Opinion: Sustainability and Resilience – Words or Action?
In a recent presentation, the City of Boulder’s planning
director identified sustainability and resilience as two concepts critical for
defining Boulder’s future. But is there a real commitment to take the necessary
actions? I suspect that the full implications of these concepts will be
ignored, and that our future will be business as usual — more and more growth
and development without any requirement to maintain the qualities that make
Boulder great.
The Brundtland Commission of the United Nations defined
sustainability well: “Sustainable development is development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs.” It’s obvious that “meeting the needs of the present”
cannot mean continually allowing conditions to deteriorate. But that is just
what we are doing.
For example, continuing to allow more residential
development without adequate funding to provide libraries, parks, recreation
centers, and schools is not sustainable. But our development impact fees are
simply inadequate to keep up, and for no good reason. Continuing to add more
jobs than resident workers, as with Boulder Junction and other commercial
development in east Boulder, both pushes up housing prices and leads to
increasing in-commuting and the resulting worsening of traffic jams. Neither is
consistent with a goal of sustainability. Traffic is getting ridiculous; for
example, a week ago Friday the evening rush hour was bumper to bumper from
Boulder all the way to Golden.
Resilience is “the ability of a system to return to its
original state after being disturbed.” If a system becomes overloaded or has no
redundancy, then a small perturbation can cause major disruptions, because
there is no slack and there are no alternatives. Right now Boulder has a very
reliable water supply simply because we have multiple sources and excess water
rights to deal with dry periods. But continuing to add people, both residents
and workers, and annexing more land, like the Planning Reserve, will soon put
us in the position where any multi-year drought will lead to severe watering
restrictions, potentially killing off the trees and landscaping that make
Boulder so attractive. And our transportation network has no more excess
capacity; it becomes tied up when even one major arterial requires work.
Boulder County is pursuing an important project relative
to making transportation more sustainable. They have just completed an analysis
of the potential benefits and costs of countywide EcoPasses for all residents
and employees. The study demonstrates that very significant increases in
transit ridership could result for very little additional cost. (It would be
even cheaper if RTD could be persuaded to base its pricing on the actual
costs.) The study’s price elasticity analysis implies that much more dramatic
increases in ridership could occur if we started charging people for driving,
either by charging for parking or using a license plate recognition system to,
in effect, charge tolls, as London does. Combine this with a requirement that
new commercial development be net-zero regarding transportation impacts, and we
would really improve both sustainability and resilience. But so far there is no
real consideration of such approaches.
Much of our open space serves as habitat for local
species. This is another area where not compromising is critical for future
generations. It’s easy for people to think that their individual impact or that
of their pet is small, and therefore not of concern. But it is the cumulative
impact that drives animals and birds away and destroys habitat. Our
sustainability plans must take this into account, and we all will need to do
our part, just as we do with conserving energy.
We are at the end game for Boulder. The big question is
whether we will continue to add more commercial, office and residential
development without any quality-of-life standards that we are committed to
maintaining. If we want to keep Boulder a desirable place to live, then we will
need to create comprehensive legally binding standards so that what we do or allow
today will not compromise our future and the qualities that we love so much
about our city. These standards need to go to a vote of the citizens, so that
future councils cannot alter our path at their whim. And we should not be
forced to choose between paying higher taxes, to fund what the new development
should have paid for, or suffer a lower quality of life because service levels
are degraded.