On the whole, you find wealth much more in use than in ownership. – Aristotle

What Aristotle aimed at cannot be certain. When applied to owning a car, though, we can certainly interpret it in the following manner: “The true cost of car ownership is not in its capital expense, but in its operating expenses.”

Jane outside her Whittier neighborhood home

Boulder resident, Jane Enterline recently bought a new car. Her next door neighbor, Graham Hill, mentioned the idea of sharing that car with her entire neighborhood. She fell in love with the idea, so now her new shiny, fuel-efficient, red Honda Fit is conveniently placed outside her Whittier Neighborhood home, and as part of the eGo CarShare fleet, she won’t have to pay for insurance, maintenance or even gas. This is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) CarSharing and, though referred to as a new phenomenon, has been going on in Boulder since 1997.

P2P asks the question, “Why so many cars?” Peer-to-Peer CarSharing has the potential to change the standard ratio (one car for every person) to neighbors sharing cars with neighbors. Imagine entire neighborhoods reclaiming the public spaces we now reserve for automobiles by significantly reducing the number of vehicles that remain parked, and unused, 22 hours out of every day. The traditional concept of one car, one owner is about to become an outdated paradigm. As serial Internet entrepreneur, Lisa Gansky, highlights in her recent book The Mesh, “We’re moving from an economy and lifestyle where access trumps ownership.”  Indeed, Boulder’s soon-to-be launched Community Tool Library and upcoming Bike Share program further illustrate this trend.

“I was going to buy a car anyway, but when this option became known, I thought it was perfect for my family,” explained Enterline. “I ride my bike a lot, plus I have an Eco Pass, so sharing our car and still having easy access to it made this an easy decision. I think more people will be willing to buy a car and place it in front of their house for others to use in exchange for no operating costs. When I first looked into carsharing, I noticed that the closest car was about 9 blocks away. By adding my car to the eGo fleet I can unload my groceries in front of my house, while providing a beneficial resource to my neighbors,” said Enterline.

In 2009, the average annual cost of owning a car was $8,487 per 15,000 miles. That’s $707 per month. This cost is seldom considered in purchasing decisions. Sharing will become the new norm as we move away from hyper consumerism and re-invent ourselves and our society. As Gansky put it “With all of our ability to connect to each other and the physical world, this is the precise moment when sharing our things could be convenient, relatively inexpensive, and painless.” For now, Boulder residents can easily share their cars making us wealthier with easy and cost effective access. Did Aristotle see this coming?

The synthetic turf playing field at the renovated Casey Middle School is a lot of things: centrally located, environmentally friendly, guilt-free green— and off-limits.  A grey Master lock and a BVSD sign declare use of the field restricted to properly authorized individuals who have reserved it ahead of time.

No kids with kites.
No Snow Day sledders.
No Frisbee-tossing teenagers.

The field where generations of Boulder kids learned to throw a ball or turn a cartwheel is now closed to casual use. Casey officials have indicated that the field will remain locked up like “all District turf fields,” despite earlier promises to provide public access to the space.

This unfortunate decision comes at a price for local youth. Recently, the police showed up because a few neighborhood boys had scaled the fence to play Frisbee. The message to these teenagers? “Playing outside can get you in trouble.” In an age of epidemic child obesity, isn’t it irresponsible for a public institution, renovated with over $30 million in tax dollars, to take away a communal space that has been used primarily by children for outdoor recreation?

The lock-out seems especially unfair given that access to the field and adjacent sledding hill was a major point of discussion during the planning phase of the Casey renovation project. The sledding hill has been a fixture of central Boulder for years, and community members attended design meetings to ensure its availability after project completion. School officials assured the public that access to the field and hill would be preserved.

The reason now cited for the closure—protection of the newly-installed synthetic turf—runs counter to the justification provided for installing the turf field in the first place. In addition to the major benefit of conserving water, the synthetic turf was touted as being tougher than grass. Limiting access also runs counter to one of the guiding principles for BVSD facility planning, as articulated in the Educational Facilities Master Plan, which describes the projects funded by the 2006 Bond Issue (including the Casey renovation): to “[c]ontinue to encourage community use of facilities.”

Nothing discourages community use of a field more than a lock and a sign urging residents to report its unauthorized use. Boulderites value an active lifestyle. Our public schools should promote this value by providing more places for kids to play, not less. Unstructured outdoor play is one of the basic joys of childhood. If we want to raise a generation of healthy adults, we need to start today in our own backyards—and playing fields.

Get inspired on this year’s 8^th Annual Whittier-Mapleton Hill Garden Tour. Join this self-guided walking tour of spectacular private gardens in one of Boulder’s most prized neighborhoods, the Mapleton Hill Historic District. As you tour, absorb the abundant and lush beauty of nine spectacular gardens. Get advice and ideas from knowledgeable garden hosts, designers, expert garden volunteers, and CSU Extension Master Gardeners. All will be on hand to discuss and enjoy the gardens with you.  The gardens are easily accessible and a short walk from each other.

The 2010 Garden Tour has introduced a new benefit for tour participants. All ticketholders will receive a free Goodie Bag with various treats and offers from the Tour’s sponsors. Some of the items include a free glass of wine at The Kitchen, lip moisturizer, bicycle bell, free exercise class at The Bar Method, and bottle of local spring water to name just a few.  The Annual Mapleton Hill Rummage Sale takes place on the same day, bringing an extra buzz to the neighborhood and both events are the perfect kick-off to the summer season.

