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[Note: This material is copyright by the Des Moines Register, and is reproduced here as a matter of "fair use" for non-commercial, educational purposes only. Any other use may require the prior approval of the Des Moines Register.]

The city of Ankeny and its chosen developer for the former ISU dairy farm envision a community within a community that has all the amenities people are looking for today: a city center with a mix of retail and residential around a public square; generous space for trails, lakes and parks; walkable, tree-lined streets; houses with garages in the back and porches on the front. In a decade or less, it could be home to 10,000 new residents and a retail/entertainment magnet for visitors from Ankeny and the entire metro area.

Ankeny is in some respects a small town and in others a prototypical suburb. It sprang up in the late '40s around a factory that made ammunition in the Second World War. Two years ago, the city was handed a golden opportunity when Iowa State University decided to sell its dairy farm, which occupied part of the ordnance plant site. With a 1,100-acre site entirely within the city and virtually undisturbed, it could have carved it up for piecemeal development. Instead, the city picked a single developer - Ankeny native Dennis Albaugh, who has made a fortune in global agricultural-chemical sales - and set out to do something special.

The city and Albaugh appear to have gotten it right in every respect.

It is a model for community development in Iowa and perhaps the nation - right down to a plan for making the city center a hub for an express bus route into downtown Des Moines.

The goal is a livable community that will have a gentle impact on the environment by conserving storm-water runoff and encouraging pedestrian access and use of public transportation. Rather than sitting apart from the existing community of Ankeny, Prairie Trail will be integrated into surrounding neighborhoods by common streets and trail systems.

This is a revolutionary project in the context of traditional suburban development, or urban redevelopment. It is a rejection of sprawling cookie-cutter subdivisions, strip malls and big-box retail, which Ankeny has embraced in the past. It represents a return to an earlier approach to building a community.

It is no accident that the planning firm working for the city and developer Albaugh seized on small-town Iowa as a model for the project. Architects with Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh, nationally recognized for urban-planning work, conducted several reconnaissance missions to Iowa communities. They were impressed with Iowa's courthouse squares bounded by retail shops with apartments above and surrounded by neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and Prairie School architecture.

That is the essence of virtually every Iowa town incorporated before World War II. If there is a lesson in the Ankeny experience, it is that Iowa has tremendous assets in its 950 towns that offer precisely the sort of lifestyle that Americans hunger for today. Iowa's mission should be to preserve those communities and duplicate their best attributes as the state changes and grows in the future.