Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. Why can’t officials elected on platforms of slowing growth and preserving community character get more accomplished? The short answer is that the sentiment that elects pro-planning candidates is not unified by much else. Environmentalists make up […]
How to get involved and push the process
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
‘Wise use’ plans abhor change
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. Cody, Wyo. – This county on the eastern border of Yellowstone National Park has been so sparsely settled, the prospect of a little more than 100 people moving in to work a gold mine helped set […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Rural residents defy Washington law
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. Some landowners in rural Washington are so sick and tired of being told what to do by one planner after another, they’ve decided to do something about it: Secede. Under the banner of property rights, rebels […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Some state governments try planning from top down
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. The governor of Oregon may have been a little ahead of his time, speaking out against growth and for planning: “Sagebrush subdivision, coastal ‘condomania’ and the ravenous rampage of suburbia in the Willamette Valley all threaten […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
When planning plays catch-up
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. MONTROSE, Colo. – For decades this town with the stunning views of the jagged San Juan Mountains aggressively courted growth and collectively admitted no downside. When county commissioners tried to adopt a wimpy land-use plan 21 […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Golf course splits ranch family
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. CARBONDALE, Colo. – Disagreements about how to plan for growth have reached into a ranching family here. “I’m retiring anyway, and … you can’t divide land equitably (among the heirs), but you can divide cash,” says […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Boulder’s ingenuity has a few drawbacks
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. Few communities in the United States – let alone the West – have tried to control growth the way Boulder, Colo., has. Using imagination and innovative planning, a progressive citizenry and equally progressive elected officials have […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
A soft-paths approach to land conservation
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, A toolbox to shape the future. Even the most gung-ho planners admit that government can only do so much to protect native plants, animals that need hundreds of miles of habitat, and human communities. Some critics are more blunt. “I left planning disgusted […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
A toolbox to shape the future
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. The planning tools being used in the West vary as widely as the character of local communities. Factors such as terrain, population profile and economics determine which tool is wielded where. Some of the tools have […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Can planning rein in a stampede?
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. By now the scenario is all too familiar: Refugees from far-off, disintegrating cities, packing their dreaded California-scale equity, swarm into some previously unfashionable zip code in the rural West. Which leads to congestion and a land […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Busted town pursues industrial recreation
ANACONDA, Mont. – Can famous golfer Jack Nicklaus reverse the sagging fortunes of this crumbling smeltertown by building a golf course on top of a hazardous waste site? The company that owns the site, Arco, is betting $10 million that he can (HCN, 11/29/93). “Some people will say I lost my marbles,” Nicklaus told Anacondans […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Park Service trying to evict cave cafe
Thanks to the presence of a huge subterranean cafeteria, the 2 million visitors to Carlsbad Caverns National Park each year can gawk at stalagmites and stalactites while nursing a cold sandwich and soda. But the crumbs may not fall where they have been. The National Park Service and conservationists are going against a chamber of […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
The ultimate boycott
Dear HCN, Richard Manning (HCN, 7/25/94) says “a national boycott of gold would make many of our environmental worries go away, as if by magic.” He should carry it even further. What about silver? It is mainly a by-product of other mining, so we could also eliminate copper and other metals to help protect the […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
Baby-obsessed in California
Dear HCN, I note with particular sympathy the various articles in HCN that talk of the destruction of small Western towns due to the influx of us “city folk.” It reminds me of my early childhood growing up in the Santa Clara Valley, now Silicon Valley, when the majority of land use consisted of orchards […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
The NIMBY factor
If you live in a rural area with no zoning, and if one day a pesticide manufacturing plant announces plans to build in your neighborhood, you might want to consult Not In My Back Yard: The Handbook. Anthropologist and activist Jane Anne Morris details how to launch and win a grass-roots battle against LULUs, defined […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
Whose public lands?
The evolving battle over management of the West’s vast public lands is the focus of a three-day conference sponsored by the University of Colorado’s Natural Resources Law Center. “Who governs the public lands: Washington? The West? The community?” features Western heavyweights from academia, industry, environmental groups and federal agencies discussing everything from grazing reform to […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
From sacred to suburb
A neighborhood group in Boise, Idaho, is trying to raise $75,000 to protect Native American burial sites from residential development. The East End Neighborhood Association wants to buy land sacred to Shoshone, Bannock and Paiute tribes near Castle Rock, a mile from downtown Boise. For centuries, the tribes say, their sick and wounded came to […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
Incoming
The U.S. Army still plans to eject missile debris over Utah, but wants to adjust its aim. Many residents of Moab, Utah, as well as environmentalists from elsewhere, protested an earlier plan to drop 1-ton missile boosters northeast of a heavily visited area in Canyonlands National Park (HCN, 4/19/94). Now the Army proposes to allow […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
No new roads
New rules proposed by the Interior Department limit the ability of states and counties to build highways across public lands. The rules clarify Revised Statute 2477, an 1866 law that granted rights-of-way on federal lands (HCN, 3/21/94). The law was repealed 18 years ago but it did not nullify any earlier rights-of-way. Since then, some […]
Posted inAugust 22, 1994: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly
New river watchers
Some members of Amigos Bravos, a conservation group in New Mexico that focuses on the Rio Grande and Rio Bravo rivers, have broken away and formed a new group, Rio Grande Restoration. The group’s quarterly newsletter, the Rio Grande Riverkeeper, says Rio Grande recreationists such as rafters pumped $4.6 million into local economies in 1992. […]