I wish they would do something like this in NJ. My town is infamous for allowing beautiful, old homes to be torn down to make way for cookie-cutter McMansions (and they are all built by the same builder so they really are identical). About six blocks away from me, they tore down a Victorian era home with a big front porch, curved glass windows and the most beautiful old front door (it needed work, but there was so much potential there). People say it is cheaper to tear down & start over but I get so mad when people call a house a "tear down".

i lived in boulder for five years, and in that time new 'towns' between boulder and denver just kept cropping up...fasted growing area in the country...blahblahyakyak.

tons of gated communities, ginormous cookie cutter ugly frickin' houses...even in boulder itself, so many apartment complexes, townhouses, etc... eventually, what i fell in love with in boulder became overwhelmed by what i despised - the utter lack of charm rampant in new development.

i'm so glad to hear they're playing with ways to give smaller footprints a bigger incentive. it doesn't hurt to TRY.

What's Boulder's regulation will do is encourage more building outside the city limits (and outside the scope of the law), thus increasing sprawl. For this to work, it needs to be so broadly regional that there's no practical way for people with local jobs to live outside the range of the law.

The one change that can truly stop the train of McMansion building is rising energy costs. If it simply costs too much for a normal family in their 4-BR McMansion to heat and cool their home (and to commute to their jobs), people will start moving to more affordable dwellings.

It was the cost of modernizing utilities that created a mass move from Victorian mansions to more compact homes in the 1910s. That, and servants left for better jobs in factories, leaving women to run their houses by themselves -- a solution that may be mimicked by current efforts to stem illegal immigration from Mexico.

I should add -- since I'm usually the unpleasant voice of reason on second-order effects -- that I'm totally in favor of decreasing sprawl and encouraging smaller footprints.

One major reason I'm switching into the investment field is that I want eventually to be able to direct large amounts of money to projects that have a real chance of achieving their goals.

BOOMER, why so bitter about Portland? I think the urban growth boundary and small lot sizes (to encourage urban density) is an amazing accomplishment. It allows the city easy access to local farms/produce/meat etc. not to mention quick and easy access to the beautiful natural assets we have in Oregon/Washington. I can drive for 30 to 40 minutes and be in the mountians on a river in complete solitude and i LOVE it! no sprawling cookie cutter houses as far as the eye can see like in Dallas, Tx. where i grew up. Forcing urban density has also given Portland its fabulous neighborhood-y feel. Old buildings get rehabilitated into local business and resturant space instead of big box stores showing up and ripping stuff out to make room for parking lots and strip malls. Thanks to the planning and density in portland i have everything i need within easy walking/biking distance. Portland has AMAZING things to offer thanks to the planning and foresight of leaders past. And it is still the most affordable 'big' city on the west coast... I would argue with anyone that Portland is the most pleasant and liveable city in the U.S.