where should growth occur?

Countywide zoning is going to impact the communities of Ravalli County, but just what those impacts are and how the county and towns will limit or mitigate them are, as yet, unanswered questions.

But one message from county and community officials is clear: everyone will need to continue to work together.

“It’s generally the right thing to do because clearly any zoning we do around the existing incorporated communities can affect how they end up growing,” said Karen Hughes, director of the Ravalli County planning department. [more]

PROCESS STARTS MARCH 5

Thirty-five firms from across the country applied to work with the city of Missoula on the Downtown Master Plan, the first design strategy for the downtown in the city's history. After a long, hard look at each of the candidates, a steering committee chose the Portland-based firm Crandall Arambula.

The firm, according to Missoula Downtown Association director Linda McCarthy, stood out on one key issue: getting the general public involved. This made them a commonsense match for Missoula.

"Crandall Arambula talked so much about these community meetings and how the public is really who should be deciding what Missoula should look like 20 years down the road," McCarthy says. [more]

When do we shake hands?

Neighbors need each other, just as agriculture and urban areas need each other. “When they don’t get along, it threatens the security of everyone,” says Susan Duncan. In this column, she discusses our imminent dependence on local resources where rural and urban areas will be looking to each other for products and needs. Where does this leave cooperation?

So far, the efforts to control "growth" have been based on competition. Why didn't those measures work? One side wants to control the behavior of the other, and only dollar values count. The result is conflict between "good guys" and "bad guys." The rancor produces lots of heat, little enlightenment and not nearly enough progress.

Let’s look at it another way. Think of urban and rural land uses as indispensable, complementary halves of one — a whole community structure. Agriculture thrives on urban markets and expertise: Urban areas thrive on the amenities offered by agriculture. Through integration, urban and rural land uses build a strong foundation of interdependence and a stable community.
[more]

What is the White Space on the Map?

In the wake of rapid growth of rural expanses in the West, planning and zoning is considered an answer to mitigate and arrange the varied land use. But when looking at a colorful planning map, what is the unlabeled white space? Agriculture? Potential expansion? Columnist Susan Duncan discusses that if agriculture is not designated in the planning process and labeled on the maps, what future does agriculture have in the West? - Editor's Note

The pattern is clear. Rapid growth in Western valleys leads to urban/suburban development of nearly all available farmland. Why does this happen?

Extensive rural land uses cannot compete economically with intensive urban uses. In this high stakes competition, agriculture is viewed as a temporary use for lands waiting to be “discovered” by developers, and put to their “highest and best use.”

How do these attitudes play out to the disadvantage of “working” landscapes? If farmland is not a designated land use in the planning process, it has no chance of survival. [more]

Documentary Looks at Wolf Reintroduction

No wildlife species is as iconic and controversial as the wolf. Canis Lupus is a symbol of wildness and healthy ecosystems to some, but to others it is a callous killer and an economic threat.

Loathed and loved, the American Gray Wolf has gone through a tumultuous history in the West. They were hunted as vermin to virtual extinction by the early 20th Century, reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, and now are around 1,500-strong across the Northern Rockies. Biologists say wolves are officially recovered in the West and should be removed from the Endangered Species List, but – true to form – disagreements over wolf management between pro-wolf and anti-wolf groups has delisting at a standstill.

In 1999, journalist William Campbell began a documentary film to tell the story of what wolf reintroduction meant for people living in wolf territory. The result, “Wolves in Paradise,” sheds invaluable light on this story, giving a face and a voice to the many people trying to live with this species. [more]

Introducing...

The best way to check out The New West magazine is to subscribe. We want to know who’s interested in The New West, so we have made the magazine available free to qualified subscribers who answer a short questionnaire.

• Click here for the questionnaire for a free subscription.
• You can also subscribe for $9.95 a year by clicking here.

