Great images--thanks for finding those. I meant to mention this earlier, but your comparison of Londonderry to Scarborough is right on. While most New England suburbs that grew from a farming village have some sort of semblance of a town center or village, both of those towns are nearly devoid of this.
I agree that it's interesting to see Portland used as an example, too. It's often said that new urbanism is really old urbanism, and there's some truth to that, but there are key differences that make the comparison to Portland a little misleading. New urbanism tends to look and feel much more homogenous than traditional cities, even if it's built in phases as is proposed in Londonderry.
It also lacks the history and serendipity of older towns (except when fake history is added, which is even worse), and a part of this is because it is so often divorced from organic development. Londonderry, for instance, has the slightest hint of a town center a little ways west of this site. It's not very special and does not have enough developable land for something like this to take root, but my biggest concern with this project is that it's not really located along major roads, except the highway the Market Basket faces. The proposed new interchange and the sheer size of this development could change that, but it's in a bit of an awkward location to become a natural "town center".
I think this project, overall, is extremely promising and infinitely better land use than typical suburban sprawl. Having a few dense satellite villages surrounding Manchester would make both Manchester and the surrounding towns much nicer places. I just think it's also important to note that new urbanism often oversells itself, and that the best Woodmont Commons will never feel like Portland. All that having been said, I think it will definitely turn into a very nice neighborhood to live in, work or visit; and unlike most suburban developments, it will be an actual neighborhood.
