“If we fail to insist on the kinds of places that people instinctively love, we won’t succeed, and we won’t deserve to, either.”

Read the entire article at the Atlantic Cities: What Smart Growth Advocates Get Wrong About Density.

Flatiron Industrial Park (Google Earth)

2011 has thus far passed largely unmarked as the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jane Jacobs’ influential book on urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  In 1961, the book was as close to a blockbuster as the topic of planning has ever seen.  Today, while it is still widely read, some of its focus has become dated as planners have shifted much of their attention from problems of urban decay and flight to the suburbs to longer-term questions of sustainability, particularly in the context of climate change, global resource depletion, and the possibility of extended economic stagnation.  Moreover, Jacobs is clear and unapologetic in focusing on the biggest American cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and so on.  Yet the book retains its relevance today, despite these changed priorities, and that relevance extends to urban design in Boulder, a place Jacobs would surely not regard as a city.

To understand Jacobs’ book, you have to understand the Modernist, anti-urban planning movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and to understand these movements, you have to understand conditions in large cities in Europe and America at the time, particularly in London and New York.  Tenements in the cities were achingly overcrowded; the soot from coal fires blackened every surface; parks, libraries, museums, and other public spaces were rare, and largely shut off to the masses; and every street was covered in horse manure and the flies it attracted.

Planners of the time began to react against the unhealthy, miserable conditions, and proclaimed that cities, themselves, were the problem.  So they began to design un-city-like, even anti-city, communities.  The first, and most revolutionary, of these planners was the Englishman Ebenezer Howard, who began the Garden City movement.  The Garden City was to be a community of 30,000 people or less, where the working class could live and work while still being in proximity to nature (or at least greenery).  As the name suggests, gardens would be the most prominent feature of the city, with housing, shops, factories, and the like each segregated within its own district.  The design was prescribed and geometrical, like a formal English garden, with no errant petunias sticking up in the rose bed.  Linking it all together would be sweeping drives, like lovely, curving garden walks.

"Letchworth Garden City" from Principles of City Planning (1931) by Karl Baptiste Lohmann (click to enlarge)

A couple of actual Garden Cities, Letchworth and Welwyn, were subsequently built in England, more or less according to Howard’s plan.  In the US, Clarence Stein designed Radburn, NJ after Garden City principles.  However, the much greater impact was on the thinking of architects and planners, who embraced the concept wholeheartedly.  One of these was the influential Frenchman le Corbusier, who kept the ideas of greenery and strict separation of uses, but replaced the relatively low buildings in Howard’s conception with skyscrapers.  In The Urban Prospect, Lewis Mumford described le Corbusier’s design as bringing together “the machine-made environment, standardized, bureaucratized…; and to offset this, the natural environment, treated as so much visual open space….”  Le Corbusier also enthusiastically associated the plan with its natural transportation mode, the automobile, which when he was writing in the 1920s was already becoming the mode of choice in much of the Western world.  This plan he called Radiant City.

Finally, at about the same time the City Beautiful movement was popular.  This movement promoted the construction of monuments and civic centers (Denver’s being a prime example), again on the same general model of isolated buildings carefully placed to stud large lawns, all set well back from the road.

Flatiron Industrial Park (photo by the author)

All three movements were vehement reactions against the traditional urban building pattern.  Jacobs lumps them together, disparagingly calling them Radiant Garden City Beautiful, and blames them for many of the planning ills of her day, while marveling at their influence on planning thought.  Indeed, clear marks of Modernist ideas are visible today in Boulder.  The Flatiron Industrial Park, with its large, monolithic buildings set amongst perfectly manicured lawns, all surrounded by wide, gently arcing roadways, is a direct conceptual descendant of this tradition.  The complex containing Boulder’s Municipal Building and main library owes allegiance to the City Beautiful movement.  Even Northfield Village, currently under construction at the corner of 57th Street and Jay Road, can trace its high surrounding fence, its inward-looking demeanor with few connections onto the main streets, and its monoculture of residential use to Garden City ideas.  It is truly remarkable that in Boulder in 2011, we are still designing the city in reaction to conditions in 19th-century London.

