Leonard Downie

Freeways came late to the urban Midwest, after they had been tried to relieve traffic congestion in the crowded East and had created an entirely new pattern of living in California. Today, the multi-lane divided highways marked by prominent blue and red interstate route signs dominate the metropolitan landscapes of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis. And they all seem to be carrying more and more people out of these cities into the vast suburban areas around them. Yet as fast as those suburbs have been growing since World War II, most now trends in housing have also come slowly to this region. The single-level “ranch type” home now seen everywhere here was imported from California, for instance. Condominium and cooperative ownership of apartment units, still considered a daring idea of the future among Midwesterners, has long been popular along the East Coast. Now, the developers of an ambitious real estate project named Jonathon are trying to sell the notion of transforming a swatch of scenic Minnesota countryside containing idyllic blue lakes and low green hills