Case Study: Boulder, CO

(The following was excerpted from Better Not Bigger by Eben Fodor. Shown here with permission from the author. For more information see Fodor and Associates and New Society Publishers.)

Located where the western edge of the Great Plains meets the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder (population 93,000) enjoys a beautiful natural setting. The University of Colorado contributes cultural and intellectual diversity. These amenities, combined with a strong economy, caused Boulder to experience rapid growth in the two decades between 1950 and 1970, averaging about six percent per year. (At this rate of growth, a city's population doubles every 11.5 years!) By the late 1960's, residents had become keenly aware of the problems associated with growth.

In 1967, Boulder voters approved one of the nation's first locally funded greenbelt systems. They used a local sales tax increase of 0.4 percent to finance open space land acquisitions. As of 1998, Boulder had raised $116 million and acquired 33,000 acres of greenways and mountain parks. The greenbelt system serves as a natural growth boundary, defining the limits of the city with open space and parkland. This natural boundary helps to block urban sprawl and "leapfrog" development. The greenbelt has also helped protect the quality of life in Boulder as the city has grown. It is said that more people use the greenbelt system each year than visit nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. As an added measure, Boulder established a building height limitation of 55 feet in 1971 to preserve the view of the Rockies. The city and surrounding county have cooperated on planning and growth-management policies and jointly adopted the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. A city-county study in 1970 showed the area's population doubling in 20 years to 140,000. This projection alarmed many residents and prompted discussions about optimum population size. A public opinion survey found that more than 70 percent of respondents favored population stabilization near the 100,000 level. 

In November, 1971 Boulder citizens set another first when they placed an initiative on the ballot to create a charter amendment setting a maximum population limit for the city. Voters narrowly defeated the initiative. The defeat may have been partly due to an alternative referendum placed on the same ballot by the city council. This second referendum was approved by 70 percent of voters and directed local government to "take steps necessary to hold the rate of growth in the Boulder Valley to a level substantially below that experiences in the 1960's." This important decision has led to a number of experimental growth-management policies that are still being fine-tuned today.

In 1976, Boulder adapted residential growth limits (four years after similar limits were adopted in Petaluma, California). These limits initially capped the number of new dwelling units at 450 per year to keep the annual growth rate at 1.5 to two percent.  (In previous years, the annual growth rate has averaged about three percent.) This plan helped revitalize the downtown, because 175 of the 450 permits were earmarked for the city center. Small projects (fewer than four units) on existing lots were exempted from the dwelling unit limits. The growth rate cap was lowered to one percent per year in 1995, and has remained at that level. 

Originally, the residential permit caps were accompanied by a merit review system that was intended to help select the best development projects for approval (these were also based on Petaluma's model). A detailed point system was developed that awarded permits based on such criteria as availability of urban services, affordability, and energy efficiency. Projects that created low-and-moderate-income housing (for rent or sale) received the most points. While the affordable housing incentive worked very well, the merit system was found to be too bureaucratic and was abandoned in 1981. The current system gives each applicant a proportionate share of the available building permits.

More recently, the city sought to limit the rate of commercial development. For the past 15 years, the rate of job growth has exceeded population growth. Between 1980 and 1995, the population increased by 18,980 while the number of jobs grew by 27,000. While the residential growth controls had slowed population growth, they had done little to curb commercial development. Boulder's job growth has also contributed to the population growth of surrounding towns. This, in turn, caused increase traffic congestion in Boulder and resulted in over-use problems for city facilities and amenities. 

As part of a city-wide visioning process, city planners evaluated various scenarios for the ultimate "buildout" of the city by the year 2020. They determined that their problems could get much worse before the city reached the end of its commercial land supply. The city council acted in September 1997 to reduce the potential number of new jobs the city could accommodate.  Known as the "Comprehensive Rezoning Proposal," the program will reduce the ultimate number of new jobs at buildout by 15,000 to 20,000 through:

• Purchasing commercially zoned land to prevent commercial development;
• Rezoning industrial or commercial land to residential use; and
• Changing zoning regulations to reduce the allowed size and density of new developments (downzoning).

As part of this program, of limiting employment growth, the city recently bought several parcels of vacant industrial, including 165 acres owned by IBM. New zoning regulations were adopted to limit commercial and industrial building sizes.  Approximately one-third of the city was rezoned, including all industrial land.

A common criticism of Boulder's growth rate cap is that it has caused high housing prices. While Boulder's housing is expensive, it is not clear that the city's growth controls are the cause. Housing prices were high before any growth management programs were ever enacted. According to former-city planning director Bill Lamont, the rapid growth of the 1960s had already inflated housing prices and forced some lower-income people out of the city before the growth controls were implemented. Also, housing prices remained the same relative to those nearby Denver both before and after the growth controls were implemented. (Boulder remained about 10-15 percent more expensive than Denver.)

When the annual growth rate cap was lowered to one percent in 1995, the city council also acted to create a larger share of affordable housing. New housing is allocated according to the following formula: 25 percent to market demand, 55 percent to affordable housing (based on size and other criteria) and 20 percent to permanently affordable housing maintained through deed restrictions. This housing allocation is combined with other programs such as a housing trust fund that uses an excise tax on new construction to subsidize low-income housing.

Colorado's Front Range communities are facing such extraordinary growth pressure that former governor Richard Lamm referred to the area in 1997 as the "Los Angeles of the Rockies". In spite of this pressure, Boulder has managed to protect its quality of life and preserve its unique character by recognizing limits to growth and adopting responsible policies that are consistent with those limits.