Twenty miles from the twang of Nashville's guitars, the tranquil neighborhood of Westhaven comes into view. Here are elegant homes nestled among verdant hills. Lush vegetation and venerable trees blend naturally with the surrounding countryside. There are white picket fences and people strolling along the sidewalks.

Here, underneath all that beauty and tranquility, is the amalgamation of numerous theories, visions and plans. Southern Land Company (SLC), a real estate development firm, conceptualized Westhaven, a 1,500-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Franklin, Tenn. As the region's first TND, Westhaven assumed an experimental role. According to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), there are 13 daunting principles that the community should embrace. (Note: CNU is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization founded in 1993. It works with architects, developers, planners and others to create cities and towns that include "coherent regional planning, walkable neighborhoods and attractive, accommodating civic spaces.") Using these principles as a framework, SLC went outside academic and theoretic boundaries.

The traditional Franklin, Tenn. team members decided to get their hands dirty. They knew, for example, key new urbanism principles--such as homes should be within a five-minute walk of neighborhood centers. But they scrutinized the specifics of what makes such a walk resonate. They asked questions such as, "What do you see during those five minutes? What do you feel? What do you hear and smell?"

This detail-seeking dialectic came from the top: SLC founder and CEO Timothy Downey is a man known for his attention to the finer points of the broad brushstrokes. It was his vision of Westhaven that swept Southern Land Co. into a new urbanism dialogue. Professionals in the fields of landscape architecture and town planning pored over designs until not a drainpipe was left unexamined.

The consumers--homeowners taking that hypothetical walk--are now truly living the TND dream.

Management Mirrors Theory
The community's success has been credited in many respects to the company's management style. SLC is a vertically-integrated organization. This business model encourages an exchange of ideas among departments that includes landscape architecture, architecture, land planning, horticulture, homebuilding, civil engineering, finance, community development and marketing.

Not ironically, this interdisciplinary exchange of ideas mirrors the fundamental by-product of TND: a community that fosters communication and creativity. It also increases efficiency and thoroughness, thus ensuring that the details--the fundamental building blocks of a TND--are masterfully orchestrated. And it ensures that no one discipline overshadows the others.

Working as a team has kept every member focused on a singular vision driven by a simple question: What will help the Westhaven resident truly enjoy the community experience?

"Every discipline has input," says Rob Molchan, a town planner. "Everyone operates on the same wavelength. Our ideas coalesce and we have complete focus on one vision."

The Land of Land
To Southerners, land is lifeblood, but surprisingly, it took little convincing to persuade hundreds of pioneer-minded homeowners to eschew grand back yards for the shared green spaces of Westhaven.

Half of Westhaven's land, 768 acres, is open and green. Ultimately the developed portion will include 2,600 single-family homes interwoven with pedestrian paths, streets, retail spaces, condominiums and brownstone-style town homes.

Planned development mixed with open space is, by new urbanism maxims, diametrically opposed to conventional suburban development with big houses on large lots.

Still, while TND has precursors in certain historic towns such as Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, it is a largely new concept for middle Tennessee.

New urbanism's idea of borrowing from the past and providing modern amenities was one SLC embraced when planning Westhaven. Then as home sales outpaced expectations--at five to 10 percent above market average--SLC realized its belief in building communities, not subdivisions, was an idea long overdue in the region.

"It was something of a challenge to convince people to give up a big house and a big lot," explains Christopher Wood, a senior landscape architect at SLC. "But we created an atmosphere of comfort and beauty so that residents would experience enjoyment outside of their own property in communal spaces. I think it's also an idea people will continue to welcome, because with our busy lifestyles maintaining large landscapes isn't feasible."

Comfort Is Key
As a cornerstone of new urbanism, open space should theoretically be inviting. In reality, it can be intimidating. This was another psychological issue that landscape architects and planners examined. Again, they went beyond theory by examining the sensory experience of open space.

When people are overwhelmed by an expanse, the comfort level can go down, Wood believes. And the last thing a development firm wants is for homeowners to feel uncomfortable in what was theorized to bring comfort.

An effective way Westhaven landscape architects solved this potential problem was by layering plant materials to create garden rooms, producing an open space that was a comfortable scale for residents. In Westhaven's Founders' Square, edges are defined by evergreens; these are then scaled down to human size by layering multiple heights of plant materials such as flowering shrubs, perennials and groundcover.

This landscaping surrounds a fountain, a 22-foot sculpture inspired by the famous Forsyth Park Fountain in Savannah, Ga. "The fountain is an example of drawing people into a space," Crenshaw says. "People will sit by that fountain for 45 minutes at a time."

Utilizing Common Space
Westhaven landscape architects look for ways to get residents to actively use all spaces to add value to the community.

"We're not out there trying to design these open spaces that are strictly for marketing props," says Ben Crenshaw, SLC's vice president of landscape architecture. "It's all about the experience of living in these spaces, within this community, inside this house. It's all melded. That's why Westhaven's green spaces have been successful."

