Agritopia pictures as promised:
Sign for the grill from the road
They did an excellent job of tree-lining even the major boulevard that borders the development. I wish we saw more landscaping like this downtown if grass is too expensive/water intensive for the planter strips. The flower strips look great and would look even better if a few agaves, barrel cacti or century plants were added to fill in the dirt gaps.
For all the talk of walkability, it seemed most people drove to the grill (though that is in part due to the development not being at full build out, most of the homes are far from the grill).
More of the grill
This self serve farm stand had goods for sale that were grown on site
The coffee shop
Thats right, they have a Vespa service place
The parking spots near the retail were made of a permeable paver which was great to see (though the drivable part is the traditional asphalt)
This small (actually old) building is the Agritopia offices
nice arches abounded in the retail area
parts of the still functioning farm operation
In the distance past the undeveloped section you can see a typical strip mall
Homes in the distance, you only see garage fronts because these are the 'backs' of homes. The next phase will have other homes facing their garages towards these ones.
Some of the alleys had small areas for visitor parking (check out that sweet Vibe!)
Nothing says walkable urbanism like a Hummer!
The largest surface lot in the development served the private Christian school
The rather ugly school. The fact that it was a private religious school added to the Stepford feeling of the place.
But it had a nice field with built in bleachers
The town clubhouse had meeting rooms inside (a bday party was going on) and a pool behind it, as well as tennis courts that border the schools ballfield and create a nice recreation area.
Agritopia does a poor job of terminating views with major buildings or interesting visual resting points. Tsk tsk, messing up one of the main tenants of TND.
This large linear park backs up to the 202 and does a good job of buffering the residents
This main street with the round about didn't have on street parking, but most streets did
Many of the smaller houses forego yards all together and are built around a communal green space. The garages are built into the back of the homes (like seen above)
Another popular design configuration was homes backing up to large linear park spaces. Most of these homes had garages or carports on their sides set far back from the street
Like that!
Various housing types abound
A lot of the houses like this one had parking on the side and a granny flat style in the back. This made for a very small backyard (more of a courtyard really) though it doesn't much matter since it backs up to open space.
Also those white fences you see everywhere are fucking plastic, I tried leaning on one and almost broke it!
Agritopia does a lot of stuff well, and is much better than most sprawl. However it does a poor job with retail (there's only the farm stand, coffee shop and grill), there's no office space, some of the streets are too curvilinear & they don't end with nice views. Then there's my typical complaints against the fake architecture and the silly theme, even though it is indeed a working farm, the 'topia' part of the name is eye roll worthy. The location while far flung to me isn't nearly as bad as Verrado.
I give it:
Two Andres Duanys (out of a possible 5)!
EDIT: VV Oh many of them do have yards that I would say are the same size as most homes being built in suburban Phoenix nowadays, that just wasn't too interesting for me to photograph-- plus people's back yards are private and I didn't want to snoop too much. Now the yards aren't like what you'd see in say Arcadia, but yards have been getting smaller and smaller in the Valley for 15 years or so it seems to me, at least Agritopia augments that with well planned common space.
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