Because spare for the greater part of the year, pictured below are an abundance houses. Why abundant? Because I have shared little. Why spare? Several America250 projects in arts and culture have consumed nearly all of 2025. Next year, 2026, our semiquincentennial anniversary, the promise of a great renewal in the beautiful and good arts. Of this more to tell, later. Now, the American traditional neighborhood.
Civic Planning
Nearly 15 years ago I was tasked with planning a 48 square mile city. The city spanned three Florida counties, Okeechobee, Indian River, and Port Saint Lucy. The city’s center was to be a 10 square mile entertainment park divided into 10 one square mile sections. The sections were Latin named in the manner of Roman provinces, Asia, Germania, Hispania, Africa, Arabia, Italia, et cetera, and another province unimagined by Rome, America.
Traditional Neighborhood, Mid-Atlantic, 4a Houses, M. Curtis, des.
The City, AEGEA
The city was titled Aegea, “AEGEA”, Art and Entertainment in a Global Exhibition of Architecture. Inspired by Walt Disney’s vision of EPOCT (Experimental Planned COmmuniTy showcasing modern innovation). Classive rather than Progressive, Aegea rejected shopping center Modernism. As you know, the EPCOT “nations” though delightful are merely a few yards deep and are belittled by the Mod architectural innovations of nearby EPCOT. As you know, cold, steel-hard modernist innovations have brought humanity more ill than good. AEGEA intended to restore good, healthy American traditions, and to foster fertility in Classive arts.
Many of Disney’s architects, designers, CG artists, and executives joined the AEGEA project. Those were days when Woke shadows were lengthening, when Disney’s began the practice of sex and race swapping, the subterfuge of traditional American culture, its ugliness, sexual corruption, and petty hatreds. Aegea was intended to return the arts, especially film and architecture, to wholesomeness. My task, to design the central 10 square miles of Classive Civilization’s essential cultures, and to extend architectural traditions as though corrupting Modernism never existed. That and designing 38 square miles of beautiful, traditional neighborhoods.
My team included some of America’s best classical architects and civic planners. We were prepared to create a great city like the once great cities, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New York, etc. before these degenerated into the brutalist, Blue Leftist slums they now are. Aegea was kind, healthy, friendly, a make America great again city before Make America Great Again. The project was supported by numerous political and civic leaders who foresaw the Left’s intended tyrannies, tyrannies we came to experience through aggressive COVID overreach.
Traditional Neighborhood, Mid-Atlantic, 3b Houses, M. Curtis, des.
Traditional Neighborhood
Floridians have a rich architectural tradition. Florida’s Tidewater, Colonial, Spanish and Mediterranean, Deco and Beaux Arts home styles are often gathered into distinct communities and are sometimes comfortably intermixed. Aegea was to favor architectural styles friendly to one another, as in the way that birds of a feather flock together. Yes, the occasional Jay will have its way, but the Jays too had a place.
The primary stylistic model was Coral Gables, among the nation’s first planned communities, a City Beautiful development that is beautiful even today. Aegea enjoyed advantages of the Reedy Creek Development Authority, a special legal district provision ruined by Disney’s moral and ethical corruptions and its political shenanigans, a municipal convention yet enjoyed by Thomas Monoghan’s remarkable Ave Maria University.
The neighborhoods pictured above and below foretold what might have been and what might yet be, the great American tradition of homebuilding adapted to a new time and place, and this in the energetic pace of Make America Great Again.
Traditional Neighborhood, Mid-Atlantic, 3a Houses, M. Curtis, des.
Why post traditional neighborhood ideas? The National Association of Realtors notes that in 1981 the median age of first-time home buyers was 29 years old; that in 2025 first-time homebuyers are 41 years old. What is the cause of the 12-year delay of America’s dream and promise? 1. The Federal Reserve favors established Wall Street, harms ambitious youth with punishingly high interest rates. 2. Progressive-Democrat regulations have reduced affordable manufactured homes from 30% to 10% of the new homes market. 3. Outdated zoning laws discourage homebuilding innovations. 4. Banks discourage manufactured housing, especially in second mortgages.
I cannot influence the Federal Reserve board, regulation happy Progressive Democrats, tired zoning departments, and mortgage regulations, yet I can offer designs of affordable, beautiful, contemporary neighborhood homes suitable to manufacture and rapid construction.
Traditional Neighborhood, Mid-Atlantic, 2a Houses, M. Curtis, des.
Other Beautiful Home developments. Upcoming release of long-gestating interviews with the classical architect, Robert Bentley Adams, with James McCrery, architect of the new White House Ballroom, with Dr. Nir Buras, author of Classic Planning, a book that is helping to beautify the world’s cities, and then house tours, recorded discussions, etc. And too, pictures and stories of Beautiful Homes now in various stages of completion, International, Adobe, Tidewater, Regency, and Greek Revival.
In coming months, I look forward to visits with you in these pages. I especially look forward to America250 and the many celebrations I am helping to bring to you.
Traditional Neighborhood, Mid-Atlantic, 1b Houses, M. Curtis, des.
TRADITIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD
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* If you visit Coral Gables through Wikipedia, you will notice that it manages to make Coral Gables dull and tedious. For beautiful Coral Gable pictures, image search “Coral Gables Architecture and Houses”. For more on AEGEA, click AEGEA and Sama the Prince, a screen-novella composed for AEGEA’s movie studio.
