Vernon Bryant / The Dallas Morning News

Developer Diane Cheatham shows off a house under construction at Urban Reserve.

DALLAS — Plastic bottles, newspaper, cans—every day, many of us carefully sort through these items to be recycled.

But it's not enough.

Ten years ago, national environmental leaders pledged to recycle half of the nation's trash by now. We're only up to 32 percent, leaving landfills overflowing.

There has been a lot of talk about a unique housing development in North Dallas. The Urban Reserve, near North Central Expressway and Royal Lane, is mixing cutting edge design and environmental quality.

Now the homes are taking shape, and folks are talking again.

From the beginning, it was touted to be something special—a neighborhood that's nice to Mother Earth.

Urban Reserve is developer Diane Cheatham's dream. "When I bought this property, it was so overgrown," she said. "All kinds of varmits, snakes, poison ivy; I just drove around it ... and thought, 'You know, we can make this work.'"

What looks like an oasis beyond the suburbs is, in fact, a tract of land right inside the City of Dallas, on the east bank of White Rock Creek.

The homes being built there are unlike anything else around it.

"We believe very much that architecture should be of its time and of its place," Cheatham said. "We don't think it should be copies of another period."

So Urban Reserve features modern homes using today's materials and technology, like concrete, which moderates temperatures so houses stay cool in summer and warm in winter; and bamboo or cork floors that arelong-lasting and easily replenished.

Every home here is 20 percent more energy efficient than required by code.

One house, when finished, will save 50 percent more energy than an average home.

Then, there is the rain garden. "It's a nice body of water, but they're also very functional," Cheatham explained. Run-off water is filtered, then returned to the Earth.

It's a design Cheatham came up with long before anyone realized how it could be used. "That was three years ago, and now there's a big conversation about water," she said. "I think that's going to be an ever-growing thing as we talk about all our resources. You need to be respectful of the Earth."

E-mail mjepson@wfaa.com