The New Neighborhood Network

The people in Orange County’s newest subdivision will click a computer mouse to order pizza for dinner before heading to an old-fashioned ice-cream social on the town green.

They can invite all the neighborhood kids to a birthday party via e-mail--because every kid here has e-mail--and then stand on the front porch on their tree-lined street to welcome the children, who have all walked to the party instead of being driven.

This, at least, is the world according to the planners of Ladera Ranch, the biggest development to open in Orange County in the past decade. The eventual 8,100-home community opens its first phase this week.

The development is designed for people who yearn for the charm of the past but are inexorably tied to the future, who crave Main Street but can’t get through the day without eBay.

To start with, Ladera Ranch will be wired. High-speed cable modem is only the start. Every resident will be given an e-mail address and access to a network that acts like a Ladera-only Internet. Residents will be able to check their children’s school lunch menu or bus schedule, reserve golf tee times, alert others to soccer practice changes or order items from neighborhood businesses, which will be wired in.

Developer Rancho Mission Viejo LLC is seeking to create that sense of community everyone’s been complaining about missing, the kind of place where people porch-sit and neighbors borrow each other’s tools.

Garages are tucked behind Craftsman-reminiscent houses; pedestrian paths weave everywhere to encourage walking. The designers plan for trees on the grassy medians to someday spread out canopies of leaves above and charmingly buckle the sidewalks underfoot (while, in contrast, many older cities are pulling out their root-cracked sidewalks for repair).

But the development’s sheer size--4,000 acres divided into five “villages,” each with roughly 1,000 to 2,000 homes--will make fostering sociability a daunting task.

“Times are different, people’s lives are different,” said Ray Watson, vice chairman of the Irvine Co., a huge Orange County land developer. “They want this comfy-cozy feeling in their neighborhood, but they also can’t live without garage door openers and 85-inch TV sets.”

But thousands are buying into the vision--about 9,000 potential buyers have signaled interest in the first 960 homes, available for sale starting Saturday, at prices from $200,000 to more than $500,000.

Among them are Jay and Robin Turner.

“We want to know our neighbors. What a concept,” said Robin, 36, a part-time insurance broker, who along with her husband, a financial consultant, hopes to be among Ladera’s first residents. “It sounds so basic when you say it, but it’s so hard to do.”

Many suburban developments have community centers or clubs set up by social directors. But Ladera is trying to create, instantly, the sense of small-town neighborliness that historically evolves slowly.

One way to encourage friendliness is by discouraging use of cars. In the first village, for example, the developer devised dozens of walking trails and greenbelts that will curl around 17 neighborhoods, linking them together and leading residents to a centrally located clubhouse. Streets will have traffic circles, bringing speeds down the old-fashioned way, without the use of speed bumps.

Planners also hope the 19 “pocket parks,” each about the size of one residential lot, will promote chance encounters among neighbors. At least half the houses will have front porches, along the theory that porch-sitting also promotes casual conversation.

But will people actually sit on those front porches? Can a social mixer programmed by the developer-hired social director bring out the deep-seated folksiness that people remember from their childhoods?

Urban designers and developers have their doubts.

Unclear is how a plot-sized “pocket” patch of green, for example, will attract neighbors--especially if they’re all busily messaging each other on their universal e-mail. And having sidewalks, urban landscapers say, hardly is a guarantee that people will forsake the speed and convenience of cars.

Urban designer Peter Calthorpe said many builders latching on to the latest trend of “recreating nostalgia” are simply dressing up the status-quo, car-dependent suburbs. He doubts whether families will choose the 10-minute walk over the two-minute drive when they want to go to the community pool.

Ladera’s designers respond that their magnum opus comprises countless other innovations that will make the community work.

In one district, called Township, houses will encircle a town green, where a band shell will offer picnic-style concerts and the community Christmas tree will be lighted.

Ladera’s developers also will build four schools to ease the strain that thousands of new families will put on the already-crowded Capistrano Unified School District.

When designing the homes, planners shifted living areas--kitchens, family rooms and breakfast nooks--from the rear to the front, hoping residents will spill outside more often instead of pulling into their garages and retreating to the back of the house.

“When you look down a street in Ladera Ranch, we don’t want you to see one single garage,” said planner Steve Kellenberg. “We want you to see trees. And families.”

With more potential buyers than there are homes, builders anticipate they will be forced to set up priority lists for pre-qualified families or hold lotteries to avoid camp-outs. Their market research shows that Ladera’s buyers are mostly couples, ages 31 to 40, with combined annual incomes of more than $80,000. Most have children in elementary school and are looking for four- or five-bedroom homes. And they want it fully wired for Internet access and e-mailing the neighbors.

The risk, of course, is that all those high-tech-oriented families will use their wiring to create a virtual community, replacing the face-to-face meetings that Ladera’s designers have strived so hard to foster.

Ladera’s Kellenberg said the network is about having a choice in how one wants to socialize--digitally, in person, both or not at all.

“Yes I can e-mail the guy next door and say he hasn’t brought my hammer back,” he said. “But does that mean I won’t talk to him when I see him out getting his mail? I don’t think so.”