Charles Brewer is a developer of the Glenwood Park community in Atlanta

Glenwood Park community

ORLANDO (By Robert Johnson, NYTimes) February 20, 2004 - Dale Borders is shopping for a home in Orlando, Fla., and he's unabashedly enthusiastic about joining the area's suburban sprawl.

Not that the father of five hasn't been enlightened about life in so-called new urban neighborhoods, which tout pedestrian-friendly, close-knit mixes of houses, apartments, parks and stores. Many of the houses feature large front porches and have rear alleys that lead to detached garages. All this is supposed to hark back to a simpler time - and a better one.

But that holds no appeal at all for Mr. Borders, 30, a self-employed salesman of business promotional items who recently fled the winters of Boston.

"We want to spread out and do our thing," he said. "We want a big backyard and a swimming pool." New urbanism's sales pitch that residents can walk to the market or doctor's office isn't for him. "Walk everywhere with five kids? I don't think so," he added.

Although new urban communities are relatively hot sellers in some areas, new urbanism in its purest form remains essentially an idealistic model that does not appeal to the vast majority of buyers.

Building industry estimates put the share of such homes at up to 10 percent of all new homes sold annually, depending on how these communities are defined. (Some planned communities contain new urban sections interspersed with standard suburban tracts.)

This reality falls short of the predictions of some green-minded land planners that new urbanism would transform suburban sprawl into more compact, livable communities. Suburbia, where the internal-combustion engine is king and the garage its castle, is seen by many land planners as a gas-wasting, fume-choked mess where the desolation is broken only by patches of high-maintenance grass and ornamental plants.

In the view of new urbanists, a better vision was unveiled in 1981 on North Florida's Gulf Coast in then-sparsely populated Walton County, with the 80-acre community called Seaside by the developer Robert Davis and the husband-and-wife architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Lauded by architectural critics, it has since evolved into a vacation spot with few full-time residents. Some real estate industry consultants say that's partly because vacationers, especially at the beach, are happy to walk a bit more than normal.

But when it comes to the mass market, and the hard facts of full-time living, most home buyers still aren't willing to part with their auto-oriented lifestyle.

Lewis Goodkin, a real estate researcher in Miami who advises developers across the Sunbelt, endorses new urbanism in theory but doubts that it will work as well in practice. "We're seeing that there's a limit to how much walking a lot of people are willing to do," he said. "Most aren't going to trudge through the rain, or even heat and humidity, to the grocery store and lug back a heavy bag."

What's more, there's little evidence that the vast majority of American drivers are ready to give up their cars, says Gopal Ahluwalia, an economist at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, whose members include advocates of both new urban communities and car-happy subdivisions. "While new urban communities look good and have some wonderful features, they're more popular with architects and designers than they are with potential buyers," he said.

The association's research shows that less than 20 percent of consumers want to live in an urban setting. "Most are trying to get away from urban density," Mr. Ahluwalia said, "and getting away means the suburbs with big lots, plenty of room between houses and cul-de-sacs to reduce traffic."

The barriers to changing the view of the suburbs have not deterred Charles Brewer, an Internet entrepreneur who has become a developer. "I have thought of most developers as destroyers; I really don't like what they have done," said Mr. Brewer, who founded Mindspring Enterprises, an Internet service provider, and then merged it with Earthlink in a $1.7 billion stock swap. Mr. Brewer, 46, has invested $8 million in starting a 28-acre new urban community called Glenwood Park in a formerly commercial area near downtown Atlanta.

Like other critics of traditional suburban design, he dislikes dead-end streets because they "breed congestion and inhibit a sociable atmosphere," just as he dislikes garages that face streets at the end of long driveways. They just add pavement and put "all the emphasis on cars," said Mr. Brewer, who rides a bicycle on the short commute to his Atlanta office.

In his mind, the better alternative would be Glenwood Park's mix of retail space on the ground floor of four-story or five-story buildings that have apartments located above, flanked by town houses and a few nearby single-family dwellings; about 400 living units in all. The homes are selling well, he says, and the community will be fully occupied sometime in 2006. Prices range from $150,000 to $700,000. The kind of buyer outlook that these developers are counting on is epitomized by Shirley Johnson, 55, of Okeechobee, who recently retired from the bail bonds business and bought a town house in Orlando's Avalon Park, a new urban community. "It has a real neighborhood feel to it: a small bank, little delis and a farmers' market open every Saturday with fresh fruits and vegetables," said Mrs. Johnson, who is buying the home for herself and her husband, Daniel.

Moving from a semirural area where she had to drive almost everywhere, Mrs. Johnson says she's looking forward to strolling, meeting her neighbors and enjoying the convenience of not having to drive for much of her shopping and other personal business. "And it's real cute," she said of her $210,000 home and the Avalon Park environment. Still, she's keeping her options open: her town house has a two-car garage and Mrs. Johnson isn't selling her 2002 Jaguar.

The reluctance of Avalon Park residents to give up their cars underscores the limits of new urbanism. As their numbers grow and more are built away from urban cores, they're becoming suburbanized.

"The American dream house is typically located about an 8- to 10-minute drive from schools and places where we do errands, but not many people want the bank or the grocery store practically in their backyards," said Gail Rocca, an Orlando real estate agent at HomeJoy Real Estate, retained by Mr. Borders.

Sherry McMurtrie, an agent for Re/Max Properties in Orlando, said that clients shopping for homes inquire about new urban neighborhoods far more often than they actually locate in one. They often opt for typical suburbia because they want a lot big enough for a swimming pool, and for privacy. Clients relocating from the Northeast sometimes tell her, "I don't want a 'sugar house," a home where a neighbor can reach from her own window to theirs to borrow a cup of sugar.