While Santa Fe County works on its new "Sustainable Land Use Plan and Code," our commissioners Tuesday have a chance to approve the kind of development the new plan would encourage — but the old one didn't anticipate.

The Village at Galisteo Basin Preserve, a mouthful of a title even in an age of lengthy, often-highfalutin real-estate brands, has been in the county planning process for three or four years. It's a good one — the product of a nonprofit, conservation-aimed corporation called Commonweal Conservancy (where do people come up with these names?) — a 300-acre multiple-use village adjoining open-space easements to complement the 13,000-acre Galisteo Basin Preserve.

In time, it could grow to nearly a thousand homes at widely varying prices; the first phase calls for 149 homes and 37,500 square feet of commercial/civic space. But because the homes would be clustered together to allow for communal open space, some of the plan is crosswise of the current land-development code.

But it's right in line with the aims of the new land-use plan, which will encourage clustered, mixed-use development patterns, new road configurations, green planning and building, watershed management and restoration, agriculture and open-space protection, alternative energy development, community-based affordable housing, and localized economic development.

Last summer, the county's Development Review Committee unanimously approved such variances to the old code as narrower roads for greater pedestrian safety and a small amount of 30-foot-high construction to allow for passive-solar construction. It was a good step; the board of commissioners should confirm it Tuesday. The commissioners have shown the foresight to approve progressive development in the Community College District closer to town, and this project promises further advances in creative, less-obtrusive design.

Unlike so many developments in our county, this one hasn't drawn opposition. At a few public meetings on the project, folks from the Galisteo Basin area have shown predictable concern, and a certain amount of sadness, over growth and changes to that scenic part of the county. But with the breakup of ranches out there has come the possibility of endless ranchettes or hacienditas or other such horizon-to-horizon sprawl — so what this bunch offers is eminently preferable.

We can expect commissioners to raise — or re-raise — water issues, which have been met, but which will be ongoing when it comes to development in the Galisteo Basin. The project includes water quotas, rainwater harvesting and wastewater-recycling — but the nonprofit's leaders should get a certain amount of recycled questions on that vital point. Presumably, they're prepared.

Given our area's slow housing market, this project could be equally slow in realization — but as developmental concepts go, this one appears solid.