As a reader, it’s also important to understand the context in which Jacobs was writing.  The word order in her title was not accidental.  In 1961, the death, or at least continued decay, of many big American cities seemed inevitable.  Crime rates were high, downtowns were crumbling, businesses and the middle class were moving to the suburbs in droves.  “Death” was on its way, and “Life” may have seemed wishful thinking.  Today many American cities are much more vital: a glance at Denver’s LoDo or New York City’s declining crime rates confirms that.

Like its title, The Death and Life of Great American Cities is wide-ranging and often verbose.  Jacobs addresses the virtues of sidewalks, the uses and misuses of parks, the economics of urban investment, subsidized housing, and more.  She rails with particular vehemence against housing projects, which she viewed as more or less Garden City for poor people.  It’s perhaps in large part thanks to Jacobs that housing projects are now almost universally recognized as an abject failure.

"Zoning" from Principles of City Planning (1931) by Karl Baptiste Lohmann (click to enlarge)

Jacobs’ antipathy toward highly prescriptive, rigid planning schemes that strictly separate uses, including her critique of Euclidean zoning, made her something of a darling among libertarians.  There’s nothing to indicate that her views were dictated by any larger ideology or agenda, though.  She opposed Modernist separation of uses from a pragmatic standpoint, because it was detrimental to the city and the people and activities that comprise it.  Jacobs surely would not have taken kindly to Boulder’s zoning code, which, while something of a hybrid, for the most part enforces just the kind of strict separation of uses that she criticizes.

Her prescription for how to fix projects — meaning mainly housing projects but applying to any Garden City-style development — is particularly interesting from a current perspective.  She suggests many of the same tools that planners today use, including those in Boulder: re-establishing the street grid through the development, for instance, and introducing buildings that line and address the streets.  These approaches can be seen in the (by no means fully successful) transformation of the Crossroads Mall into Twenty Ninth Street.

But the heart of the book, as Jacobs herself points out, is in her formulation of “generators of diversity.”  This is before “diversity,” in the senses of race, ethnicity, gender, and so on became a buzzword.  Jacobs says she means diversity of use, a very fine-grained mix of all the kinds of activities — economic activities, social activities, recreational activities, and more — that go on in a city.  But a better term today might be dynamism: the level of healthy activity in a city.  This diversity, or dynamism, she contrasts with what she calls The Great Blight of Dullness.

Her four factors creating diversity of use in a neighborhood are:

1. A fine-grained mix of primary activities, meaning those that someone would travel across the city to engage in.  Besides housing and employment, primary activities include destination shopping, premier arts facilities, government offices, main libraries, parks that draw from across the city, destination restaurants and bars, etc.
2.  Short blocks in the street grid.
3.  Buildings of a wide range of ages and conditions.  The idea is to have a wide range of rent or purchase costs, to provide spaces for established, successful firms that can afford nice digs, as well as spaces for enterprises that are just getting going, or perhaps (as in artists’ studios) may not be highly profitable.
4.  A sufficient density of people, who may be residents or people there because of other primary uses.

"Short blocks" illustration from Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs

All four of these conditions are directly contrary to Modernist planning.  Most suburban neighborhoods are residential-only, with relatively large blocks, houses of very similar vintage, and very low density.  Flatiron Industrial Park has almost exclusively office and industrial uses, very long “blocks,” buildings that almost uniformly date from the 1980s, and low average density.

Jacobs spends a good deal of ink discussing the four conditions, which she claims are both necessary and sufficient for creating diversity of use.  That might be going too far, but they all clearly contribute to diversity and thus warrant more consideration in urban design.  Other than in the residential realm, the value of a mix of more- and less-expensive buildings in an area, as called for in condition 3, gets particularly little attention from planners.

