The way we develop our cities… is bankrupting us and endangering our neighborhoods through:
- A nationwide housing crisis.
- Dangerously designed streets.
- A lack of transparency in city finances.
- Endless highway expansion.
- Huge, wasteful parking lots.
— from StrongTowns.org
Yes, the title of this editorial series — “A Perfectly Good Town” — is meant to be ironic. We live in a good town, but certainly not a “perfectly good” town.
The question, looking into the future, is whether we’re going to make it better. Or worse. Both options are available.
I’ve been following the articles on the Strong Towns website for the past several years, and have shared some of their articles here in the Daily Post, on the assumption that Pagosa Springs would like to be, one day, a strong town.
The Strong Towns contributors — Chuck Marohn, Daniel Herriges, and many others — have been challenging the “anti-urban” planning ideas promoted by professional city planners for the past 50 years, through well-researched articles, podcasts, public presentations, and conferences.
Some of the key concerns relate more to larger American cities like Denver and Colorado Springs. But some of the ideas certainly can be applied to our small rural town.
A few months ago, the website shared a link to an article by Andres Duany and Emily Talen: “Making the Good Easy: The Smart Code Alternative”.
The “Code” being, a community’s Land Use Code. The laws that intentionally limit the ways property can be used. From that essay:
It is legally difficult to build good urban places in the United States. The vast majority of conventional zoning codes prohibit the replication of our best examples of urbanism — places like Nantucket, Williamsburg, or even “Main Street U.S.A.” in Disneyland. This situation has been profoundly damaging. Our current codes are based on a theory of urbanism that is decidedly anti-urban. They separate land uses, decrease densities, and increase the amount of land devoted to car travel, prohibiting the kind of urbanism that typifies our most beloved urban places.
Ironically, by being anti-urban, conventional codes are also anti-environment. Through separation, districting, and rigid statistical procedure, zoning has forced us to think in terms of separating the human habitat from the natural one, when they are really co-dependent. The natural environment is better protected when cities are viable places for humans to live. Conventional zoning, however fails to recognize this reality by prohibiting true urbanism and substituting it with the “anti-city” — a landscape composed of monofunctional, single-use zones.
True urbanism is diverse, compact, pedestrian, and celebratory of the public realm. Conventional zoning gives us only a disaggregated version of urbanism, commonly known as sprawl, which does not constitute a viable human habitat…
I have to laugh at the suggestion that “Main Street USA” in Disneyland is an example of the best type of urban development. But I understand what the authors were trying to suggest.
100 years ago, the town of Pagosa Springs had grown up around an unusual geological feature: a sulfur-smelling hot spring with purported healing properties. But the economy was built upon a totally different natural resource: old-growth mixed-conifer forests. Thanks to a railroad and a thriving timber industry, the town’s population had grown from 367 residents (in 1890) to 1,032 (in 1920).
The total county population had grown from 826 to 3,590.
I doubt anyone would have claimed that Pagosa Springs was a “perfect” place to live in 1920, although it obviously had enough charm to attract several hundred residents.
After 1920, however, the economy remained relatively stagnant. In 1980, the county population was 3,664… about 74 more people than in 1920.
During its first 90 years or so, the Town of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County had no Land Use regulations to speak of. Residents and business owners bought property and built structures based on common ideas about what constituted a good building, and a good town. The local governments presumably had better things to do than tell people how to develop their properties.
What grew up within the downtown was a cozy mix of small businesses built within walking distance of residential homes. Diverse, compact, pedestrian, and celebratory of the public realm.
What developed out in the rural county were mainly traditional, large, ranch properties.
About 1970, our local governments began to wonder if they ought to be putting limits on where and how people could build a home or business. The first “governments” to establish these kinds of limits were actually homeowner associations that wanted to ensure certain types of land uses. That is, neighborhoods of generally similar-sized homes, with large front and back yards, built at a considerable distance from places of employment and social interaction.
In some cases, massive front and back yards.
50 years later, this type of land use — that is, standard American Suburban Development — is the very type of development that the experts at Strong Towns claim are bankrupting our communities, while also ruining our environment. Other urban planning organizations are offering the same kind of warnings.
This is not to say that American Suburban Development didn’t make perfect sense in 1970. In fact, just this type of development was promoted by federal, state, and local government leaders, as well as by private developers — and was embraced by ordinary American families.
The rules that encouraged this type of community were carefully written into our local land use regulations and subdivision covenants.
Most of our readers may think these rules are perfectly fine, if occasionally a bit oppressive. In fact, when you consider the fact that residential property valuations increased by perhaps 60% between July 2020 and June 2022, you can easily conclude that Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County have built out in a manner that is highly attractive to real estate investors.
But not, unfortunately, in a manner that provides homes for ordinary working families.
At the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners work session yesterday, we heard from County Development Director Pamela Flowers about possible changes to the County Land Use Regulations. These changes were developed to begin addressing the serious shortage of affordable workforce housing in Archuleta County.
In particular, Director Flowers and her occasional collaborator, Community Development Corporation (CDC) director Emily Lashbrooke, wanted to update the BOCC on the grants and subsidies that will soon be available through Proposition 123, passed by the Colorado voters last November.
From the Colorado Department of Local Affairs website:
Several hundred million dollars for affordable housing will become available in the second half of 2023 due to the enactment of Proposition 123 by Colorado’s voters in 2022. This funding will be overseen by the Department of Local Affairs and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and may be granted or loaned to the following types of organizations:
- Non-profits
- Community land trusts
- Private entities
- Local governments
Organizations are only eligible for this funding if their project or program take place in cities or counties that have committed to increasing their affordable housing stock above a baseline amount. Stakeholders should regularly visit this site to find explanatory articles and resources, and to offer feedback that shapes future materials, policies, and procedures relating to affordable housing commitments, and funding programs overseen by the Department of Local Affairs.
To repeat. Several hundred million dollars for affordable housing.
If you are willing to commit.