Kentlands

One of the worst sins of suburban sprawl is its lack of user-friendliness. A typical tract features big, detached homes set far apart, with few of the traditional touches -- porches, sidewalks, alleys -- that serve to encourage such quaint customs as kibitzing with the neighbors and traveling by foot. For those activities, you have to head to the local mall.That's why the Howard County Council should be congratulated for recently voting, while sitting as the Zoning Board, to give preliminary approval to new regulations that would allow "traditional neighborhood design."

The merry month of May is many things to many people in Maryland. It's the Preakness, the beginning of summer on Atlantic Ocean beaches, trekking in Western Maryland mountains. It's also Maryland Preservation Month, which is as wonderful an excuse as any to examine the enormous variety of Maryland communities.Throughout May, dozens of exhibits, tours and workshops are being held to "make the connection" between preservation and livable communities, which is the official slogan of the month.

Baltimore County planners have come up with some intriguing ideas for the development of the northeastern area of the county known as Honeygo. That's a good thing, because pretty soon it wouldn't be Honeygo. It'd be Honey-came and went . . . to Harford County.One of every seven new homes in the Baltimore metropolitan region over the past five years was built in Harford. More than 32,000 of those homeowners moved from Baltimore County. While this middle-class mushroom cloud fanned out in Harford, Baltimore County to the south was left with the rich, the poor and the elderly.

It would be ironic, or generous, to use the word "design" in a discussion of the way modern suburbia generally has been laid out.Madness minus method, American suburban growth of the past half-century has been marked by sprawling ticky-tack housing tracts and copy-cat shopping centers built to accommodate the continual flow of fleeing urbanites. All too often, these booming new communities have gone up without consideration of their inevitable impact on local roads, schools and ecology.That is why two huge planned developments coming to the Baltimore region -- Honeygo in northeast Baltimore County and Waverly Woods II in northern Howard County -- are so unusual and praiseworthy.

NO ONE would mistake Carroll County Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown for a "Deadhead," an aging groupie of the venerable rock band, the Grateful Dead. Few would consider him the acting county executive, either.Yet that's the impression Mr. Brown is making by his unilateral push to convert part of the Springfield Hospital Center near Sykesville to a rock concert pavilion, after the state turns over the surplus property to the county, charges his fellow commissioner, Richard Yates."South Carroll doesn't really need the streets clogged with old Volkswagen buses with peace signs and marijuana smoke wafting out the windows," Mr. Yates fumed.

The merry month of May is many things to many people in Maryland. It's the Preakness, the beginning of summer on Atlantic Ocean beaches, trekking in Western Maryland mountains. It's also Maryland Preservation Month, which offers a wonderful excuse to examine the enormous variety of well-preserved or recycled historic buildings in this state.Throughout May, dozens of exhibits, tours and workshops "make the connection" between "preservation and livable communities," which are the two official slogans of the month.

A fresh vision of suburbia is headed for the Baltimore region. Small lots. Narrow streets. Condominiums near townhouses near houses, each looking a little different from the one next door. Garages tucked discreetly out of view, facing alleys. Stores, offices, parks and a field filled with schools just a stroll away. No cul-de-sacs. Not one. If it sounds more like a city than the suburbs, that's because its planners are taking their cue not from post-World War II living but from old-time places like Roland Park and Annapolis.

If the developer of the 171-acre Phillips property outside Union Bridge sticks to his new plans, G. Jackson Phillips may set a welcome precedent in Carroll County. Instead of going ahead with plans for the standard cookie-cutter subdivision of 400 homes, he has retained a land planning company that wants the new development to reflect the small-town feel of Union Bridge.The results of less thoughtful approaches to residential subdivisions litter the Carroll landscape. Interchangeable subdivision plans imposed on the landscape without any consideration of the land's natural contours and features or acknowledgment of existing buildings or communities are all too common.