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"Informing
Public Opinion and Organizing Community Support for Regionally Significant
Community Development Projects"
The land use planning
challenges Boulder and Colorado's mountain resort towns have been struggling
with for the past decade are now facing the entire West. In land-locked
communities blessed with a high quality of life, property values soar
beyond the means available to the average employee. This causes labor
shortages, longer commutes, and traffic congestion. Local residents begin
to question whether the costs of growth outweigh its benefits, and they
organize to oppose new projects. As the politics of growth enter a tailspin,
complex and unpredictable planning processes evolve, pushing development
costs even higher. The unintended consequence is that responsible development
projects - which could help to resolve many community challenges - lose
their financial viability.
I want to take what
I learned as an attorney for the City of Boulder, with what I have seen
from the private sector's perspective at Colorado Ski Country USA, and
worked for as a facilitator at Governor Romer's "Growth Summit,"
to help projects that make sense get designed, approved, and built in
Colorado and throughout the West. The developers I've come to know and
respect are committed to meeting their civic and environmental responsibilities.
Their concerns include strident critics who refuse to compromise or listen
to reason and are never required to establish their actual base of support,
planning targets which shift with the political winds of change, conflict
among governmental entities with overlapping jurisdictional authority,
the ethical consequences of NIMBY attack strategies, and procedural costs
in both time and money that kill good projects.
Effective public representation
can make a real difference in this new developmental political environment,
particularly when counsel is retained at the front end of the process.
Accurate assessment of local public opinion and the political climate
for development, meticulous presentation of your project's potential for
meeting future challenges facing your community (Governor Romer's "Smart
Growth" concept), and effective participation in the continuing debate
over the benefits and costs of growth, must all be included in a carefully
coordinated strategy to secure an approval from decision-makers who are
often predisposed to say "no." Necessary studies have to be
commissioned, consultants have to be hired and managed, and required approvals
have to be received in the proper sequence -- the strategy for doing so,
if made "on the fly," can bankrupt any development proposal.
Taking the time to carefully map out a comprehensive strategy before committing
to a specific use or design is the best investment a developer can make
in a project.
If you want to know
more about how Smart Growth,"new urbanism," mixed-use zoning,
transit villages, subcommunity planning, regional planning, federal ecosystem
and integrated watershed management, local growth caps, and Amendment
1 may affect your project, give us a call at 447-2555. I can provide reliable
advice to help you succeed in today's complex land use planning environment.
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Why
Passive/Aggressive Transportation Design Is Destined for Failure:
What If We Don't Build It, and They Come Anyway?
by Ed Byrne (2/26/98)
The public process
that produced downtown Boulder's Residential Parking Permit (RPP) system
was aptly tagged in a recent Daily Camera editorial as "wedded to
an 'If you build it, they will come' attitude" of resistance to new
parking." The same quip can describe Boulder's current Transportation
Master Plan (TMP), if you substitute "roadways" for "parking."
I, for one, hope the insular logic underlying both the RPP and the TMP
has run its course, because freeze-drying our current transportation infrastructure
does not appear to me to be an attractive option.
Neither does it appear
wise to me that we seem to be allocating most, if not all, of Boulder's
limited transportation construction budget to bicycle and pedestrian facilities
that barely make a dent in our traffic congestion challenge (I say this
even though I try to ride my bike to work every day). By contrast, our
capital and operational investment in transit alternatives like the Skip
and the HOP seems better advised, and actually appears to be working to
reduce traffic in the areas receiving enhanced services.
The unmet challenge
with respect to both the TMP and RPP public processes was how to fill
in the missing voices - the people in Boulder who actually choose NOT
to testify at hearings or join task forces. They must be heard before
balanced, realistic and effective transportation policy objectives can
be finally determined.
The Regional Transportation
Task Force (RTTF), established in the spring of 1997 by Boulder County's
Consortium of Cities, and the City of Boulder's "Transportation Future
Search" (TFS) conference come at this challenge in a different way.
The public process for each effort involved active recruitment of interested
and informed volunteers. The next step is to share good public policy
analysis, including all of its complexities and trade-offs, with this
broad cross-section of citizens. Participants are then charged with the
responsibility to sift through the analysis in order to prepare it for
later public consumption.
The assumption is
that in our new age of direct democracy, the tough choices will be sent
to the voters anyway, so we better provide voters with the information
they will need to make decisions that will stand the test of time. The
good news is that we will all ultimately get to vote on how our community
and region is going to address the transportation challenge. Of course,
that's the bad news, too.
