Village Homes began as the developers’ vision in making what they call “a better place to live.” Born out of the social and environmental concerns of the 1960s and 1970s, Village Homes was intended as a reflection of these times’ environmental sensitivity and social responsibility. (Francis 20)
As the Corbetts write in Designing Sustainable Communities, Lewis Mumford, in 1960, poetically characterized the grim effects that sprawling development patterns were having (and would continue to have) on the American landscape:
“Park” now usually means a desert of asphalt, designed as a temporary storage space for motorcars; while “field” means another kind of artificial desert, a barren area planted in great concrete strips, vibrating with noise, dedicated to the arrival and departure of planes. From park and field unroll wide ribbons of concrete that seek to increase the speed of travel between distant points at whatever sacrifice of esthetic pleasures or social opportunities. And if our present system of development goes on, without a profound change in our present planning concept and values, the final result will be a universal wasteland, unfit for human habitat, not better than the surface of the moon. (Corbett and Corbett 2000, 124)