Flow, letter to the editor

What good is more if it's not better?  It's not about growth, it's about the neighborhood.

Everyone wants to use the word "growth" and "economic development" as if they were synonymous. Let's get one thing straight- they're not. You can grow yourself into poverty just as easily - we have ghost towns all over the West to remind us of that. In fact we had a little dip 2008-9 which proved it beyond all doubt. The faster you grow the faster and bigger the fail. This is why I wish I heard the phrase "managed growth" more frequently, heck, I'd settle for just hearing it once at any City Council meeting in the Valley.

So what makes for "managed growth"? This is growth which takes into account quality of life. You don't separate out where you sleep from where you work from where you shop from where you eat or drink a coffee with a crowd. You make neighborhoods which have all the things people need within walking distance. You make these neighborhoods small enough for people to know one another, to see each other every day, to become a community. Small communities can live inside larger ones but without the sense of "neighborhood"  we lose connection with the big picture. It's linear, our family, our block, our city, our region, our State, our Country, our Continent, our World flows like water- from a droplet to the ocean merging into a sense of responsibility and belonging.

More simply, if you don't plan for a cohesive neighborhood with the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker you get a lot of disconnected people who don't give a damn about who is living next door.

The "tree farm" is a poster child for the disconnected life.

Atlantic Article thanks to Marina Rainer

Pride of Place, letter to the editor 2014

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

Fall 2014

We're tracking the shrinking bed base-and yet we're not  tracking the shrinking youth base. How many Aspen  kids are living where they grew up?

"Pride of place" that is at the core of any thriving community.  After all if you don't feel proud of your home and your community all you have to do is leave… right?  What if you feel connected but don't have the ability to stay? That's the dilemma of Aspen's next generation. We've perfected luring in "new blood" and completely locked out our heritage.  I can name a lot more generations who have left Aspen then have stayed. They're choking the "I remember when" groups on Facebook. They rail in letters to the editor with down valley addresses.  They drip nostalgia with every keystroke. They moan with that low pained whipped dog whine of paradise lost.

So, what happens when the tabula rasa is always being razed? You get people without roots. Oh, they have roots, but not here. They are not connected to the land, the sky, the deep deep snows of yesteryear or the millennial  ice in the Grottos. They bring their pride of place with them in a box, locked away for their inner circle and not to be shared with the other locked boxes built next door.

Tyler Stableford: The Farmers

The altruism of the no growth policy was compromised the second the City got into the real estate business. We created an "affordable housing" program which only trickles down one generation- if the kids want to inherit their childhood home- sorry- tough luck. Own your home but  want to get your kids into "affordable housing" and off the couch? Nope, tough luck. Want to actually house your employees in the affordable housing your permitting fees paid for- well maybe- as long as you pay them at or below Aspen poverty level. We've created a draconian nest of land use rules which prevents ranchers from subdividing for their children. We have a pyramid of permitting paper which knocks the knees out from under anyone who wants to build an addition to house for their aging parents or their job seeking kids. We've banned renting a couch in employee housing while capping the income a wiffle above Aspen subsistence minimums. We have $100 million dollar budget for 6500 people and why , why, why do we have 1% homeless with that much money in the City coffers?  Oh yeah, and we've put the hospital, the homeless "shelter", the recreation center, the public schools and senior housing outside of the city limits. Let's separate things into nice neat little boxes by activity and age and , dare I say it ,  by class.

If anyone wants a blueprint for ripping the heart and soul out of a community, brother, this is it. Don't blame "the rich" or the "evil developer" for gutting Aspen's character dear Pogo, you can look a lot closer to home than that. All we've done is create an opportunity for those who can afford to leapfrog all the ordinances and we've  locked out everyone else.   That's what Aspen's no growth  policy has become, no generations, no roots, no character.

Let's turn this battleship of unintended consequences around. Now.

Franz Berko