But what’s especially relevant today about Jacobs’ conditions is that numbers 1, 2, and 4 are all widely accepted as means of making a neighborhood less car-dependent: mixed use allows for the possibility to walk among home, shopping, and work; a fine-grained street grid means shorter distance around blocks and a more pedestrian-scale feel, and a more diffuse distribution of auto traffic; and density means more activity within a given walking distance, making walking and transit more viable alternatives to the automobile.

The question of car-oriented design is something Jacobs touches on only lightly.  She saw the degrading effects of the automobile on a city, but for her the greater evil was Garden City-style development, with the car just a mechanism that allows that style to be viable.  But she was writing before the days of ozone alerts, oil wars, global warming, and the obesity epidemic.  Today, to address these and other ills that 50-plus years of auto-centric development have helped bring about, planners are turning from designing the urban form for cars, almost invariably using Modernist-inspired motifs, to designing for people (and their mobile form, pedestrians) using models that predate Modernist ideas.  New Urbanism, in particular, hearkens back to the urban form of the very cities that so disturbed Howard and the others — though, it’s hoped, minus the turn-of-the-century evils.

So what Jacobs tells us is that pedestrian-oriented design is also good for the dynamism of the city: its economic vigor, its social strength, the safety of its streets, and so on.  Traditional urban design with its mix of land uses, short, walkable blocks, and relatively high density produces a happy convergence of these traits.  But that should come as no surprise.  It was the standard urban model around the world for thousands of years prior to the fossil fuel age, until Modernist ideas, made practical by the popularity of the automobile, supplanted it.

The underlying theme and motivating force behind all of Jacobs’ urban planning guidelines is her emphasis on community.  She wants readers to see the city as comprised of people and their activities, not buildings and streets and marks on a map.  Buildings and streets and maps are important, to be sure, but they’re not the point.  They’re simply the means that allow people to congregate in the city and engage in the myriad activities that give cities their unique vitality.  The Death and Life of Great American Cities could well instead be titled Cities for People, as is a recent book by the architect and planner Jan Gehl.  Ebenezer Howard clearly had people at heart when designing his Garden Cities, but subsequent planners adopted the form and abandoned the objective.  (Geddes Smith titled a 1930 article about Radburn, “A Town for the Motor Age.”  How different from Cities for People!)  Reading Jacobs today, we see that sadly, the last fifty years have not erased the need to remind designers that people — not developers’ profits, not cars, not architects’ egos — should be the point.

The enduring, or perhaps resurgent, value of Jacobs’ book lies in the case it makes for a traditional urban form that, today, is widely recognized as a model that planners must return to in order to redress decades’ worth of Radiant Garden City Beautiful design.  The book endures as a passionate, articulate, approachable defense of urbanism as an alternative to The Great Blight of Dullness wrought by Modernism — a planning model that remains remarkably pervasive, even in Boulder.

Thanks to Louis Krupp for his extensive contributions to the author’s urban planning library.

Read the entire piece at Rust Wire: Michigan CEO: Soul-Crushing Sprawl Killing Business

from flickr: http://flic.kr/p/5Aa2F3

The United States Constitution requires the federal government to conduct a census of population every ten years. The census was originally intended to determine representation in the U. S. House of Representatives but the data derived has been expanded to state and local government redistricting, distribution of public funds, demographic analysis, research for retailers and developers and bragging rights among cities and states.

The 2010 census determined that the population of the United States, as of April 1, exceeded 300 million. The state of Colorado had grown by 16.9% since 2000 to just over five million people. In Colorado 16 of the state’s 65 counties registered population declines, mainly those on the eastern plains, in the San Luis valley and among some small mountain locations.

Growth rates were highest along the Front Range and in several mountain counties. Denver bucked the trend of the mid to late 1900s by growing, with an increase of 8.2%. The growth was reflected in a number of other large American central cities, showing a move back to urban areas by young people and the increasing role of Latino immigrants.

