Laura Dunn’s multi-layered new documentary, “The Unforeseen,” chronicles resistance to suburban sprawl in the longtime maverick town of Austin, Texas. “All I need is water,” a prominent tract builder says, but the resource proves both limited and uniquely precious to city residents. Not another environmentalist yowl or lecture, “The Unforeseen,” which opens today at Cinema Village, tackles the ecological price of unchecked development and suggests, with a moving lyricism, a deeper, even spiritual, toll.

Ms. Dunn focuses her attention on the late 1980s and ’90s, when developers in Austin attempted to evade protective regulations by grandfathering old housing projects that were abandoned. Protesters decried the danger to Barton Springs, a natural municipal pool in Austin that was threatened by the overuse of aquifers (underground layers of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be extracted using a well). “The Unforeseen” portrays Barton Springs as a regenerative oasis, a bellwether, and an endangered symbol for well-being. When Ms. Dunn takes the story up to the present, we see the formerly sparkling depths of Barton Springs are now cloudy.

Instead of simply proceeding chronologically, “The Unforeseen” enriches its account of the conflict with some thoughtful moves. Ms. Dunn weaves in the very personal story of a hotshot developer from an earlier era, Gary Bradley, who made a mint on tract housing in the ’70s, only to crash-land into bankruptcy with the savings-and-loan crisis. Youthful-looking, with manicured eyebrows, Mr. Bradley confides in us the pride of his success and the shame of his failure. It’s not often you’ll see a businessman cry in a movie such as this, but Ms. Dunn is confident enough to humanize someone whom other storytellers might simply villainize.

The compassion of the Bradley interviews reflects the spiritual core of the documentary, which is grounded in a mode of thought that feels very American and very traditional. Even the film’s title comes from a poem by the yeoman Christian writer Wendell Berry, whose writings — concerned mostly with sustainable agriculture, apposite technologies, healthy rural communities, and a connection to place — are heard in voice-over throughout the movie. While Ms. Dunn shows righteous testimonials from a public hearing defending Barton Springs against softened legislation, Mr. Berry’s ruminations ground the movie’s message in something greater.

Visually, Ms. Dunn’s documentary chronicles the relentless course of development with satellite imagery and animated graphs, as well as footage of endless new roads and a building-in-progress overshadowing the Texas State Capitol. The spidery spread of new construction comes to seem unstoppable, and a turning point in the movie arrives with legislation grandfathering developments from an earlier, laxer age of regulation.

One of the movie’s many memorable personalities, glimpsed painting model planes and warships, is the hard-line lobbyist Dick Brown, the mastermind of the legislative coup. Balancing Mr. Brown’s disdain for environmentalists is journalist William Greider, who offers arguments for sustainable growth with affable common sense. “The Unforeseen” also visits with an antsy suburban boy desperate to convince us that he has plenty of places to play, and a pleasantly plump couple who underline the everyday desire for space and convenience that fuels the real estate boom.

Ultimately, “The Unforeseen” concludes that growth is a vexing concept — one that sounds positive but causes systemic strife. At one point, Ms. Dunn probes the very metaphor of growth with some nature photography that shows the word’s other manifestations. Though a bit trite, it’s intended as a moment of wondrous contemplation, a mode familiar to Terrence Malick, who in fact originally recruited Ms. Dunn to undertake the documentary.

Ms. Dunn also risks a snicker here and there, as when producer Robert Redford recalls his years in Austin. But pressing for the need to relax in a public pool — really, the need to maintain well-being — seems necessarily vulnerable to the harder, bricks-and-mortar argument of more housing for more people. At the moments when all its many strands tie together, “The Unforeseen” achieves ambitions that most documentaries don’t even harbor.