbanist mold, the developers simply built their community somewhere undeveloped. Isn’t this just sprawl with a pretty face and mom and pop businesses?

Posted on 9 February 2005