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PLACEMATTERS06, the name of
the Orton Foundation's annual look at the best land-use
practices for creating sustainable communities, is also
the attitude of many who inhabit the Rocky Mountain
West.
Community leaders from across the region and the nation
will gather in Denver in October to discuss some of
the underpinning issues of growth and development in
the region, including where the energy for that growth
will be produced, how to accommodate the ever-changing
needs and tastes of the growing population, transportation
needs, and the growing momentum of citizen's initiatives
to revamp property rights laws.
Development in the Rocky Mountain states is at all stages
— urban centers that have been all but abandoned
are being rediscovered; subdivisions have evolved into
their own municipalities; small towns have become bigger,
bedroom communities for tiny resort towns or second-home
enclaves.
Counties with few people and no planning board or growth
plan are struggling with requests for subdivisions that
will dwarf existing towns. And underlying all those
growth issues are questions regarding traffic, mass
transit, sewers and of course water.
PLACEMATTERS06 will delve into these issues and listen
to what has and hasn’t worked for communities
who have been there, done that, and are now dealing
with the ramifications — or successes —
of their decisions.
In the Rocky Mountain West, growth along Utah's Wasatch
Front, Denver's Front Range, Arizona's Phoenix Valley
and Idaho's Magic Valley is gobbling up open lands and
has municipalities fighting over who will annex what
acreage.
As developable land becomes more scarce, some cities
such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Boise are finding
a new market for downtown housing.
Baby boomers no longer wishing to be bound by home and
lawn duties, and twenty-somethings who want to live
in the thick of things are snapping up townhouses and
apartments in Western cities' downtowns, and enticing
restaurants, retail stores and movie theaters back into
the urban center.
The lack of open land is also creating new interest
in former industrial sites located in urban areas. The
former Champion Mill site in Missoula, Mont., discussed
in Daniel Kemmis' column, is one such redevelopment.
Other such redevelopments are being or have been undertaken
at the former Stapleton Airport near Denver, at a former
gold smelter in Colorado Springs, and at two former
steel sites in Utah, and all will contain a mix of industrial,
commercial and residential space.
Infill development has become another tool in western
cities' planning toolbox as a way to add housing where
infrastructure already exists.
As bare lots become nonexistent — or so pricey
that they are out of almost everyone's price range — home buyers are finding it easier to buy an existing
older home, tear it down and build a new one.
But that trend has lead to huge new homes out of character
and style in older neighborhoods. Now, a number of cities
across the West have passed new zoning regulations against
such development, requiring new homes fit the size and
scale of their neighborhoods.
But not all development is occurring in urban areas,
and not all entities dealing with growth issues are
cities.
Small towns and rural counties have been blindsided
by proposals for huge subdivisions that double, and
sometimes even triple, the populations of their towns
or counties.
In Montana, Granite County officials are scrambling
to come up with a growth policy after a rancher decided
to build a 500-unit subdivision there; similar subdivisions
are planned in the state's Flathead and Bitterroot valleys
as well, and all subdivisions will nearly double the
size of the small towns adjacent to the new developments.
As more and more counties, cities and towns take steps
to adopt growth plans and put zoning regulations in
place, an attendant move to protect private property
rights is gaining momentum as well.
In the wake of last summer's U.S. Supreme Court decision
that said local governments could use eminent domain
powers to clear the way for private development, Colorado,
Idaho and Utah passed laws to rein in the use of local
government's use of that power.
New Mexico and Arizona lawmakers passed similar laws,
but the governors of both those states vetoed the measures.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said that state's bill
did more harm than good, and Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed
Arizona's proposed law because she said it was too restrictive.
Some Rocky Mountain states are also looking at measures
similar to Oregon's Measure 37, which requires local
governments to either rescind land-use measures that
adversely affect a landowner's property values or reimburse
that landowner for the loss.
Statewide ballot initiatives on such "takings" legislation have qualified for the ballot in Idaho,
Arizona, Montana and Nevada, but a campaign to put the
matter on the ballot in Colorado failed.
Headwaters News will be following the progression of
PLACEMATTERS06, and of course will continue to follow
the issues of the conference.
We invite readers to weigh in on the discussion.
Tell
us why you believe your Place Matters.
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