A new Miami Beach development attempts to marry modernism and Mr. Rogers.

It's an interesting recipe. take Dacra, a scenester-oriented Miami real estate development company, add a roster of highbrow contemporary architects, then put them under the direction of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. -a.k.a. DPZ-the leading lights of New urbanism, the community-planning movement that calls for a return to traditional, small-towny, let's-go-for-a-stroll neighborhoods.

The result is Aqua, an 8.5 acre development on an island in the chain that includes Miami Beach. Slated for completion by 2003, Aqua incorporates three midrise apartment buildings and 46 single-family town houses, designed by such notable architects as Walter Chatham, Hariri & Hariri, and Alexander Gorlin. "With the typical 40-story Miami Beach apartment tower, what's being sold is the view of the ocean. We want to sell the view across the street," says Dacra president Craig Robins. "We'll create something special: a modernist neighborhood."

To reconcile modernism's spareness with cozy comity, DPZ planners devised shady sidewalks and an open promenade along the water's edge. All streets will end at the water (rather than in a cul-de-sac), for views and light. A gated luxury development?houses cost from $800,000 to $3 million, apartments from $350,000 to $2 million-accessible only by car, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk admits, can't fulfill the New Urbanist paradigm of an economically and culturally diverse neighborhood. "But if there's an opportunity to make something that will contribute to the long-range development of a new urban building type, you take it."