Boulder County participated in the Front Range growth, increasing its population by 1.1% to 295,000. However, that rate (and population total) was affected by the creation from Boulder County (and two others) of Broomfield County subsequent to the 2000 census. Had that not occurred Boulder County’s population would have increased by about 13%. All of the municipalities in Boulder County registered growth except for Louisville, which had a surprising decline of 3%.

The City of Boulder grew but at the expected slow rate. The population in 2010 was recorded as 97,385, for an increase of 2.9%, or 2,712 people from 2000. The census has various (and sometimes conflicting) methods of counting college students. The annual American Community Survey estimates the City of Boulder to have over 100,000 people, including all CU and Naropa students who reside in the city, regardless of their official home towns. In any case, Boulder’s growth rate is slow and steady and not a cause of great concern unless you want no growth, an impossibility.

However, the census does point out some issues that should affect public policies, especially for housing, transportation and planning. In particular:

• As one might expect of a college town Boulder is a very young city. It also attracts a lot of college graduates who wish to take advantage of employment opportunities, the pleasant lifestyle and environment and inclusive attitudes. But Boulder also has a substantial aging population, many of whom are residents aging in place and others moving to the city for many of the same reasons as younger migrants. Sometimes the interests of these demographics clash.
• Boulder has a healthy economy which is likely to expand as more businesses oriented to alternative energy, organic food, bicycling and high tech expand, relocate or start up in Boulder. This is likely to put more pressure on an already tight rental housing market and on commuting patterns as some of these residents come to jobs in Boulder but live in nearby communities. And, the situation once again raises the “jobs/pop” issues of how to balance employment and housing with commuting pressures.
• Housing construction in Boulder during the 2000 to 2010 period was not the boom imagined by many. The City of Boulder issued building permits for 3,366 new residential units during the period (net of demolitions), the majority of which were in multi-family or single-family attached (townhouses and duplexes) units. Considering demographic trends this is likely to continue, which means a demand for more density in housing development.

One factor being observed nationally is a “self sort” by which people move to communities that reflect their values. Thus, even though Boulder has a considerable turnover in population (as one might expect in a college town) newcomers retain many of Boulder’s traditional environmental, political, social and recreational values. For example, Boulder’s much more likely to attract gay and lesbian newcomers than Sterling, Limon or Colorado Springs.

A concern I have is that there appears to be a divide between younger newcomers and older residents on the issue of the use (or misuse) of open space lands. To some extent this is a “I’ve got mine” versus “It’s mine to use” conflict between those who want to preserve and protect the open space lands and those who want to maximize what they see as appropriate recreational use. And yet, all of them value the environment and the open space. It’s not a question of whether we should have open space but how to both use and preserve it.

In any case, Boulder is much better positioned to address some of the problems that will arise over climate change, peak oil and the divisive and increasingly dysfunctional political situation on the federal level. Excessive population growth is not one of those problems, at least in our community.

How and where we construct our communities has an enormous effect on our energy consumption. Buildings and transportation together account for about 70 percent of energy use in the United States and are responsible for about 62 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Creating more energy-efficient communities and buildings would reduce our impact on climate change and save people money on household energy costs. It could also help the U.S. to become less reliant on foreign fuel and other non-renewable sources of household energy.

Read the entire article at the EPA:  Location Efficiency and Housing Type – Boiling it Down to BTUs.

Edward Glaeser is high on cities. Very high, in fact. In “How Skyscrapers Can Save The City” The Atlantic, February 2011 the Harvard economist puts the high-rise at the heart of a newly accessible, affordable, vital and sustainable metropolis. The city that doesn’t build up must build out, Glaeser points out, sucking up resources, lengthening commutes and putting pressure on undeveloped land. He sees densely populated, vertical cities not only as environmentally responsible, but as engines of innovation and prosperity — and the best hope for developing nations. Yet in cities around the world, Glaser’s lofty vision has bumped up against height limits and restrictive permitting. He spoke with The Atlantic from his home outside Boston about how measures aimed at saving cities may actually threaten their survival.

