The North team's development concept calls for a number of residential "hilltop villages." At lower elevations, natural greenbelts would snake between these residential clusters. A commercial "town center" would be occupy the relatively flat eastern end of the site. Developed areas would account for less than 50 percent of the total site, and impervious cover, averaged for the whole site, meets the 15 percent maximum allowed by recharge zone regulations.
Still at issue Saturday morning was how to connect the "hilltop villages" west of the creek with those east of the creek. A surface roadway winding down and up would fragment the habitat and negatively affect wildlife, in the view of some team members. But a bridge linking the two sides of the site above flood level would most likely be impracticable economically. Suggestions of a minirail connection, without auto access across the creek, seem equally unworkable in a suburban setting. But this drama is still unfolding. Stay tuned.
Flesh was still to be added to the basic framework of the "hilltop villages" as of Saturday noon, so evaluation at this point is impossible. But the fundamental concept is sound: From both environmental and urbanistic standoints, it makes more sense to cluster intensive development, leaving substantial areas of relatively uninterrupted raw nature, than to spread low-density development evenly across an environmentally sensitive landscape.