Highlights of the Tour include:

• A lush fantasyland in Central Boulder with whimsical sculptures and artwork, an inviting pool, Koi pond, and enormous shade-loving plants covering an expansive property;

• A sustainable garden creatively designed with salvaged bricks that once covered Broadway Boulevard, stones from the old Boulder courthouse, unusual xeric plantings, and a variety of vegetables and herbs;

• Privacy created through the use of trees, shrubs and water features;

• Interesting planting combinations resulting from unconventional gardening practices;

• A garden that started out as a small “Garden in a Box” package and has matured to feel like an urban park;

• A front yard lawn transformed into a beautifully designed vegetable garden through intensive plantings and the four-square gardening concept;

• A regal garden surrounding a meticulously preserved barn which formerly housed the Boulder Fire Department’s draft horses in the early 1900s;

• A rarely seen private garden of spectacular beauty and grandeur tucked behind one of Mapleton Hill’s most distinguished homes; and

• An inspiring smaller garden that has been twenty years in the making, demonstrating a gardener’s passionate eye for complex perennial arrangements and abundant plant variety.

Whittier International School Benefits from the Tour

The Whittier-Mapleton Garden Tour is more than just a day of revelation and fun. By taking part in the garden tour you’ll make a direct and meaningful contribution to help sustain the quality of programs at Whittier International School. All of the proceeds from the tour—100 percent—directly benefit the students of Whittier. The Whittier student body spans a diverse cultural and socio-economic spectrum. The children represent 29 countries and speak 19 different languages. Nearly 40 percent of the students receive free or reduced lunches. The contribution you make to Whittier through our garden tour is dedicated to programs that support these diverse needs. Our garden tour fundraiser is even more important this year because of impending budget cuts throughout the Boulder Valley School District that will deeply affect core academic programs.

Event Information

When: June 5, 2010; 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Mapleton Hill Historic District

Cost: $12 for adults and teens; kids 12 and younger free, no dogs please

Where to buy Tickets: Advance ticket sales at: West End Gardener, Sturtz & Copeland, and Pharmaca at Alpine and Pearl Street and the Flower Bin (in Longmont).

Day-of-event sales at: The Boulder Farmers’ Market, the former Mapleton Elementary School at the corner of 9^th and Mapleton; 402 Pine (the corner of 4^th & Pine St.); and 702 Pine Street.

For more information go to www.whittiergardentour.com.

Up until about World War II, both neighborhoods remained quite stable.  Changes to the housing stock were more common for larger houses throughout the neighborhoods as families, especially during the Great Depression, claimed “hardship” in maintaining large homes.  There was a city board that then would grant permission to split the big house down into smaller units. The Kohler House, formerly owned by the family of Edward Kohler, a prominent banker and rancher at 942 Pine, once had 14 rooming units!

Following “the War,” an influx of GIs attending the university on the “GI Bill” placed further demands on Boulder’s housing stock resulting in more house conversions to apartments in both neighborhoods.  The need for housing was so dire that Minnie May Cunningham, the “Goat Lady” near 4th and Linden, was able to convert her low ceilinged chicken coops to rental housing. In those days, there were no rental licenses!  As the University began accommodating more married students in family housing, originally in Quonset huts and then in the apartments located south of Canyon and west of Folsom, there was less demand on the neighborhoods for student housing. The City instituted zoning regulations with more control, in particular segregating apartment housing from single-family housing.  Single-family housing was further defined by size of lots and the general mix of housing types.  The area north of Mapleton included a number of houses that were originally built as duplexes.  This, coupled with small lot sizes, resulted in a MR-E zoning (medium density, established) designation for the area–the same as much of Whittier.

By the mid-1960′s, Boulder had begun to expand to the east.  Apartment complexes in areas zoned for high density began to spring up, relieving some of the demand on the big old houses for higher density housing.  Housing was reasonably priced so a family could buy a “run down” apartment house and convert it back to single-family use.  Because the housing stock was not expensive, developers could also buy little old houses for demolition to be replaced by small multi-unit buildings given a large enough lot or two in the MR-E zones.  The Whittier neighborhood and the east end of Maxwell both had quite a bit of this kind of in-fill development through the mid-1970′s.  For a brief time, I lived in one of those brand new four-plexes in the 1700 block of Spruce.  Crystal Gray was my next-door neighbor.  Her family occupied the upstairs apartment, one of three, in the same house where Crystal still lives. At about the same time that I bought my little house west of 9th on Maxwell, Crystal and her family bought their house from their former landlord and converted it back to single family.

It wasn’t very long before development activity began to creep across 9th Street into the north part of Mapleton Hill.  The families living in Mapleton Hill organized an effort to both change the MR-E zoning to LR-E and have Mapleton Hill named an historic district–one of the first in the City of Boulder.  Neighbors were notified of the doings about town via “The Mapleton Leaf,” a 1 page newsletter that was distributed by the Eco-Cycle block leaders.  (Later, the sixth grade children at Mapleton School took on the responsibility of passing out the newsletter.)  We gathered around the table at Judge “Bud” and June Holmes’ home enjoying June’s home baked cookies with “Bud’s” Mayna bird caged in the kitchen screeching something that sounded like “Get me outta here!”  We worked together to change our neighborhood and were known as the Mapleton Hill Mob down at City Hall.  I was in Council chambers the night Bill Winter stood and said, “Mapleton Hill is an anachronism and, as such, ought to be preserved!” Council agreed and made the changes that the neighborhood had requested. No more of our small housing stock was demolished except for one “new” condo complex at the northwest corner of 9th and Maxwell.  (The permits for that project were issued just prior to the changes that the neighborhood requested of Council went into effect.)

While the Mapleton neighbors were busy preserving our historic housing stock, Whittier neighbors were busy revitalizing their school through the creation of an International Baccalaureate program.  How would each neighborhood be different today had the residents made different choices thirty and forty years ago?  How will these two exceptional neighborhoods change in the next fifty years?