Let There Be Dark

AMA Links Light Pollution to Cancer, Health Woes

The American Medical Association this month passed a resolution that recognizes a host of problems with light pollution, including health issues -- such as breast cancer -- that are "associated with human eye exposure to light at night."

The AMA resolution (view it in full here) explains that the increasing amount of light in the world, including streetlight glare and intrusive light that "trespasses" into bedroom windows and homes, is linked to higher rates of cancer and other health woes. It harms wildlife as well, the medical group says.

As the AMA puts it: "Light trespass has been implicated in disruption of the human and animal circadian rhythm, and strongly suspected as an etiology of suppressed melatonin production, depressed immune systems, and increase in cancer rates such as breast cancers." In addition, it "disrupts nocturnal animal activity and results in diminished various animal populations’ survival and health," the group says.

Planners Under Fire

Flathead Planning Lawsuit: Secret Meetings, or Sour Grapes?

Flathead County planners might be saying amen to that this week, in the wake of a lawsuit and ongoing allegations by a group of vocal locals who claim the county and a planning committee conducted a too-secretive planning process that violated Montana's open meeting laws.

Planning processes everywhere in the state, it seems, are a battlefield in which elected officials and disgruntled private landowners are accusing planners and others of violating proper procedure. Insert the nation's legendary litigiousness into this recipe and you get a sulfurous stew, one that makes it increasingly difficult for anything with the word "plan" in it to get off the ground.

The battle gets particularly strident where property-rights groups like American Dream Montana -- whose members are among those who filed the Flathead suit -- campaign against people they denounce as "smart-growthers" and (in their view) socialists run amok.

Deja Boo

Missoula City Council Hears Nays and Yeas About Zoning Rewrite

After more than five hours of hearing public comment Monday night, the visibly exhausted Missoula City Council sent the proposed zoning rewrite ordinance revision back to the Plat, Annexation and Zoning committee for re-evaluation.

If passed, the new zoning ordinance would replace the existing zoning ordinance, which Office of Planning and Grants Director Roger Millar described as confusing and contradictory.

“Everything we do depends on zoning, and our regulatory foundation is broken,” Millar said during his brief presentation last night. “It’s time for a change.”

Following Millar’s presentation and continuing until past midnight, about 50 Missoula residents representing commercial, organizational, neighborhood and personal interests lined up in the aisles of the Council Chamber and, one by one, voiced their concerns before the weary Council members, Mayor John Engen and City Attorney Jim Nugent. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 a.m.

The Smart and Narrow

Doing Density Right

Stand in the shadow of any giant residential megablock in Seattle and you can't help but wonder: Isn't there a better way to do this? The reality of massive buildings now being auctioned off at fire-sale prices seems proof that bigness alone is neither necessary nor a sufficient condition for successful development in Seattle.

Developers have long crowed — and local politicians have cowed to — the notion that "we can't make money in Seattle unless we build six-story buildings." After a round of developer-driven up-zoning we now behold the post-bubble result: fleets of full-block behemoths standing half-empty, unsold, even half-built.

What will we make of this enforced economic pause? Will we carve out urban and mental space in which to think about growing smartly and sustainably instead of just bigger and faster? Or will we simply wait for the banks to resume shoveling debt so the bulldozers can resume shoving dirt?

A few blocks from the lively Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill is a place that could change our thinking about Seattle urban density.

From the Missoulian

Tom Tidwell is New Forest Service Chief

The new Chief of the U.S. Forest Service will be Tom Tidwell, the Region 1 Forest Supervisor, according to a Missoulian news story by reporter Rob Chaney.

In February 2007, the U.S. Forest Service promoted Tidwell to regional forester for the Northern Region, which includes more than 25 million acres of public land in Montana, Idaho and North Dakota. Prior to the promotion, Tidwell had been deputy regional forester in the Pacific Southwest Region.

New Report Questions Fire Plan Logging

A new report on the effectiveness of thinning forests under the National Fire Plan shows that most logging occurs far from communities, thus questioning their effectiveness. Plus the majority of lands that should be treated lie not on federal lands, but private lands. The report gives new credence to critics such as myself who maintain that most fuel reduction logging operations are wasting tax dollars and causing more harm than good.

Preview: Planning in the West Conference

As Demand for Dense Communities Rises, How Does Nature Fit In?

That's the question Rich Franko, a principal at the Seattle design firm Mithun, Architects+Designers+Planners, would like to answer.

"As things drive to denser, more urban, more city development," Franko says, "Making them great places to live, bringing nature into the city is going to be important."

"Just density alone is not good," he says. "You have to find out how natural systems work into it as well. That's a cutting edge."

Take for example, one of Franko's projects in Seattle -- Higher Points, a lower density project that has, as part of its integrated design, a restoration of a salmon watershed within the neighborhood. Or, in Portland, Oregon, Franko is working on finding ways to reincorporate elements of a conifer forest into a high-density neighborhood. Both are examples of weighing a balance between nature and the urban landscape.

Part of the challenge, Franko says, is exploring "what are the limits to that? What makes for clean water and ecosystems while still having that urbane sense of community?"

The communities of the future -- urban or rural -- Franko says, will have to address the natural environment in which they are built, especially as energy, transportation and water become bigger and bigger issues.

PLANNING IN THE WEST CONFERENCE, JUNE 17-18 IN BOISE

Adjusted Development: Saving the World with Sustainable Growth

Why should towns in the West change the way they grow? And why should planners design healthier, greener communities?

Because if they don’t, they’ll suffer and fail.

Dire as that answer sounds, it's sparked something worth celebrating: a planning revolution and a move to sustainability across the West, according to land-use and green planning expert Christopher Duerksen.

The Fire This Time

Firefighting Needs Major Overhaul, Study Shows

Wildfire prevention efforts should focus far more on homeowners and key ecosystems -- and far less on random fires deep in the wilderness, according to a new study by the University of Montana, University of Colorado and Colorado State University.

The study -- which calls for an overhaul of the National Fire Plan --takes a hard look at federal efforts to prevent wildfires that are increasingly scorching the West and threatening homes near forests and wilderness. Only 11 percent of National Fire Plan wildfire-mitigation efforts in the last five years have occurred near people’s homes or offices, where it's critically needed, the researchers conclude.