Columbia, MD news and local guide

Beginning in 1962, Rouse's company made 165 land purchases over about a year and a half, buying secretly through dummy corporations to keep prices low, and assembled 14,178 acres, about 10 percent of the county, from 140 owners at an average of $1,500 an acre, financed by Connecticut General Life Insurance. When the purchases were revealed in October 1963, they put to rest rumors that the land would become a medical research laboratory or a giant compost heap. The planning director rejected the proposed zoning in December 1964 for handing nearly all planning control to the developer, but after a public campaign it was approved in June 1965. At its unveiling on June 21, 1967, Rouse described Columbia as a planned new city with jobs, schools, shopping, medical services and a range of housing, designed to avoid the leapfrog and spot-zoning growth threatening the county. The master plan called for ten self-contained villages, each made up of several neighborhoods, around a town center with a mall and the man-made Lake Kittamaqundi, and Wilde Lake was the first village developed. Sources Wikipedia: Columbia, Maryland