New Urbanism at home in this suburb

The most noticeable landmark along the road into the Issaquah Highlands is its sparkling park-and-ride garage.

Covered in silvered shingles that swing with the breeze, it shimmers in the sun like a gigantic princess-cut diamond.

Nearly full at midday, the 1,000-stall structure is a crown jewel of this development, which has been carefully designed to foster a pedestrian culture of neighborly interaction.

Some Issaquah Highlands residents don't need to park, only to ride.

Every weekday morning David Wiggins walks less than a mile down Park Drive to board the bus that will take him to work.

The ride takes 10 minutes, Wiggins said, "about the same as driving."

A little more than a year ago, Wiggins lived in Berkeley, Calif., where he worked as a cartographer at an urban-planning firm.

Word of the Issaquah Highlands has traveled fast and far among the urban-design set, and when he landed a job with Expedia in nearby Eastgate, he knew immediately where he was going to live.

"I kind of decided I was going to move there before I had even seen it," he said.

"I am really a city person and don't want to live in a typical suburb."

The New Urbanism

The Issaquah Highlands' reputation stems from its design, the concept of New Urbanism, which promotes walkable communities and sustainable design.

New Urbanists eschew the cloned, car-centric, cul-de-sac model that has come to define much of suburban living over the past few decades.

In the Issaquah Highlands, closely spaced houses, duplexes, condos and apartments are near commercial hubs.

Community parks replace spacious backyards, and sidewalks and trees line narrow streets.

Besides restaurants and cafes, a Montessori school, a gym and a community center all are within walking distance of most homes.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Wiggins. "When I first saw it, I was kind of freaked out. It's so far from Seattle, and there're all these houses and buildings stacked on top of each other."

But Wiggins overcame his initial trepidation about the suburbs, and with his wife, who telecommutes to her office in San Francisco, he bought a single-family house in Crofton Springs, one of several subneighborhoods within the Issaquah Highlands.

"I eventually came around and realized it was perfect for me," said Wiggins.

Retail center at base

Two-thirds complete, the Issaquah Highlands will harbor at least 3,200 homes when fully built, adding about 7,000 people to the once-sleepy city of Issaquah (which now has nearly 25,000 residents).

An upscale retail center similar to University Village in Seattle will go in at the base of the development, to draw shoppers from the entire region.

The Issaquah Highlands wasn't an easy project to get off the ground.

Washington's Growth Management Act of 1990 pushed local communities to decide where and how they wanted development to unfold, and in Issaquah they wanted growth to concentrate in the Highlands area, with the surrounding 1,400 acres of woods to remain intact.

Judd Kirk, the president of the development company, Port Blakely Communities, said he worked with area residents, city, state and county officials for five years to create an acceptable master plan and get the permits to build.

"Nobody says 'I love sprawl,' " Kirk said, but rural areas usually are zoned so that high-density development is difficult, he said.

Builders also have been required to meet stringent environmental standards, some of which the builders themselves helped develop in partnership with King County and the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

Issaquah Highlands' master plan also stipulates that about one-third of the units must be affordable to middle-income families, based on various formulas.

Prices range from condos under $200,000 to multimillion-dollar houses.

City folk in the 'burbs

The Highlands have attracted a lot of self-described city people who didn't imagine they'd ever live in the suburbs, including Judd Kirk's daughter, Lisa Hysom.

"I had a condo in Belltown and I loved that I could walk to everything," said Hysom.

After she got married and wanted to have children, having more space became a priority, and she and her husband bought a three-bedroom home in the Highlands for $380,000.

She was attracted to the Highlands' claim to community, but wondered if it would live up to the hype.

"I wasn't sure if it was just marketing spin," she said.

Her doubts disappeared after she joined a support group for new mothers, where neighbors delivered homemade dinners to her doorstep.

Within a year, her husband's parents also moved there from Mercer Island, and then her brother-in-law and his wife followed suit.

In addition to having family around, Hysom said she was pleased by her neighborhood's diversity.

"The suburbs used to be mainly white, and the diversity was more in Seattle," said Hysom, but "the Highlands is really ethnically diverse."

Hysom, who is white, said that within two or three blocks of her house are people from India, South Africa and the Czech Republic, as well as African Americans and Asian Americans.

"That really surprised me," she said.

As to how the people of Issaquah have responded to the new community, if there was any tension, it seems to have dissipated.

"Initially there was some degree of resentment from long-term residents toward newcomers," said Ava Frisinger, the mayor of Issaquah. "But that seems to have gone away. People from downtown will go up to use the dog park. There's been a pretty solid bonding."