A Progression of Public Spaces

Public outdoor spaces usually come in two packages: the public park and the greenbelt with walkway/activity pathway. Steve Kellenberg argues that to make these spaces really work, builders and developers must refine their design approach to the scale of individual neighborhoods and streets.

Kellenberg, a land- and community-planning principal with EDAW Inc. in Irvine, Calif., makes this argument through his plan for Terramor, the latest village unveiled by Rancho Mission Viejo Co. in its master-planned Ladera Ranch community in Orange County, Calif. Terramor will combine the best elements of New Urbanism and suburban living with a preponderance of single-family homes that have rear-loaded garages and front on green spaces and paseos and arroyos that link neighborhoods and streets with the entire community.

"The idea is that your front door is set in a garden and that the whole village is knitted together in a rustic landscape," Kellenberg says. "These are the places where there will be opportunity for neighbors to encounter one another by chance."

These green linkages move from "primary neighborhood paseos" to larger, more formal "village paseos" and eventually to the "central arroyo" that runs the length of 1,250-unit Terramor.