Neighborhood Design

West Villageblog.
segd.org/2010/03/going-green-at-uc-davis/

        West Village is a new sustainable neighborhood project that has 6 main general goals that are ideal for a sustainable and successful developed area. They include type of building, access to/around the area, space, transit, mix use, and environmental strategies. Village Homes has similar goals, walking and biking, drainage, agriculture, nature, and community, but inevitably the way in which Village Homes was carried out is much more personal than West Village and really does create a community.
       Not only did tenants get to help build and put in their own time, but they were consulted during the creation, about land use expectations and ideal living characteristics. In terms of individual behavior, this community design was about the individuals behavior. In other words, it helped make individuals behaviors to be convenient, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing, while West Village is not catered to the individuals behavior, but more of a group behavior, which in turn could create a cohesive community. There is a bigger picture in West Village, one that is closer to other neighborhoods, while Village Homes takes to pushing boundaires and trying new things that haven't yet been done.

Both have the positive goal of achieving a sustainable living area, where we incorporate the knowledge we have learned about living in harmony with the ecosystem, but on different scales and catered to slightly different people.

Village Homes in Davis, California (photo by Wayne Senville, Planning Comm'rs Journal, www.plannersweb.com).
It goes to show that the individuals behavior is important if you are designing for an individual and their sustainable habits. It can be looked at the other way by shaping the landscape to encourage and potentially change behavior in numbers using design.