Minnesotans and their political leaders should consider seriously the $10 billion they can save over the next 20 years by encouraging the Twin Cities to grow in a more responsible, efficient manner.

A recipe for those savings was offered last week by the Metropolitan Council. The new plan springs not from the paternalistic coercion that critics tend to associate with the council, but from the common sense of citizens themselves. Responsible governments are obliged to engage the public, ponder the future and plan in ways that respect the taxpayers' burden.

In pursuing its new Blueprint 2030, the council offers a truly conservative approach, one that will not only save money (perhaps $250 a year for the average metro taxpayer) but conserve farmland, preserve natural features, ease traffic congestion, lessen urban decay and, in the process, make Minneapolis-St. Paul a more attractive and competitive region.

Mounting traffic congestion makes it plain that the inner seven metro counties have reached a critical point. Either development continues to spread outward in its current far-flung pattern -- gobbling 285 square miles of rural land every decade and requiring even more driving -- or it goes on a sensible diet.

With the new approach, the same growth -- about 580,000 people per decade -- can be accommodated on half as much land. In essence, this dietary plan lets the urban become more urban while conserving more pastoral countryside -- 140 more square miles per decade.

Viewed from the air, then, a new Twin Cities would look less like two fried eggs dropped into a pan with the whites spreading ever outward, and more like a spider with legs of transit-oriented communities separated by ample areas of far roomier development; in other words, it would offer something for everyone.

This prescription didn't come from a bunch of dreamy-eyed planners but from hundreds of Minnesotans who turned out at workshops throughout the metro area over the past year. The process will continue into public hearings next fall. Using maps and color-coded chips, the workshops challenged citizens to imagine how growth in their communities should best be handled. The answer came loud and clear: more variety on less land.

Anticipating their own aging as well as the best interests of their children, people said they wanted more types of housing, less driving, more walking, more transit, easier access to nature, more jobs and shopping close to housing and a greater "community feel" to their suburbs. Not surprisingly, these desires match national surveys that are starting to make believers of lenders and home builders.

The traditional nuclear family now constitutes only a quarter of current households. An aging population and an increasing impatience with long commutes is creating a market for communities that more closely resemble the streetcar neighborhoods of the early 20th century: bungalows, townhouses, corner stores, frequent parks and a grid of streets.

Encouraging this change, however, is a huge challenge for the Twin Cities -- where ordinances often prevent traditional neighborhoods; where developers cling to the big-lot, autocentric formula of the 1950s; and where conservative politicians ferociously oppose any investment in transit and, thus, any return to a more traditional form.

Still, the advantages of the new growth scenarios are so plain that it's hard not to expect that one of two similar versions will be adopted. These scenarios double or triple the number of walkable neighborhoods foreseen under current plans, mostly by clustering housing and leaving lots of room for nature. They encourage up to triple the number of new homes in older neighborhoods. They double the number of new homes within two miles of jobs and within a half-mile of parks. They more than triple new homes located near transit lines. As a result, driving declines by more than 10 percent while the population rises, and air quality improves markedly.

Perhaps the best news involves cost. Savings in sewers and roadways alone amount to as much as $6 billion over 20 years. Additional savings in school construction, health care, public safety and other government functions easily push the overall savings beyond $10 billion, even with new and necessary transit investments.

Met Council Chairman Ted Mondale and his staff have done remarkable work, thanks, in part, to funding from the McKnight Foundation and the expertise of Calthorpe Associates, the nation's top regional planning consultants. Together with hundreds of citizens, they've made clear the critical choice now facing the metro area: Either it settles for "more of the same," as traffic-choked Atlanta has so painfully experienced, or it demands a saner, less-costly and more livable future.