It took just 10 seconds. Ten seconds to bring two hulking skyscrapers to the ground, to turn buildings that dominated the Gorbals for 40 years into bits of concrete, wood and iron. Ten seconds to end an experiment in housing and design that had gone badly wrong.

That was Sunday. The day after, and 50 miles south of those demolished Glasgow high-rises, I'm standing by a field where another experiment in housing and design is just beginning.

Mark Greaves, one of the masterminds behind the plan, is sweeping his hand across the landscape and describing what the place will look like one day. He points up the road towards what will be the town square, with its toll house and cute two-storey houses, then back across the fields to what will be flats, shops and workplaces. There will be hundreds of houses here, all integrated with cycle lanes and green spaces; there will be none of your cul-de-sacs or vast concrete car parks. It will be a new town, but one unlike any that has been built in Scotland for generations. It will be just as ambitious as those Gorbals high-rises once were, except this time the designers think they've got it right.

The name of the town has a marvellous made-up ring to it - Knockroon - and it will emerge, brick by brick, by the side of the main road between Auchinleck and Cumnock in Ayrshire over the next two or three years. The plans for the new community formed part of last year's deal to buy Dumfries House, the stately home nearby, that was led by the Prince of Wales. It has already attracted all sorts of labels: eco town, fit town and Scotland's Poundbury.

In a way, all these names fit because the concept is of a place that will not only be somewhere pleasant to live, and will regenerate an area that struggled after the decline of its local industries, but that will lead a fundamental change in the way Scotland's housing is conceived and designed.

Tomorrow Prince Charles will be leading a discussion about what that change could mean. Speaking at a conference at Holyroodhouse organised by the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, the charity that is running the Knockroon scheme, he will call for a new, more sustainable style of Scottish town-making, drawing on the lessons of the past. Many of the people who could make the changes he wants, including the First Minister, Alex Salmond, will be there to hear him.

According to Mark Greaves, who is the foundation's programme manager in Scotland, one of the fundamental ideas behind Knockroon is the need to move away from towns broken up into zones filled with houses that all look the same and attract the same type of people. "We are trying to structure a place where people could spend their entire lives if they wanted to, moving from a starter flat to a terrace to a detached house and then, when the kids leave, back into a flat." In a way, it's a bit of architectural time travel, going back before the 1960s, before some of the English new-town ideas crept into Scotland, before the growth of the housing estate, back to principles that have been lost over the past 50 or 60 years.

So how accurate are the nicknames that have been applied to Knockroon; labels such as "fit town"? Hank Dittmar, the chief executive of the Prince's Foundation and a former advisor to Bill Clinton on transport and the environment, says the improved fitness of the residents could be a by-product of what he calls the five-minute pint test (whether it's a pint of milk or beer is up to you).

"Towns were always designed around the idea of the neighbourhood which is five minutes from centre to edge, and five minutes is how far people will go to get their daily needs without getting in a car," says Dittmar, who will be at tomorrow's conference. "When we design in that way and make streets active, walkable places, people do tend to walk more, and that has health benefits. It also has safety benefits because you have active streets that are overlooked by houses and so you don't end with the no-man's-land places that you have in housing estates, where gangs can take over or elderly people feel unsafe walking."

And what about "eco town"? Again, says Dittmar, there can be green benefits of a town that is well designed. "If you can get people to do their daily trips by walking rather than taking the car, that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. And if you can create some kind of local capture in the economy, you're keeping more of the profits in the community and you have an economic benefit as well."

And finally, Scotland's Poundbury. What about that label? Certainly, the concept is basically the same. Poundbury, the new town based on principles espoused by Prince Charles (see panel, below), was conceived as a mixed community. "If you have living spaces and work spaces next to one another, the shops do better because people who are working during the day shop there and people who are coming home at night shop there," says Dittmar. "In the typical housing estate, the shops don't do very well at all because no-one patronises them during the daytime." In a way, he says, none of the labels matter much because, if you design towns correctly, all of them can apply.

The fuel under all these benefits is tourism. When Dumfries House officially opens to the public on Friday, it will unlock a long-dormant asset. "Dumfries House can hopefully redefine the character of East Ayrshire as a place that isn't in the economic doldrums," says Dittmar.

Later this year, the foundation will also be working with the council to provide design workshops in the region's towns with a view to creating an economic strategy for their future. It will take time, of course, says Mark Greaves. "It's difficult to change culture over a short time, so we will build a place that can evolve over a long period to deliver proper regeneration, rather than a quick fix."

In the longer term, it is hoped Knockroon will not only regenerate the local area but lead the change in design that the prince will champion at the conference tomorrow. He'll need influential backers, of course, but there is evidence that is already happening; Alex Salmond has expressed his support for the ideas behind Knockroon. "I think some of the precepts in this development are applicable on a much wider canvas across Scotland," he has said. Some of the ideas were looked at in a discussion document published in October called The Future of Housing in Scotland. An update from the government is expected shortly.

As for the people who live around Knockroon, there has been some suspicion; a little incredulity, perhaps. At the workshops that led to the designs for Knockroon, some residents were sceptical about whether it would all really happen. Talking to locals, you pick up the feeling that the plans are welcome and exciting, but many are sticking to a believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude. Dittmar says you have to respect that. It's hardly surprising that a community that has never seen a lifeline work before should need a little convincing.

In the immediate future, the next step for Knockroon is a planning application to the council later this year. Then the process of attracting private investors and developers will start, with the first digger hopefully cutting the first piece of earth around the end of 2009. By 2017, there will be 250 houses, with plans for another 80 after that.

The hope is that Knockroon will endure because it is built on principles that chime with what people like and want. Building against those principles can't, in the long term, work. The evidence for that is in the pile of concrete, glass and wood that was once two skyscrapers in Glasgow.