Whether we get it
right will depend on the quality of our public debate. If the substance
of the discussion can be reduced to fit on a bumper sticker, we're in
trouble. We must all challenge ourselves to understand (and explain to
others) the complex public policy trade-offs involving transportation
systems, affordable housing, jobs, the environment, our quality of life,
and our sense of community (to name a few). Remember, the future we save
may be our own.
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"Living
in a Fragile Landscape:
The Future of Human Settlement Patterns in the American West"
by Ed
Byrne (October 25, 1999)
In 1976, the City
of Boulder adopted the first residential growth cap in Colorado. Twenty
years later, we have region-wide community jobs/housing imbalances that
are producing traffic congestion throughout eastern Boulder County. We
also have an affordable housing shortage that is harming our region's
economy, damaging our environment, destroying our sense of community,
and undermining our quality of life. We are building trophy homes at the
edge of town, on our mountain backdrops and in the middle of nowhere,
while creative affordable housing and mixed use developments must run
a gauntlet of organized neighborhood opposition.
Most voters understand
what many local politicians refuse to accept: growth is a regional challenge.
As the complex nature of the regional challenge becomes better understood,
voters are also beginning to recognize that local growth caps have failed
as an effective growth management tool. Land and home prices have skyrocketed
in Boulder and residential growth has simply shifted to neighboring communities,
creating longer commutes, air pollution increases and incredibly frustrating
traffic congestion.
Auto-dependent, "single-use
enclave" zoning practices are another reason our streets are so congested.
The sprawling development patterns they have produced require most people
to drive cars all over town to do almost anything. Reconfiguring land
use patterns it has taken us fifty years to create will require vision,
time, patience and resources - all of which are in short supply these
days. But we can not afford to wait any longer.
Dr. Tom Clark, Chair
of the University of Colorado-Denver's Planning and Design Department,
argues that "where growth settles upon our landscapes is far more
important than its sheer volume, and if growth's contemporary pattern
persists long into the next millennium I believe there's trouble on the
horizon." The other Tom Clark, former President of the Boulder Chamber
of Commerce and current Chief Executive Officer of the Jefferson Economic
Council has summarized the challenge as follows, "(t)he notion that
we can sustain our quality of life based on low-density settlements in
the face of a rapidly increasing population is a fallacy. Nor can we continue
to have one community pitted against another for retail development while
disregarding our common regional interests." Two Tom Clarks, one
an urban land use planner, the other a strategic economic planner, and
one shared opinion: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,
expecting a different result.
From an economic
and community health perspective, we must recognize the need to develop
higher density development and re-mix our land uses to secure our region's
future quality of life while rendering it more sustainable. Number caps
that make no distinction between small townhouses along transit routes
and muscle homes on large lots, or for that matter, convenience stores
in strip malls and high-tech manufacturing space in industrial parks,
can confound creative residential and non-residential solutions alike.
There is no simple, quick, local or statewide fix, although bumper stickers
in the years ahead may try to suggest otherwise.
David Osborne and
Ted Gaebler, co-authors of the seminal work, Reinventing Government, have
observed:
"In many ways,
we have outgrown our governments. The building blocks of our economy
todayare regional economies, which radiate out from a city or group
of cities . . . Each region has integrated needs - for public transit,
for water and sewer systems, for solid waste treatment, for economic
development. But few have integrated governments.
Id. at 246. There
ought to be a political price to pay for supporting public policies that
create results which are unfair, shortsighted and unwise, but - as the
late Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill once put
it - "all politics is local." Through a local lens, many of
the worst policies from a regional perspective seem to make sense. Similarly,
many individual choices in the marketplace make perfect economic and societal
sense (i.e., tract home v. co-housing v. fixer-upper, or big box v. local
grocery store v. farmers' market), even though the cumulative impacts
of such personal decisions can produce harmful local and regional impacts.
The unintended consequences
of ineffective (and even counterproductive) growth management policies
always seem to fall hardest on the working poor and the middle class,
because personal wealth can protect others from the government's inability
to "repeal" the economic law of supply and demand ("if
you constrain supply, and demand remains the same or increases, prices
will rise"). As Boulder has become more exclusive, its residents
have desired more services, but the employees needed to serve them have
had to live further and further away. The same has occurred in Colorado's
mountain resort towns. Ethically and environmentally, such jobs/housing
imbalances are indefensible, and they are a nightmare for both planners
and commuters.
