First off, I would like to wish everyone a prosperous New Year.
That is to say, I would like to wish you that kind of New year, except that I’m hesitant to use the word, “prosperous.” During 36 years of marriage, I realized (too late) that the more prosperous my family became, the deeper in debt we found ourselves. Prosperity — in my experience at least — merely caused my wife Clarissa and myself to become less careful about our finances, and begin making purchases we couldn’t afford and really didn’t need.
As a man wiser than myself once said, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Actually, the worst times for my family, financially — the times when we went the deepest into debt — resulted not necessarily from ‘prosperity’ per se, but rather from the ‘expectation of prosperity.’ We’d be awarded a large commission for a project, which then produced an expectation of many thousands of dollars coming our way… and financial caution would fly out the window, along with prudence and common sense.
Our local governments, here in Archuleta County, suffer from the same disease. When elected officials perceive ‘growth’ taking place, that’s exactly the time they start putting us — the taxpayers — deeply into debt. Or, along similar lines, it’s the time they begin promising developers 25-year tax breaks for “urban renewal” projects.
In Part Nine of this editorial series, I attempted to raise a couple of questions about the vision of Pagosa’s future, as imagined by our current Town Council, and in particular, about the idea of a “Refreshingly Authentic” community. Thinking about that motto and the meaning of the word “Authentic” — as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling — brought up thoughts of Disneyland, one of the least “authentic” places I’ve ever been in my life, but at the same time, one of the most pedestrian-friendly places.
I mentioned yesterday that I’d visited Disneyland as a child, circa 1960, just a few years after it opened its gates. I suspect my mom and dad probably took out a loan to finance that particular vacation, because as I recall, the new Matterhorn Bobsled ride (for which we waited in line maybe 45 minutes?) had by itself set my family back a total of $2. Back home in Oakland, my whole family could eat for two days on $2.
The entire park, including its massive parking lot, fit on about 160 acres of a former orange and walnut orchard. I’m guessing the themed “lands” may have taken up 50 acres? (About twice the area proposed for the controversial Springs Resort expansion plans, here in Pagosa.) The place I was most excited to visit, as an eight-year-old, was Tomorrowland.
I’m still fascinated with the future.
We did a lot of walking that day in Disneyland, when we weren’t riding on a bobsled, or a monorail, or a submarine, or a paddlewheel stream boat, or some other guided mechanical amusement ride. The rides were, of course, throughly pre-programmed; they generally transported each person over exactly the same track as every other person, during precisely the same amount of time. The only thing you could determine for yourself, really, was how long it took you to walk from one pre-programmed experience to the next.
Life in Pagosa Springs is not generally pre-programmed, and that might be one of the things we like most about it.
Meanwhile, we don’t have a walkable community, the way Disneyland was walkable in 1960… in fact, the way most urban centers around the world are walkable. And that’s because these cities and towns were designed and built before the arrival of the automobile.
95 percent of the development in Archuleta County took place well after America started putting automobile parking spaces in every convenient location.
Yesterday, I shared a list that the Pagosa Springs Town Council and its core staff produced during their annual ‘Goals & Objectives’ retreat last summer — a list of what features each Town official would want most to see in Pagosa Springs 20 years from now. Here’s that list again.
- Convenient Bypass for Walkable Downtown.
- Well-Connected Trail Network and Sidewalk System Leading to Multi-use Park Facility at Yamaguchi South.
- Pagosa Springs Continues to be a Refreshingly Authentic and Healthy Small Mountain Town.
- Residents Walking Through Neighborhoods on Sidewalks — Smiling!
- Businesses and Homes That Appeal To and Support a Wide Range of People.
- A Thriving Economy (not solely tourism based).
- Less Cars on Main Street (due to a new parking garage).
- Well Maintained and Connected Neighborhoods Where People of Diverse Backgrounds and Incomes Live Together.
- Preserved Open Spaces and Parks — Natural River Flowing Through Town (not encased in concrete).
- Streets, Sidewalks, Trails, and Parks are Modern, Clean, and Welcoming.
- A Diverse Age Strata Of Locals.
- An Active and Well-Functioning Local Citizen Government: Diverse Council and Long-Serving Staff.
- Infill Development Has Reduced Number Of Vacant Lots (infill vs. greenfield).
- A Large Community Recreation Center.
I mentioned before that, of the fourteen ideas listed, more than half of them reference “walking” or “recreation” or “sidewalks” or “trails”. Our current Council is clearly fascinated by the concept of a walkable downtown.
I am fascinated, meanwhile, with the Town Council’s fascination with walkable communities. My fascination is partly due to the fact that the Council recently appointed four new members to the Town Planning Commission, and I’m one of them. At our first gathering of the newly-constituted commission, we jointly agreed that the Town Planning Commission has, in the recent past, been doing only half the job they are authorized to do. The commission has been dutifully recommending development projects, as they are charged to do.
But the Town’s Land Use and Development Code also charges the Planning Commission with doing research, and with making policy recommendations to the Town Council.
I’m sharing a photo this morning showing a street in Vienna, Austria. The photo resulted from a random search for the “most walkable cities in the world.” There are a lot of such cities, and many of them might be defined as “authentic.”
As we notice, the buildings that line this very walkable street in Vienna are generally about six stories high. I assume the lower floors, closet to the street, contain retail stores, and offices, and restaurants. And the upper floors are apartments. I’m just guessing, but there might be enough apartment spaces in this photograph, along this one Vienna street, to house 500 people. And it appears there are about 100 people in the photo walking on this one street. That’s 600 people? Not including the people in the restaurants and retail stores and offices?
Is it possible that there’s nearly the entire population of the Town of Pagosa Springs — 1,800 people — within the frame of this one photograph?
I will note here that six-story buildings are utterly illegal in Pagosa Springs. I will mention that three-story buildings are generally illegal in Pagosa Springs.
Here in Pagosa Springs, we want the walkable community, but we don’t want the urban vitality necessary for a walkable community…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.