"Open space is nice, but if it isn't used, how successful is it?" Wood asks. "The design is not for the designer, it's for the people to use." At SLC, successful design and planning aims to evoke an emotional response. The team always remembers they're designing for people, not to elicit "cool" or "wow" reactions.

 
To further enhance green spaces, SLC is building a life-size chess set and a bocce court. Crenshaw notes, "You have to give people a reason to be there. You can't just say, 'Here's a big green! Go knock yourself out!'"

It's illustrative to take a "walk" through Westhaven, which is what Wood and the designers on the landscape team did--think about the sensory experience a resident might have while strolling through Westhaven.

"We incorporate various senses into our designs," Wood explains. "Sight is reflected in terminating vistas. Smell is fragrant plant material; roses are a primary one. Sound is the water flowing in the fountain at Founder's Square. Touch is the variety and texture of your building and plant materials."

For the dedication to making landscaping and horticulture an integral part of planning and not just an afterthought, SLC received the 2006 "Because Green Matters" award from Project EverGreen, a nonprofit with the goal of raising awareness about the environmental, economic and lifestyle benefits of landscapes. SLC, one of the few real estate companies to maintain a full-time horticulture staff, impressed Project EverGreen with its long-term commitment to educating residents on how to enhance and enjoy green spaces.

Attention to Details
As new urbanism suggests, Westhaven has adopted the idea of creating a village around a town center and making amenities easily accessible by foot.

Beyond its Founders' Square center, Westhaven also has a lakeside main street and is opening nearby shops, cafes, restaurants, businesses, and places of worship. Westhaven will also contain a civic center, an elementary school, a day care and an open-air amphitheatre.

This ultimate expanse of infrastructure creates a wide array of impressions. Again, success begins with attention to details.

"It was something of a challenge to convince people to give up a big house and a big lot."
--Christopher Wood, a senior landscape architect at Southern Land Company

"We pay attention to good views and bad views," Crenshaw says. "We want to screen what is not visually appealing and highlight what should be visually pleasing."

These elements are taken into account at the earliest stages of planning. Because of the vertical integration of the firm almost nothing is outsourced to consultants. So there isn't a lot of back-and-forth that eats up time. The walk from civil engineering to architecture in the office takes seconds. So, the logic of engineering meets the aesthetic of architecture, while land planning and landscape architecture bridge the gap between logic, function and aesthetic.

"A lot of planners do not think about practical application," Crenshaw observes. "Typically, planners may do their thing, then give it to engineering who may need to 'fix it' due to the practical concerns of gradings or drainage. We try not to go through that step."

This structure enables architects and planner to think more like engineers and vice versa.

"A lot of multidisciplinary firms don't communicate," Crenshaw says. "The big difference is we do communicate and try to facilitate this as much as possible. This adds four or five more layers to the planning, but facilitates better design in the end."

Among the 13 principles of new urbanism are a variety of design specifics. For example, garages--so common in typical home design--shouldn't be in full view, and parking should be behind buildings in commercial areas. Not only are they visually unappealing, they also break up what designers call "streetscape." At Westhaven garages are subtly tucked at back of homes, where they are accessible by alleys; on structures where this is not possible they are set back 20 feet beyond the front face of the facade.

TND principles specify that prominent sites, such as civic buildings, should be placed at terminating vistas of streets or in the neighborhood center. Iconic architecture or structures terminate the eyesight of a person on that roadway, visually capping off the end of the street.

At Westhaven one such focal point is the fountain at Founders' Square. When you drive into the community on State Boulevard, its glistening white curves cut a striking figure in the distance, where it sits amid well-balanced flora.

The best architectural example at a terminating vista is the 15,000-square-foot Residents' Club at the end of Townsend Boulevard. The white, Greek Revival-style building is designed with a breezy porch extending the length of the building on both levels. Inside is a 40-seat movie theater, teen game room, craft room, movement studio, meetings/events area, fitness room and more.

Danny Lane, vice president of product planning, architect, explains that at Westhaven "high-profile lots"--those ending at a streets end--demand that their home design gets a bit more fine-tuning than is standard throughout. Corner lots also transcend the already-lofty specifications: The two sides of a house facing the streets are designed to evidence a higher level of detail.

Interiors That Matter
Home interior specifics are not found within the new urbanism maxims, but Southern Land Co. has created its own, based on the ideal of quality over quantity. Because Westhaven's square footage is more expensive than the prevailing average, architectural plans are for open interiors, premium materials and no wasted space. Elements of detail add to the character of the house, including open stairways and ceilings that are 10 feet high, as opposed to the typical 8 or 9 feet ceilings. There is a higher quality level of inside trims, light fixtures and floorings. There is never any sheet vinyl, but instead tile, natural hardwood and carpet. This purity of execution paid off: Demand for homes remains high and prices are currently about 30 percent above forecast.

Iconic Porch
Great importance is placed on the front porch within the TND tenets. At Southern Land Co. the importance of this uniquely American addition reaches archetypal proportions. Perhaps nothing says "American hometown" more than front porches. At Westhaven no home has a porch less than eight feet deep. Ceiling fans and tongue-and-groove ceilings are additional refining touches. Additionally, homes have private back porches. "The outdoor living space has become just as important as the indoor space," Lane says.