We can build affordable
housing that is attractive. We can build "village centers" that
create transit nodes, neighborhood retail options, and community gathering
places. Over time, by channeling future growth intelligently to meet today's
social, economic, and environmental challenges, we can provide a better
future for our children and our children's children, while we avoid sacrificing
Colorado's enviable position at the cutting edge of the Information Era's
increasingly competitive global marketplace.
With the future of
Colorado's abundant natural resources and economic promise hanging in
the balance, can our state's citizens protect themselves from themselves
as voters and consumers? Only time will tell. What we do know is that
whether we're talking Adam Smith's "invisible hand" theory on
the benefits of capitalism, or the theory that in a democracy voters always
get what they deserve, good information is the key to intelligent decision-making:
"(E)nvironmentalists,
enlightened developers and (community) advocates can form a powerful
coalition for larger scale ecological programs, expedited permit processing,
efficient and affordable housing policies, and regional investments
that balance (community) needs with regional growth.
Peter Calthorpe, The
Next American Metropolis (Princeton Architectural Press, 1993).
From this day forward,
we must be wise and courageous enough to support new development that
will effectively reconfigure our current dysfunctional land use patterns,
moving us closer to a more sustainable future. We must also be principled
enough to challenge those which do not do so. If we do neither, we will
have only ourselves to blame for the environmental and economic harm -
and social injustice - that will surely follow from our shortsightedness.
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Growth
Management Angst, Redux
by Ed
Byrne (2/12/01)
Do you remember when
the most heinous crime you could commit in Boulder was taking yourself
too seriously? When people were so proud of Boulder's domestic policies
that we developed foreign policies as well? Does it now seem to you that
we have lost our sense of humor along with our community's political nerve?
What's up with that?
Well, to begin with,
some of the domestic policies have come back to haunt us. The Boulder
Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP) wasn't "comprehensive" at all
because it did not include Longmont, Niwot, Lafayette, Louisville, Superior
and Broomfield. Folks hoped the BVCP would prevent hub and spoke development
(e.g., Houston and Los Angeles), but we can now see that a 5-10 mile demilitarized
zone wasn't nearly wide enough.
Residential growth
limits in Boulder seemed like a good idea at the time, but disgruntled
developers simply turned their eyes (and their marketing budgets) eastward
and Boulder County's regional jobs/housing imbalance was off and running.
Now, we have hub-and-spoke development by default without having the regional
infrastructure needed to accommodate it. The result: runaway sprawl and
a congested transportation system.
The only good news
is that the communities around Boulder are rapidly developing their own
retail, office and technology centers, so the jobs/housing mix, at least
on paper, may become more balanced. However, the "brain drain"
factor is troubling. As a general rule, the new jobs are out east and
the old ones are closer to the mountains. The new employers creating high
quality jobs are recruiting talented mid-level managers and executives
out of existing Boulder County businesses. The "raided" companies
are then left fending for themselves in a labor market being stretched
from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Executives can afford Boulder's housing
prices, but most other employees can't, everyone seems to commute one
way or the other, so the transportation system may be taking another hit
. . .
Our local and regional
land use patterns probably couldn't be more dysfunctional than they are
today - the houses in one place, the stores in another, the jobs somewhere
else, and you're in your car, fighting traffic, to do almost everything.
Our 50-year experiment with exclusionary (single-use) zoning has not stood
the test of time, and we are now paying the price. Our quality of life
is suffering, not to mention our hope for the future.
Is it any wonder people
are so angry and depressed? Well, yes, it is. Look around you. Is life
in Boulder County really so bad? There is work left to do, but the answers
aren't beyond our grasp.
There are reasons
the "old town" neighborhoods of Boulder County's established
communities are admired, almost without exception. Towns built at the
turn of the century, by necessity, had to be "primarily self-sufficient."
Residents could work, shop and play close to home. Long-term sustainability
begins with this notion, but in our modern economy the rule can not strictly
be applied. Regional thinking can open our eyes to other possibilities,
including development of long range strategies for re-mixing and adding
some density to Boulder County's urban land use patterns (our choices
are: spread 'em out, pile 'em up, or let a bidding war make personal wealth
a residency requirement).
With a strategy integrated
using a regional perspective, we can steer future growth to local redevelopment
and infill projects that will make our lives better, not worse. With more
hope, less fear, and a plan that is fair to all, good projects can be
approved, even when faced by the seemingly inevitable local opposition
- I think (the jury is still out on this one. Get involved. There's no
point waiting for the state legislature or a ballot issue to "fix"
things. A sense of humor and some political resolve may be all we really
need to brighten and secure Boulder County's future.
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