Oddly enough, Le Corbusier’s modernism is commonly seen as progressive, the opposite of a Tory traditionalism that wants to return to a class-bound past. But what a peculiar type of progress it is! Technology triumphs over Nature; buildings are machines; people in buildings are pieces of the machines; elites ensconced in top-floor luxury suites push all the levers on the machines. This is a progressive nightmare. And that, of course, is the point of Poundbury. At its heart, Prince Charles’ approach is environmentalist, not traditionalist. With his Principles, Prince Charles is looking for a way to create a built environment that duplicates the advantages of a mature and stable ecology, a livable environment that is harmonious and egalitarian.

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Poundbury starts as a village, a tightly packed center of mixed architecture and uses. Its well-defined center, removed from the noisy main road, has a market square with a guildhall raised on bulbous columns above an open piazza, a small grocery store, a very nice pub and several shops. Both the pub and a tea shop provide outdoor seating on sunny days, and the square is invariably mobbed. Narrow streets radiate chaotically, and some appear to be unpaved (they’re not); the planners actually laid out the building lots, then fitted the streets in between them, so the lanes tend to make random jerks. There are no parking restrictions anywhere, although all residents have cleverly hidden off-street parking. Like the great 18th-century projects, the developers that act for Prince Charles have established rules that impose a common architectural language while allowing individuals a great deal of freedom in designing their own buildings. It is visually engaging and just a little bit over the top — a lively, happy jumble, filled with people.

Needless to say, the modernists hate it. “Pastiche,” they call it — a cluttered mixture or hodgepodge. In the modernist world, a lively street life, functioning neighborhood shops and happy residents are symbols of a bourgeois Tory longing for an impossible past in which there are no poor. Actually, there are plenty of poor in Poundbury, more than in Dorchester as a whole; 25 percent of the units are affordable, rent-subsidized housing. No one will tell you which specific units are earmarked for the poor — it’s a secret — and you certainly can’t tell by looking. The poor and the well-off live together without that distinction.

To the casual visitor, three views define the Poundbury village core. From Dorchester’s center on the main highway, the foremost view consists of two very large buildings: an apartment complex fashioned like a French villa and an assisted living facility that resembles a modernist interpretation of a castle. This is the part most visible, and that attracts the most criticism as “pastiche.” Both buildings are functional, however, forming a gateway and a screen. Behind them are the intimate residential lanes of Poundbury, protected by their bulk from road noise and fumes.

If instead you approach Poundbury using Cambridge Road — a normal, modern suburban road — you’ll experience a much more dramatic view. After a half-mile of driving down a straight, wide road lined by dull, lookalike brick semidetached homes, you suddenly run into a tightly-packed chaos of competing rooflines and styles, with pillars, stone, plaster and brick in a fight for attention in which the market hall is the clear victor. Here you must stop and walk, for Cambridge Road is blocked from entering Poundbury’s village center. This brings us to the second-most common criticism, of “Disney World” — as if it’s a moral shortcoming to prefer a lively, beautiful neighborhood over a spirit-quashingly dull one.

The third view is from the village’s southern edge, along a curving hilltop. Here its recreational lands give wide vistas toward the gigantic form of Maiden Castle, the Iron Age’s premier example of urban planning. From the Poundbury playing fields, a paved footpath leads in the direction of the castle. Look back, and Poundbury’s southern front has been modeled after an 18th-century curved crescent whose terraces looked over thecountryside.

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