In the Spring Issue and online here:

• Montana’s Cash Cowboy
• Real Ranch Living: Not Everyone is Selling Out
• Essay: The Family Farm, Version 2.0
• Essay: Tracks Across A Landscape
• Have Your Ranch & Develop It, Too
• Design Showcase: The Big and Little of Western Building
• Stuff It: Can Wolf Hunting Help Conserve the Species?
• Traffic Perplexes New Western Communities
• Boise in Its Own Little Bubble
• Revenge of the Resource Economy
• Spotlight North Idaho: On the Agenda: Youth, Growth & Silver
• Spotlight North Idaho: Players of the Panhandle
• Spotlight North Idaho: Coeur d’Alene Tribe Rides the Idaho Boom

[more]

By Robert Struckman, 2-01-08 | comments (23) | email story | print story

 

Growth Management Tools — what works?

Editor's Note: As the City of Bozeman and Gallatin County undertake the monumental tasks of steering rapid growth in the Gallatin Valley and beyond, officials and residents are seeking and analyzing tools to do so properly. Countywide zoning? Transfer development rights? Conservation easements? Susan Duncan discusses how rural and urban residents perceive these “tools” differently.

For nearly 20 years, Gallatin County officials, land trusts, and conservation groups have researched and developed a “tool box” of incentives and voluntary programs to guide growth and discourage sprawl. The “tools” they have tried are conservation easements, clustered development, transfers of development rights and citizen-initiated zoning districts.

Despite these efforts, few Gallatin Valley residents (urban or rural) are confident that the threats posed by growth and development are under control. Recently, two out of three county commissioners agreed that “tools” aren’t enough and voted in favor of implementing county-wide zoning.

Why aren’t the “tools” working as well as we had hoped? [more]

Preserving Eden

Editor's Note: As the City of Bozeman and Gallatin County undertake the monumental tasks of steering growth in the Gallatin Valley and beyond, a renewed responsibility falls on the valley's citizens to become part of the process to ensure their property rights, make their values heard and preserve the economies, community spirit and environmental values that make living here so great. In this ongoing series on NewWest.Net/Bozeman, Susan Duncan begins a new discussion on redefining the relationship between rural and urban. As Duncan explains, the two are mutually dependent.

It’s the $64,000 question. The query everybody wants the answer to: “What can we do to keep this place the ‘Eden’ that it is?”

Want to see a real leader on this issue? Look in the mirror. It is time for each one of us to step up to the plate and lead. [more]

Power Politics or Reigning in Government?

Not long ago, Tim Watson led a successful petition campaign to suspend Park County’s first growth policy and put it to an up-or-down vote in 2008. Now, Watson is leading another petition, this time to unseat Commissioner Larry Lahren.

In the accepted petition proposal, Watson and attorney Mark Hartwig accuse Lahren of admittedly failing to keep commission minutes and failing to provide notice of commission meetings. Lahren says his commission was working to correct inherited problems and he attributes the petition to “power politics” and outstanding grudges over issues involving the growth policy and county refuse.

Though Watson insists the recall petition is unrelated, it is hard to ignore the overarching and contentious issue of balancing zoning and planning with private property rights in this rapidly growing rural county.

Such a confrontation is not the only one occurring in similar Western counties. [more]

How Values of Property Differ

The urban and rural definitions of property and open space are colliding in the West. These differing definitions and lifestyles of rural and urban are fragmenting each other. Susan Duncan discusses if the current understanding between the urban and rural will allow both to maintain and to survive on the landscape of the West. -Editor's note

Open space and planning issues have brought forth the differences between our rural land-based culture and our mobile urban opportunity-based culture. (As I describe these lifestyles, remember these are both extreme stereotypes. Many people are hybrids of the two, including me.)

In a land-based lifestyle, the land is the only asset. This asset requires enormous commitment and deep family and community bonds to hold it together. The farm/ranch is not only home, but a livelihood, the family’s 401K and the keeper of the family heritage. The family business requires its members be on call 24 hours and 7 days a week. [more]