Santolina

An excellent article about this proposed development. Interesting that it appears in the UK press. If all the other developments weren't promising the same thing it might be sustainable, but not in concert with the others. Remember, the idea, as expounded by former Rio Rancho Mayor Jim Owens, is to make Rio Rancho (with Albuquerque as an appendage) larger than Los Angeles and extend to Mt. Taylor, and beyond:

Like most farmers in the American southwest, Candelaria has been hard-hit by the historic drought consuming the region. But the increasing scarcity of water is compounded by an orchestrated pattern of urban sprawl that Candelaria says imperils his very way of life. In recent years, one threat has loomed larger than the rest – a bizarre mega-development backed by the British bank Barclays, which proposes to build an entirely new city in the middle of the desert, just west of Albuquerque.

The plan, to fabricate a “master-planned community” for nearly 100,000 people on what is today a field of sand dunes, is called Santolina. If fully populated, the development would be about the size of New Mexico’s current second-largest city, Las Cruces, and bigger than Santa Fe, the state capital.