Surprise's Future Growth Includes MXD Villages

John Hagen, Surprise's economic development director, says the plan is the city's way to try to manage the projected population tsunami. "In 1990, we had 7,000 people here and the 2000 census showed 31,000. Now we're at 105,000," he says. "We're anticipating, over time, that we'll have about a million people here."

To support the growing population, Surprise is annexing 306 square miles. Hagen tells GlobeSt.com that about 10% of the land has cleared the annexation process. "If you're master-planning an area like that, how can you do it in a way that creates communities that have connectivity and where people want to live," he says. "The city hit on the village concept--to take the general planning, then break it into management units that would be somewhat self-contained."

The village concept resembles that of neighborhoods in older cities like New York City and Chicago, where people live and shop within a few blocks of their home and only drive short distances to their offices. Hager points out that the growth of those neighborhoods came about by chance, but Surprise will have its neighborhoods on a master plan, thanks to General Plan 2020.

Wellington Reiter, dean of the College of Design at Arizona State University, says Surprise has contacted ASU about proposals for sustainable communities with residential, retail and office space. He thinks the village trend could be more in demand as commute times grow longer and gas prices go higher.

"These smaller areas where people can live, work and play in a reasonable distance are going to be more and more desirable because people want to get off those highways," Reiter tells GlobeSt.com. "Being in a car for two hours a day in an area where you came to enjoy the weather isn't great. And, people want to live in a place where they won't want to use their cars as much."

Reiter says Surprise and other cities moving in the village direction will have to examine their current procedures and mechanisms set up for suburban developments, which include detached homes, larger lots and more space for retail and office. "In a village arrangement, you'll have smaller lots with closer street frontage and smaller lots for retail," he says, adding planning and zoning might differ, but "it shouldn't be any harder to approve as long as the right codes and laws are in place."