In many cities in the United States there is rapid population growth that is not being properly planned and that is causing urban sprawl.  This is being done because many people need places to live and the layout was based off how the car can move through the neighborhood.  There are other neighborhoods in this county that were built in with more planning when the growth was not as intense.  These neighborhoods are Traditional Neighborhood Design.  The Sustainable Cities Institute defines Traditional Neighborhood Design “as a village-style development, includes a variety of housing types, a mixture of land uses, an active center, a walkable design and often a transit option within a compact neighborhood scale area.”  This can be seen in larger cities were a growth created a need to convert warehouses into places for people to live.  In these places where people had their homes they also needed places to shop and meet.  I went to Portland last year and near our site in the Pearl district there were many different housing types and within a few blocks was a centralized hub of retailers and a few parks.  This was something that I had not seen before, because where I grew up the residential and commercial were always separated.  Throughout the rest of Portland there were many other examples of this type of neighborhood.  These neighborhoods focused on walking but still had options were driving or public transportation.  This compilation or transit types takes what used to be a small town and brings the idea to larger city and uses transit to connect all of city.  This neighborhood design is seen in large cities and can be seen in very small towns, but it is not being integrated into the middle size cities very well.  Looking locally at Moscow there is a great possibility for it to be a great example of what traditional neighborhood design, but because of the expansion to the west with a large mall complex and to the east with residential it takes away from the centralized downtown.  There are more examples such as Idaho Falls, Missoula, and Dillion; or a larger city such as Las Vegas.  This type of urban design comes from an idea that people have in America needing a house and a white picket fence.  Many people in America cannot afford to buy a house, but are still forced to because there is no other option where they live.  To create the traditional neighborhoods of the future there needs to be more multipurpose buildings, or large scale apartments that can used for families.  This is going to take a change in the idea of the American public to understand the state of the environment and how much land can be taken up by buildings before resources cannot longer keep up.  One idea that Moscow has that some other the previous examples do not have is there are already some multipurpose buildings, mostly in the downtown area.  I believe this was done because of the need for apartments for students of the U of I to want to live off campus.  This can be seen with the Garden Lounge and Mingles that both have apartments above, and in the case of the Garden Lounge also has a pizza place in the same building complex.  I do not believe that it should take a university to start the change in many cities in America, there needs to be an education about where we live and how we interact with what directly surrounds that space.