Part of a porch's appeal and function is that it invites interaction. Who can't picture sitting and chatting on a porch? Of course, there are other functions that are more private, such as the afternoon snooze or a chance to do some reading.

The SLC design team weighed the public and private aspects of the porch and yard. At Westhaven, set backs average 40 feet from house to street on major avenues and boulevards; on minor avenues and boulevards, the set back is 31 feet and 21 feet on local streets. The porch encroaches into all of these. Such closeness to the sidewalks and streets fosters neighborly exchanges.

"This gets residents to focus energy on the street edge," says Molchan. "In a typical home, the set back could be 50 feet or more."

Still, within such close proximity there needs to be a layer of special differentiation between what is public versus private, according to SLC designers. At Westhaven, lots are graded so that homes are raised roughly two feet above street level. This allows for a subtle degree of separation. Between the porch and the sidewalk, low architectural walls or fences softened with plant material cordon off the private versus the public realm, while landscaped colonnades create visual interest.

Courtyards are areas that are strictly private, enclosed by fences made of wood or brick. Like the exterior streets and green spaces of Westhaven, they are richly landscaped.

Walking Through Westhaven
A core philosophy of new urbanism is that streets should form a network that provides both pedestrian and vehicular routes.

At Westhaven, SLC took an extreme aesthetic point of view in designing everything from wildlife corridor fingers to intersections.

"We worked backward from the end product," Crenshaw says. "We did the planning so that all the planting and everything in the public realm now works properly and in harmony."

Based on the initial topography of the 1,500 acres of rolling countryside, it was planned that Westhaven's infrastructure would be integrated with the natural features of the land so that it didn't seem like a rigid grid.

Weaving the environment into the development took shape in several ways. There are approximately four miles of community bicycle/pedestrian paths along with mid-block pedestrian corridors. Pathways between blocks add another layer to connect greens spaces and parks. Designated and undesignated nature preserves are extensive throughout the property. There are a dozen water features including the main 12-acre lake at the commercial town center. Most of the existing ponds are stocked with fish and incorporated into public open spaces for public enjoyment.

Native plants and perennials are used throughout in homeowners' yards and open spaces to encourage birds and other wildlife to peruse the neighborhood.

There are even four small gravesites and Native American burial mounds that were preserved and integrated for historic and environmental purposes; residents have started an historic society to maintain them.

Beauty in a Culvert
It's easy to see the inherent visual worth of a formation as grand as the Founders' Square fountain. When it comes to necessary infrastructure devices, such as culverts, the aesthetics get a bit shaky. While many development firms wouldn't give a culvert a second glance, the team at SLC scrutinizes it and identifies a solution.

"We take a lot more prep time and thought to add incremental details," says Molchan. "Most companies don't program in the time and money to hide culverts, for example. It's one of those many qualities that make us different from a long list of developers."

Rain gardens are a camouflaging solution with built-in benefits. Water-tolerant plants, such as irises, sedges and ferns, absorb nutrients in the runoff water and improve its quality. In some instances, the culverts have stone treatments to be more aesthetically pleasing.

Not Design for Design's Sake
All of these elements and principles translate into better community design, says Crenshaw.

"We're taking old-school, tried-and-true community design principles--from planning to architecture to landscape architecture--and applying it to modern systems."

SLC measures its designs by the 100-year rule. It doesn't follow fads, but wants design that has proved inherently pleasing to people--proportion and style. While orienting homes to what is popular in the market is important, these homes must also have lasting beauty and function.

"We're not going to smack people in the face with our designs," says Crenshaw. "We focus on the experience as a design element. We care what the form is from a plan view. In many cases no one but our team is going to notice the intimate detail, but the residents in our communities can feel the difference."

This approach is like going back to an introductory course in landscape architecture before the core philosophies of the profession are confused by theories. SLC focuses on the essential principles of design: scale, texture and space.

"You experience space from a simple standpoint," Crenshaw says. "We ask, 'Are you comfortable here?' A lot of designers lose sight of that."

Other than the residents, the arbiter of what is aesthetically and psychologically pleasing at Westhaven is CEO Timothy Downey.

Throughout the stages of planning, he goes to a site, stands in a space, and simply states whether or not he feels comfortable.

"He'll say, 'Shouldn't this be walled off here?'" says Crenshaw. "Or, 'I can see that way, but I shouldn't be able to see out there, should I?' He just does it intuitively."

A Sense of Community
The end-product of traditional neighborhood development--community--was forged at Westhaven almost as soon as residents purchased homes. As locals joke, one barely has time to unpack before getting sidetracked by invitations to activities and visits from neighbors.

They also experience a newfound freedom as they walk outside the comfort zones of their own property onto the green spaces, sidewalks and bridges that comprise the communal space.

And that's a great walk for Westhaven residents and the team at Southern Land Co. Because wherever one ventures, it's a wonderful experience to arrive.