Read the entire interview at the Atlantic: City Limits: A Conversation With Edward Glaeser

City Council will discuss the next steps for the downtown area south of Canyon Blvd. on Wednesday evening, November 3, 2010.

Controversy and Consensus, a Channel 8 production hosted by Ralph Gregory, devoted a recent episode to downtown development.   Will additional density solve our affordable housing, commuting, and energy problems?  Watch former councilman Steve Pomerance and architect Fenno Hoffman debate the issues here.  Select the September 2010 episode.

Read the staff memo here.

The Diagonal Plaza shopping center in north Boulder has long been seen as a candidate for redevelopment, but plans have never materialized. The blame for a lack of action is usually placed on the center’s multiple ownerships and on the lack of City of Boulder involvement. That may be changing.

The City quietly commissioned an economic analysis of options for the center, including possible public involvement in acquisition and redevelopment. A Denver firm, Economic & Planning Systems, Inc. was retained to provide the analysis, which was presented to a meeting of the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority (BURA) on September 29.

The EPS report considered several options for redeveloping Diagonal Plaza, ranging from the inclusion of “big box” retailers like Wal-Mart or Costco to an urban mixed-use project with smaller retail anchors and high density housing. According to EPS the most feasible concept, in terms of financial costs and benefits for the City of Boulder, is the mixed-use approach. The EPS report showed several conceptual plans of how the site could be redeveloped.

Diagonal Plaza contains about 223,000 square feet of space and is currently anchored by 24-Hour Fitness, Sport Authority and Rite-Aid. The Boulder office of the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles, although small in size, also generates a great deal of customer traffic. The center is located on about 18 acres of land between Iris Avenue and 28^th and 30^th street. It was initially constructed in 1975, with several additions culminating in its current size in 1995.

Although larger numbers have been bandied about, Diagonal Plaza is actually owned by only five entities, of which one is local. The others are located (according to the EPS report) in Florida, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Denver. Several outparcels, including those occupied by restaurants and a tire store, are owned by out-of-town interests but are not necessarily needed for redevelopment of the center property.

The City of Boulder staff is particularly interested in redeveloping Diagonal Plaza for two reasons: blight and taxes. The City has commissioned EPS to conduct a “blight study,” which would be required for creation of an urban renewal district. Sales tax revenues at the center have declined in recent years as tenants have departed. Not mentioned by staff, but equally important to the community, is the opportunity to create a model urban infill project that would enhance the City’s goal of encouraging urban infill and higher density development in appropriate locations.

On November 16 the Boulder City Council is tentatively scheduled to discuss the next steps, which could lead to the creation of an urban renewal district, consideration of a public-private partnership, use of tax increment financing, waiver of fees, and other types of local government financial involvement. During discussion at the September 29 meeting, several of the BURA members seemed to favor the conversion of the site to “big box” uses. According to EPS this approach is the least feasible in terms of return on public investment.

Diagonal Plaza represents one of the last large redevelopment sites in the city so citizens should carefully follow the process. The mediocre area plan for the Transit Village and the unimaginative development of the 29^th Street retail center clearly show that creation of a real asset for the community at the Diagonal Plaza site is not guaranteed without public involvement.

from Assefa and Grauer presentation

Fifty-eight percent of the land in SoDA (South of Downtown Area between 13th and 16^th Streets and Canyon and Arapahoe) is publicly owned, and, if that space is used imaginatively, the redevelopment of the private land in SoDA will almost inevitably succeed in benefiting the public, asserted Sam Assefa, senior urban designer, and Louise Grauer, senior planner, for the City of Boulder at a PLAN-Boulder County forum on Friday, September 17.

