Americans oppose growth because contemporary suburban design is terrible, says architect Andres Duany of Miami.

He arrived in Longmont Thursday with a team of 11 designers to draw up plans for a new neighborhood in the south part of town. "Americans against growth. It's almost a contradiction in terms," Duany said. "What has given growth a bad name?"

The car.

Towns are designed for the convenience of cars, not people, Duan said.

"The car has become a prosthetic device. You need it just to survive."

Streets are designed so cars can make turns without slowing down and parking lot capacity is calculated according to the number of cars on the Friday after Thanksgiving, Duany notes.

The result is massive parking lots and streets devoid of human life.

The car created suburban sprawl and people are afraid of suburban sprawl happening in their town, said Duany, 44. That's why Americans are against growth.

Some think Duany's ideas are backward-looking and Disney-esque, while others hail them as the wave of the future.

Duany presented his ideas to about 300 architects, planners and townspeople at the Dickens Opera House Longmont Thursday night.

Though it was balmy, he dressed for frigid weather, wearing a tweed jacket and two contrasting shirts. The inside one was black and one outside one yellow. He was wielding a pointer the size of a cue stick.

Duany showed two sets of slides, using two screens on stage. Each pair showed the contrast between a traditional, "successful," design and a deplorable image of automobile-centered construction somewhere else.

He won over the audience with an offbeat sense of humor that had them in stitches for an hour and half. His speech was notable for the lack of "planner-ese."

He occasionally would gesture in a professional way with the cue stick. But more often, he just dropped the thing on the ground and jumped right into the projected image, waving his hands emphatically over the underlying shapes and lines of his favorite town squares and boulevards.

Duany and his team were to spend six days in Longmont, studying the neighborhoods and talking to city officials. They set up headquarters in the Old Dickens Opera House, and working practically around the clock, with an open door to the public, they aimed to come up with a preliminary design.

With his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Duany has started a revolution in town design around the country. Some the ideas he advocates, though not necessarily his ideas, have been woven into plans for a new subdivision in Boulder, Four Mile Creek, which is to be built this year.

Duany and his associates are scheduled to reveal the results of of their efforts tonight at 5 p.m. at the opera house.

The team is working on a plan for an 80-acre parcel at the southwest corner of Pike and Main streets in southern Longmont. The developer is John "Kiki" Wallace, whose family has owned the land for 25 years.

Wallace hired Duany after reading a story about him in the Wall Street Journal, and he is paying the firm out of his own pocket. Wallace declined to reveal the exact fee, but he said Duany's firm typically charges from $120,000 to $350,000 to conduct a week-long exercise.

The city of Longmont is not obligated to accept the firm's ultimate design, which probably will have more in common with a pre-World War II neighborhood, like those west of Longmont's downtown.

Brad Schol, planning director of Longmont, said Duany's notions are not too far-fetched. "The idea of a traditional planning is a strong theme in our comprehensive design. We believe certain components could make a strong urban design."

"We are asking for a place where streets are smaller and cars are made to feel uncomfortable," Duany said.

He said Sonoma, Calif., was an example of a great town - uncomplicated and people-friendly, with cars parked in the streets.

"The marvelous, American town is so easy it's pathetic. The only problem is it's illegal," Duany said, referring to the notion that modern building and zoning codes have legislated traditional towns out of existence.

In his quirky way, Duany applauds on-street parking. "Parked cars are a very important layer of metal," he said.

Duany despises the popular model of the ideal suburban housing development with large houses clustered around "useless" open space.

"The sorriest thing is developers are selling prestige. They are saying everybody inside the gate is better than everyone outside," Duany said.

They even build walls to keep people in the living areas separate from the shopping areas, which leads to lots of car trips and bigger parking lots.

"The American dream has become a fast-food version. We call it McMansion. What you get inside is the best in the world. But as soon as you leave your private realm, it's a most degraded, ugly and stressful place."

Duany argues for the return of alleys, front yards, porches and sidewalks, with old-fashioned streets designed on a grid, and lined with "trees of the same species all in a row."

He endorses affordable housing, as long as it looks like normal, middle-class housing, and is spread around town in small chunks, rather than being forced into a massive single-story, enclave.

Too many modern developments are dominated by the driveways and garages, Duany said. "It's all part of the same illness. Everything for the car."