Sea Ranch, the landmark seaside development in the northwest corner of Sonoma County, gets star treatment today in the New York Times. Architectural writer Patricia Leigh Brown shares her love of the land and of the radical architecture that defined the place. But she also warns that some areas are in danger of being surburbanized into what one critic calls “a highly processed destination resort.”

You can read the Times report here. (For reasons best known to Times editors, the story appears in the travel section, but it could have been published in the arts or style sections as well.)

Historical footnote: The coastal protection movement in California began at Sea Ranch. When the original developers sought to build 5,200 homes and close 10.6 miles of shore to public access, all hell broke loose. Soon after, state voters adopted an initiative to create a coastal protection commission, which insisted on public access and a much smaller development.