Sustainable suburban development using less land instead of green tech

Apologies for the edited title, but the original title conveys nothing about the interesting content of the article.

TLDR; the author participated in a contest to design a "sustainable suburban development" in the Houston area. The competition was intended to be a showcase for "green" tech, but the author's submission demonstrated they could outperform all the high tech submissions (developing more housing and commercial than was required with less environmental impact) by simply adopting a traditional small town design (read: walkable and compact) and preserving most of the land as wilderness or light agricultural.