Assefa observed that SoDA is already sharply defined by Canyon Boulevard on the north and by the nearly parallel North Boulder and Farmers’ Ditch about half a block to the south. He remarked that the irrigation ditch is now largely neglected as a source of amenities, and proposed at least one public, green space along it on each block. He also noted that the public right of way for Canyon Boulevard is 78 feet from each side of the centerline and that it is currently not being fully used on the south side of the thoroughfare.

from Assefa and Grauer presentation

The plan proposed for SoDA by the City’s Planning Department provides for widening Canyon to eight lanes with rows of trees between the lanes. Four of the lanes would be for through vehicular traffic, two would be for bicycles and pedestrians, and two would be for on-street parking. The effect, Assefa claimed, would be to create a lively, public space, perhaps somewhat similar to the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris, that would invite pedestrian activity, attract outdoor cafes, and mitigate the “dead zone” that many believe exists on the north side of Canyon.

Avenue des Champs Elysees

This plan was presented to the Planning Board this past spring and to the City Council at a study session on August 24. Grauer said that the Planning Department will submit a summary of the study session to the City Council on October 5 and suggest directions from Council for further work. One of the directions which she indicated was likely to be suggested to the Council is an inter-departmental study of the area bordering Canyon Boulevard from 9^th Street to 17^th Street by City staff during the next year with a view to widening it to fill the full 156 foot right-of-way.

Grauer and Assefa said that the existing zoning in SoDA allows for a Floor to Area Ratio (“FAR”) of 2.7. The Planning Department recommended to City Council lowering the FAR in SoDA to 2.0. Grauer commented that the Council seemed content with the existing 2.7 FAR. Both Assefa and Grauer claimed that the difference between the effects of 2.0, 2.2, and 2.7 FAR on the attractiveness of SoDA would be marginal, if the public spaces are created wisely. Assefa noted that the average density on the north side of Canyon between 16^th and 10^th Streets is 2.15, even though current zoning allows for a higher FAR.

from Assefa and Grauer presentation

The Planning Department also recommended that the by-right height limit in the downtown area, except for the historic district, be expanded from 35 feet to 38 feet. That limit would accommodate a 14 foot high first floor at street level and second and third stories of 12 feet each in height. Assefa and Grauer maintained that 14-foot high floors are considered standard for retail use.

Grauer added that the Planning Department has further proposed 1)  a 15 foot setback for fourth stories, 2) requiring permanently affordable housing in all developments receiving a density bonus, and 3) eliminating the below-grade habitable floor area in the overall FAR calculation.

Assefa acknowledged that threading bus traffic to and from the RTD station at 14^th and Canyon and on-street collection areas between eight lanes on Canyon could be tricky.  Audience member Al Gunter also asserted that redevelopment in downtown Boulder to the currently allowable density will cause traffic gridlock.

A plan for SoDA, if adopted by the City Council, would be implemented slowly over several decades as properties redevelop. Some in the audience expressed concern that such a plan must be devised so that it would withstand efforts to distort it over time. The Planning Department’s study of SoDA was precipitated by the City Council’s rejection in 2009 of a proposal to redevelop the Robb’s Music property at 1580 Canyon. At the forum one of the redevelopers of the Robb’s Music property asserted that the main effect of the proposed SoDA plan would be to shift a new building on the property 15 feet further from the centerline of Canyon.

PLAN-Boulder County believes that Boulder County is a special place.  Our beautiful mountain backdrop overlooking verdant plains has been protected forever with progressive land use planning.  Our extensive trail network and recreational facilities, coupled with 300 days of sunshine a year, invite residents to explore and appreciate our natural surroundings.  Our transportation system offers alternatives to driving a car through comprehensive bicycle facilities and transit services.  A vibrant cultural and intellectual community exists through the University of Colorado and numerous federal laboratories.  Our environmental stewardship and commitment to sustainability is recognized and emulated all over the world.  We believe that Boulder County is a unique and beautiful place that is worth caring about, and a place that is worth protecting.

We also believe that maintaining our quality of life in Boulder County will require careful management from committed municipal staff, engaged citizens and inspired leaders.  Legend has it that Chief Niwot, leader of the South Arapaho tribe in the Boulder area in the mid-1800’s, told the people seeking gold in the area that “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.”

