For at least the last few decades, we progressives have been sacrificing good at the altar of the perfect in the built environment.
As Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson eloquently and accurately articulated in their book “Abundance,” our efforts to address every manner of social and environmental interest — from sustainability, resilience, ADA and growth limits to neighborhood compatibility — resulted in such a layering on of well-intentioned rules that we’ve severely gummed up the works. The result is that we’ve made it too hard to build the very things we say we want: housing, vibrant places and sustainable communities.
As we have seen with our current housing crisis, eventually, that has severe negative consequences for our community. We’ve created a system that assumes a high degree of control over nearly every outcome.
“But wait!” you may say. “What if my neighbor wants to do something I don’t like? Or worse yet, a ‘developer’ proposes … well, anything. Shouldn’t I, or we, be able to stop them?” Perhaps. And perhaps the assumption that we should, which is an intrinsic part of our local culture, government and the rules and processes that come out of it, has gotten out of balance.
If you have ever tried to get a building permit to do a small addition to your home, you know what I mean. It can often be a frustrating, uncertain, lengthy and expensive process. Even someone who wants to build “Missing Middle” housing meets with a wall of obstacles. Just for perspective, know that it’s not like that everywhere. In many peer cities, projects move from concept to approval in a fraction of the time and cost.
Our current situation is a choice that has scuttled hundreds of potentially wonderful and beneficial projects over the years. Many of the places we love the most here in Boulder, like the Hotel Boulderado, would be flat-out illegal if we tried to create them today. Washington Village Cohousing, which is now seen as an example of excellent neighborhood development, took 11 years, cost a million dollars just to navigate the bureaucratic process and exhausted those involved in creating it. Many of us know the story of the local coffee shop that tried to get a building permit during the pandemic, and it took 406 days. I cannot tell you how many local homeowners and business owners I’ve worked with over the years who have been crushed by the local requirements, costs and timelines. Boulder has been improving in the last couple of years, but we have a long way to go.
Our community sits at a crossroads. There are new proposed projects — projects that fulfill long-recognized community needs and that we are certain to celebrate long into the future — which will die or lose their special character if we fail to change our fundamental assumption about how much control we need to exert over our collective physical environment. I offer, specifically, the proposed Pearl East Arts District as a real-world example of the kind of transit-oriented, arts-anchored, mixed-use place Boulder has been planning for years. Ideally located at a major transit hub, it proposes to take a giant aging warehouse and surface parking lot and transform the site into a vibrant mixed-use center for the arts; a desperately needed infusion of performance and rehearsal space, housing, entertainment and public space. The proposed Pearl East Arts District project also will generate long-term tax revenue for our community while serving as a key growth opportunity for the Sundance Film Festival.
The best summary of the input from a recent Planning Board hearing on the Pearl East Arts District: “That’s really nice, but the design doesn’t match our rules.” If the design concept is good (which the Planning Board seemed to think it is) and the project is beneficial to Boulder on a host of levels, and yet our rules say the project isn’t a fit, then perhaps we should change our rules. And even more to the point, perhaps we should change the underlying mindset.
It’s time to take a comprehensive look at our rules and processes and evaluate every one through a simple lens: Does it meaningfully advance our goals, or does it stand in the way? Few issues will be purely one or the other, but on balance, let’s ask, “Does it harm more than it helps? Can we either reduce, modify or remove this rule or simplify this process to better enable us to achieve more of what we want and need?” Could we consider the wisdom of evaluating each rule, not in isolation, but in their combined effect when applied in conjunction with the other existing rules and processes?
In my line of work, architecture, I have been a fierce sustainability advocate for over thirty years and have helped create some of those rules that made it harder to build here. I still believe just as passionately in the need to protect the planet, but I’ve also come to realize that we have to be mindful of the bigger picture. Housing has become too hard, slow and expensive to build here. As a result, much of our community now struggles with that basic life necessity. It leads to excessive commuting because folks can’t live here, and that in turn ruins our collective carbon footprint, erasing much of the good that our robust green building rules do. It also undermines our community’s other diversity, equity and overall quality of life goals.
Let us step back and ask: “Have we created a system that is naturally and easily producing the results that we want as a community?” If we’re not getting the outcomes we want — more housing, more vibrancy, lower emissions — then we don’t need more rules. We need a better system. And that starts with rethinking the assumptions behind the one we have.
Scott Rodwin is the owner of Rodwin Architecture in Boulder and is an award-winning green architect. He is the past-President of the American Institute of Architects of Colorado and a former President of the Colorado Green Building Guild.
Published in the Daily Camera and The Denver Post