Ask Wilbur F. Coyle III where he lives, and you're likely to get an angry response.

His ZIP code says he lives in Columbia and any passer-by likely would assume his home is in that city, but Coyle actually lives in one of the many pockets of "alien" land - some call them outparcels - that make Maryland's second-largest urban center look on a map like a sprawling piece of Swiss cheese.

Coyle's home is in the Donleigh neighborhood, which was built before Columbia was developed, and had a Simpsonville address until the behemoth homeowners association moved in 35 years ago and required its own ZIP code.

"I didn't want to be a part of Columbia," said Coyle, 66. "I don't like to be associated with Columbia."

In homes clustered on outparcels totaling about 5,000 acres scattered across Columbia's vast well-tended landscape, thousands of people like Coyle are living on the edge - where there is no Columbia Association property lien, no Columbia Council representation and the Rouse all-encompassing residential vision is just over the horizon.

Coyle fights a low-key guerrilla war to fend off the influences of the city looming over him. He set up a post office box at the Simpsonville post office so he could receive his personal mail at a Simpsonville ZIP code. Every day, he treks to Atholton Shopping Center to pick up his mail at the post office there and to buy a newspaper and cigarettes.

"I was mad as hell," Coyle said, when he was notified in the 1970s that his home would change to a Columbia address. "Columbia wasn't where I moved to - I moved to Simpsonville."

But life on the edge of Columbia has its symbiotic attractions.

People with homes in outparcels can enjoy many of the benefits of Columbia's carefully groomed lifestyle without paying the bills. They are not subject to the Columbia Association lien or the town's strict architectural covenants, which govern everything from house color to tree removal.

Outparcel homes are a perceived deal for people who are attracted to Columbia's lush appearance, schools and safe reputation and could not care less about its three athletic clubs, 23 outdoor pools and goal of bringing people of diverse backgrounds together.

These residents - who are not numbered among Columbia's population of 95,000 - cannot join any of the Columbia Association facilities at a resident rate unless they petition to join the association and pay the lien, said Alton J. Scavo, executive vice president of development for the Rouse Co. But they can run on the town's nearly 90 miles of pathways or bask at its three lakes without paying a cent to the homeowners association.

Their neighbors a few streets away on Columbia Association property have to pay hundreds or more than $1,000 annually to the association through the lien - which is not tax-deductible - to enjoy the same open-space perks.

Some real estate agents advertise homes in outparcels with "NO CPRA!" referring to the Columbia Parks and Recreation Association property lien, currently 73 cents per $100 of valuation on 50 percent of the fair-market value.

Ruth LaMonte, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Columbia, said a small segment of potential homebuyers will tell her to show them only houses in Columbia that are not subject to the lien.

"I think they're just looking at it economically," she said. "Some people feel like it's a lot of money for a homeowners association fee, so it's almost like they're against it in principle."

Changing landscape

Before developer James W. Rouse arrived, neighborhoods such as Donleigh and nearby Arrowhead and Allview Estates - now sandwiched between U.S. 29 and Route 32 and Broken Land Parkway - dotted the land.

But by the early 1960s, the Rouse Co. had bought more than 14,000 acres of farmland to turn into a town for about 100,000 people. Not everyone would sell, leaving gaps such as the 300-acre Smith farm between Long Reach and Oakland Mills villages.

The holdouts and existing developments have left dozens of large and small outparcels scattered across Columbia.

"It would have been highly improbable that [Rouse Co.] would have - in a land area roughly 20,000 acres - been able to pick up 14,000 to 15,000 acres of land that was contiguous," Scavo said. "There was so much development already there."

(In the 1970s, Rouse Co. annexed an additional 733 acres into Columbia's "new town" district, incorporating some of that land into adjacent Columbia villages.)

When Coyle and his wife, Carolyn, moved to their ranch home in the Donleigh neighborhood in 1965, they knew Columbia was coming and were curious about how the planned community would develop around their Donleigh neighborhood.

However, Coyle hardly uses any of Columbia's amenities - he rarely walks on the pathways, and the only lake he frequents is county-owned Centennial Lake. He shops for groceries about 10 miles away in Laurel instead of at the nearby village centers in Columbia's Hickory Ridge or Kings Contrivance villages.

"I can do my thing my way," he said. "I don't need much that a community offers."

But Coyle is eager to embrace the financial benefit of being surrounded by one of the area's most-coveted communities: He said his house value has gone up "10 times." (The state has assessed his home at $195,420.)

It is an easy mistake to assume that Coyle's neighborhood is part of Columbia. To the untrained eye, it does not look all that different, and it is just down the street from Columbia's Kings Contrivance village.

Not quite Columbia

But for those who know the ways of Columbia, there are clues that such neighborhoods as Donleigh, Arrowhead and Allview Estates don't belong. The street signs are green with a rectangular shape, bearing conventional names such as Donleigh Drive and Groveleigh Drive, a contrast to Columbia's boxy blue signs that bear names such as Minute Hand Court and Early Lilacs Path.

The streets are mostly straight, instead of the twists and turns that dead-end into cul-de-sacs that often frustrate lost drivers throughout Columbia. Individual mailboxes are placed at the end of each home's driveway, not those clusters of mailboxes popular in Columbia.

Jean Singleton lives almost a mile from Coyle, in Allview Estates, but her view on Columbia differs significantly. She feels very much a part of the suburb. The whole area feels like one entity, she said, and there isn't a perception of strict borders between where her neighborhood ends and Columbia begins.

Singleton, who moved to Allview Estates in 1964, said she has benefited greatly from Columbia. She used to have to travel at least eight miles to buy groceries in Laurel or Ellicott City before Columbia was built. Now she has eight grocery stores to chose from throughout Columbia's village centers.

She also became a member of the Columbia Association to use the pools and athletic clubs, and she was able to join at a resident rate because she worked in Columbia.

"It's a very pleasant place to live and bring up children," Singleton said. "And part of that is the amenities and facilities that Columbia brought in, such as the hospital."

Mitch Buntemeyer is another outparcel resident who has found happiness near Columbia. As a manager of sales training for a pharmaceutical company, he found that, in his business travels, people would speak positively of Columbia as the model of a planned community.

However, in a tight housing market, the closest Buntemeyer could get was the Sewells Orchard development - which used to be an orchard - built in the 1980s near Columbia's Long Reach and Owen Brown villages.

But that's just fine with him - as far as he's concerned, he lives in Columbia.

When Buntemeyer heard that the home didn't require a Columbia Association lien, he thought, "Hey, this is great. ... My house payment is high enough, why did I need to pay more?"

Development issues

While the residential outparcels do not spark much outcry among Columbians, problems have arisen from those pockets of land that can be developed commercially without adhering to Columbia's architectural covenants.

In March, Dorsey's Search village residents successfully fought a developer's plan to build a strip mall on an outparcel near the village center. But residents are still worried the County Council could rezone the parcel during the county's comprehensive rezoning process, allowing for the 8-acre tract to be developed commercially.

In Owen Brown village, residents were shocked this year to see a five-story storage facility built on an outparcel near a neighborhood. After that development, the Owen Brown village board obtained maps showing other village outparcels, so residents would not be caught off guard again.

Still, outparcels are likely to continue to pop up and surprise Columbians from time to time.

And, despite occasional problems, most people on both sides of the boundaries appear to accept the larger sentiment that they are all Columbians.

"We don't feel exiled from Columbia, but we also feel as a community to itself, within Columbia," Singleton said.