In the past, the City of Boulder and Boulder County have done many things right to guide development and protect the environment.  The most inspired and visionary measures have been:

• Creating urban growth boundaries through Open Space purchases around our cities
• Adopting the Super IGA (intergovernmental agreement) that restricts sprawl around Boulder County cities
• Requiring new buildings to be built to strict energy efficiency codes through the Green Points and BuildSmart programs
• Limiting the height of buildings to an absolute maximum of 55 feet (City of Boulder)
• Limiting our residential growth rate to less than 1% (City of Boulder)

While these actions have helped create the quality of life that our citizens love, increasing development pressures in our community now require additional attention to directing development.  As we move forward, Boulder and other Boulder County cities should direct slow, careful, measured growth to infill and redevelopment sites within the context of height and growth-rate limits.  PLAN-Boulder County recommends that all new development in Boulder County adhere to these four pillars.

Pillar I:       Provide Alternative Transportation

Alternative transportation is an integral component of regional growth as all communities in Boulder County experience heavy daily in and out commuting.  Boulder County municipalities should require minimum levels of transit service between jurisdictions, such as 15-minute peak service and 30-minute off-peak service.  Final mile consideration should be implemented to ensure transit stops are within walking, biking, or shuttle distances of job centers and other destinations.  Boulder County communities should develop funding sources to provide Eco Passes to all employees within the county.  Ridesharing programs should be expanded to fill empty seats in single occupancy vehicles.  Finally, municipalities should reduce parking requirements or create parking maximums for all new development, and implement managed parking zones in transit-rich central areas.

Pillar II:     Reduce Greenhouse Gas Generation in New Development

Densification in appropriate areas of our cities offers a potential reduction in vehicle miles traveled of about 10% and energy efficiency increases as high as 20-40% for those new developments.  Thus, we can expect dense developments to produce approximately 30-50% less GHG emissions than similarly constructed, detached housing in suburban settings.  However, population growth, even in well-designed dense areas, will grow our carbon footprint significantly.  For example, doubling population by densifying an area will magnify GHG emissions by 150% to 170%.

Buildings should be built to progressively decreasing energy consumption levels (including embodied energy), and should be powered entirely by renewable energy sources.  The external or indirect costs of provisioning dense areas should be considered.  Smaller house sizes, built to be durable, must also be part of the solution.

Pillar III:   Create an Adequate Public Services Ordinance

The current development impact fees in all municipalities in Boulder County are inadequate and leave residential development as a net tax drain on city budgets.  The municipalities within Boulder County should pass impact fees, excise taxes and/or Adequate Public Facilities ordinances to ensure that current levels of public services (education, parks, libraries, transportation, police/fire, etc.) are maintained and not degraded by the impacts of growth.  We recommend that that these charges are set high enough that municipalities can provide good public services without relying on commercial sales taxes to balance budgets.

Pillar IV:    Create Housing Diversity

As Boulder rapidly approaches buildout, it is important that the City develop methods of creating affordable housing that do not rely as heavily on new development.

Inclusionary zoning is still an important tool, but the current program must change.  At a minimum, two changes are essential to achieve affordability goals.  First, cash-in-lieu for off-site provision of affordable units must be equivalent to the actual cost of building or acquiring those units.  Second, if development intensity potential of properties is increased through upzoning or exceptions to development limits, then increased numbers of affordable units must be obtained.  Exceptions to development limits must only be granted when something exceptional is provided in return.  Otherwise, development intensity increases create windfalls for property owners and are, in essence, a public subsidy for the developer.  These windfalls are conferred by the Public and must therefore be recaptured in full, for the purpose they were granted – a public benefit.

Finally, regional housing choice is still poorly understood.  Boulder County cities should conduct comprehensive studies to understand both the demographics and income ranges of our local work forces, the corresponding housing requirements and appropriate affordable housing goals, and potential funding sources to create additional affordable housing.