A stoic little town faces tomorrow

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But the produce was fresh and plump and grown in Carrle's backyard. So you picked through his crates -- a half-pound of green tomatoes at 50 cents a pound, a pound and a half of Fairtime peaches at $1.25 a pound, and on and on -- until your arms were full of a high school algebra question with no calculator in sight.

"What about five dollars?" Carrle shrugged.

Oh, it should be more than that. . . .

"Yes," Carrle said, then leaned in for effect. "It should, shouldn't it?"

What he meant, on the surface, was that there isn't a place for backyard farmers in modern commerce, that it costs him more to irrigate his tiny orchard than he could ever get for his fruit.

But it was a reminder, too, that the truly rural outposts of Los Angeles County -- the nation's top agricultural county not so long ago -- are withering away. And this one happens to abut the proposed site of the largest planned community in county history.

Neenach -- and a smattering of other forlorn towns hidden between Lancaster and the Grapevine -- will be the subject of a fierce dispute in the coming year over when enough is enough in Southern California.

On one side, advocates will wave studies showing that there are 6 million more people headed this way in the next 20 years, people who will need roofs over their heads. On the other side, activists will point out that once construction starts here -- above the historical northern boundary of the region's development -- there will be nothing to keep "Los Angeles" from turning into a vast, broken metropolis stretching from Tijuana to Bakersfield.

It would all be very apocalyptic-sounding, if only it was the kind of thing that got Neenach bent out of shape.

Life, by design, is gentle and dull here.

Eight hundred people, give or take, live in Neenach. Recreation consists largely of trying to grow a bigger squash than your neighbor or trying to buy his truck. One man races pigeons. The school closed a few years back when they ran out of kids, and its rose-painted walls are still the brightest thing on the prairie.

When the abutting development is built -- if it is built -- it will be called Centennial. It would be the end, for all intents and purposes, of Neenach.

Billed as a "new town," Centennial would be constructed on a chunk of the 165-year-old Tejon Ranch. There would be 23,000 homes, eight elementary schools, three fire stations.

Well aware of the lifestyle they are preparing to upend, managers of the project have launched a spirited marketing campaign to sell Centennial -- not to sell the houses, though that would come soon enough, but to sell the very idea.

They plan to pepper the development with open space and "gathering places" -- civic squares, parks -- intended to foster a small-town feel. Children would be encouraged to walk to school, which would indeed be revolutionary by Southern California standards.

In an effort to make Centennial "self-reliant" -- that's code for cutting down on commuter traffic -- they have pledged to create 30,000 local jobs. More than 1,000 would be required for construction alone: a new house every eight hours, on average, seven days a week, for 20 years.

Environmental advocates, suffice to say, are not impressed.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, a leading advocacy group opposing the development, said Centennial would be built on rare ecosystems, including the largest swath of native grassland left in California.