The brains behind a conceptual, planned community in Colorado is imagining a city where cars aren’t allowed, bikes are free and 50,000 people live within a square mile.
Blogger Pete Adeney and Amsterdam-based property development agency, B4place, say that if their conceptual “Cyclocroft” community between Longmont and Boulder were to be built, they would start from scratch to avoid “antique car-based building/zoning rules,” according to Forbes.
Adeney, who has 300,000 regular readers blogging as “Mr. Money Mustache,” concedes people will deride the idea as a “high-tech hippie commune,” but told Forbes a settlement like Cyclocroft could attract Millennials and other people who don’t see living closely together as a compromise, “but rather an opportunity to regain once-cherished benefits, including incidental socialization and collaboration.”
Using traditional Dutch standards as a model, the community would feature parks, small public squares and no malls. Shops would be built close to homes, similar to the zoning rules that enforce retail proximity in The Netherlands.
“But the precedent for something like this in North America is virtually non-existent. NIMBYs, codes, standards, and the entrenched are effectively unchallenged and lawyered up,” Adeney said. “The average person has understandably become pretty cynical about any development, because the vast bulk of it is disposable wasteland in the making, no matter how posh it may have started out.” [Forbes] — John O’Brien