Dwelling in Expanded Biotic Communities: Steps Toward Reconstructive Postmodern Communities - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 335

in Las Vegas but never found. 18 The website for this development plays on the need for a
sense of community today:
It's the beginning of the next great town of Nevada. Reminiscent of the place you grew
up in, where nature and neighborhoods coexist. Your neighbors are your friends. And
kids can be kids.*
This strategy touches the deep longing for community on the part of home buyers,
to dwell in a place as opposed to merely inhabit. The fragmentation, alienation, and
unease that characterizes much of urban life today makes such and campaigns all the
more effective. But the upshot of this is that developments themselves do not satisfy
this hunger and, in some cases, only make things worse. While what is sought is a
sense of belonging, of dwelling in a community, what is delivered is more isolation and
dislocation. Gated communities with guard houses may give a false sense of security
and a sense that “undesirables” are being kept out, the design of such communities only
isolates people further from neighbors in nearby communities behind their own walls.
Beautiful scenery and mountains nearby can provide a scenic backdrop, a feature often
desired by homeowners, but unless efforts are made to create parks, trails, and other
access to the undeveloped desert and mountains, people remain unconnected to the
land and often oblivious to what is there and how their own actions will impact it. Native
plants and animals are viewed as “pests” to be kept out, even if such species are part
of the ecosystem within which the development is a part. But it need not be so. Using
the features of true postmodern, mixed communities I presented earlier, it is possible
to ask questions about what might be yet done in Coyote Springs in order to make it a
community rather than one more development in the desert.
The only major things to be built in Coyote Springs so far are several champion-
ship style golf courses (Figure 18.14). The plan as reflected in the website seems to be to
make the development a destination community for people wishing to golf extensively.
FIGURE 18.14
The one golf course in Coyote Springs with recycled water ponds and terraced pools.
* www.villagesofcoyotesprings.com/index_go.php (accessed July 19, 2009).