The Small Town Project

Having attended the recent League of Women Voters (LOWV) sponsored debate on growth in Mount Vernon, I thought I’d simply list a few key points concerning what I heard there.

1) Though Don Cell’s piece in the Sun leading into the debate may have given some the impression the event would feature pro-growth and anti-growth panelists, it really featured proponents of two different kinds of growth: conventional suburban growth (Rick Elliot and Richard Snavely) and thoughtful growth informed by principles of New Urbanism (Dick Peterson). The remaining panelist (Gretchen Sutherland) voiced support mainly for a new road between the Stonebrook development and the North side of town.
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Image source: The Sustainable Scale Project

Part I of this article offered a snapshot of Boulder’s open space acquisition program. I suggested that an understanding of any such effort to fight sprawl ultimately connects with larger issues such as population growth and per capita resource consumption. The work of Boulder residents, Al Bartlett and Bob Cohen provides a look at these issues, their interconnections and how they deepen our understanding of sprawl and other needless and destructive “development” such as that which we see today in Mount Vernon and Lisbon.

Let’s learn from a sprawl fighting pioneer
I mentioned in a recent post Al Bartlett’s famous talk, Arithmetic, Population and Energy. (Go there to learn about the talk’s history.) It’s one of the best sources for a clear, concise introduction to the problem of continued growth. In this case, the growth in question is both population growth and growth in our per capita resource consumption. They are, after all, the two leading culprits in the growth problems we face. Working together, they magnify the problems with which we’re dealing. And lest we lose sight of the focus of this website, we have to recognize that population growth and growth in per capita land consumption (an example of increasing per capita resource consumption) are the primary root causes of sprawl.
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Open space acquisition gets the job done. Image source: City of Boulder

Some weeks ago I promised an article on the “big picture.” I had in mind something highlighting the links between needless sprawl, broader problems such as environmental degradation, and the primary root causes of these problems: population growth and excessive per capita consumption of finite resources.

A trip to Boulder, Colorado last week did much to bring the big picture into perspective. I went there, in part, to observe directly the current results of city’s open space acquisition program. Initiated by local citizens in the early ’70s, and continuing today, it has ringed the city with open land, closed to development. I was curious to see how, some 35 years from its inception, it relates to the town and surrounding communities. Just as importantly, I was eager to meet two residents who have long been involved in addressing not only Boulder’s growth issues, but also all the broader issues discussed here as well.

Doing what it takes
Comparing today’s Boulder and its neighboring communities with the way they were 25 years ago highlights the benefits of a good open space acquisition program while simultaneously demonstrating the insatiable appetite of suburban sprawl. The suburbs and towns north of Denver have sprawled beyond belief in the last few decades. Twenty five years ago the drive from Denver to Boulder meant about 30 minutes through undeveloped, open land. Signs along the highway pointed to Boulder’s small town neighbors such as Broomfield and Louisville, but they were little seen from the road, existing as separate, distinct small towns unto themselves. Today they’ve sprawled to the highway, crossed it, and now appear as one nearly continuous suburban belt from Denver, almost to Boulder. Striking, however, is the expanse of open land you see when you come over the rise outside Boulder. The city’s open space acquisition program has preserved just enough land That Boulder retains an identity separate from the fast growing neighbors now surrounding it.
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I’ve just returned from a trip to Colorado where I had a first hand look at the results of Boulder’s pioneering open space aquisition program and spoke with two residents who have grappled for years with the issues we deal with here. I’ll be posting a multi-part article about that in the coming days. For now, given the recent passing of Coretta Scott King, it seems appropriate to post a few words on overpopulation from Martin Luther King Jr.:

Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.