By Elizabeth Garvin, Esq., AICP, Community ReCode; Donna Bye, Houston Engineering; Amber Vogt, Lawrence County, South Dakota; Daniel Pava, FAICP, Planning Solutions; and Paul Moberly, AICP PCED, Western Planner

SUMMARY

The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute: RMLUI’s 29th Western Places/Western Spaces conference, Hot, Dry, and Crowded - Planning for the Future, took place March 5 & 6 at the University of Denver. The conference looked at ways in which we can use design, planning tools, and creative approaches to better plan for a future that will be different from the known past. The Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy partnered with RMLUI to develop a track focused on integrating land use and water planning. In addition, the conference considered how our built environments, using mixed use design, transportation infrastructure, and even building codes, can help reduce our impact on climate change and create a more comfortable and sustainable living environment. The conference explored how our natural systems and outdoor spaces can be designed for greater resilience, cooler micro-climates, and more water-wise landscaping. The conference also focused on rural resilience and how to adapt sustainability innovations and new technologies to small towns and rural communities. Finally, it considered how climate change is likely to affect our natural resources—from our recreational playgrounds to our economic engines—and discuss ways in which our land use strategies can or should adapt in anticipation of changes across our Western landscapes. Check out the downloadable resources available at: www.law.du.edu/rmlui

THURSDAY

Keynote Speaker: F. Kade Benfield, Placemakers, LLC

This opening keynote was focused around his authoring of People Habitat, 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities. The essays that this author references in his writings show how much enveloped one can be within their own urban centers. He gets how people interact in their own environments and engages the audience on the benefits of those interactions. He shared seven thoughts for a more sustainable future: Our land use patterns are still not helping, and that even the greenest development isn’t good if it is in the wrong place. However, there are locations all around us such as brownfields, parking lots and obsolete malls. While density is desirable, it must be human scale and pleasant. It’s no wonder that Americans don’t walk much given the unpleasantness or dangers they face on foot. Benfield concluded that even small patches of nature are very beneficial to well-being in the smallest towns and largest cities. We need lovable places that last over time.

10:15 am Can Gentrification Be Ethical in Planning?
Yvette Freeman, Senior Strategist, Progressive Urban Management Associates, Erica Heller, Senior Planning Manager, Brendle Group

This session broke down the pros and cons of gentrification in our planning world. It focused on how demographics plays a hard role in planning and how planning must be conscious of the future outcomes of decisions made and who benefits. The speakers were very much affected personally and professionally in their lives and careers and it showed a true planner walks alongside those affected by decisions made, especially hard political decisions. Discussion spoke to the ideas of being more integrated than segregated and how does investment happen without displacement. The speakers requested using the term 'unintended consequences’ moving forward and provided the audience with a list of books to further our knowledge on the subject.

10:15 am A Climate Change for Lawyers: Confidentiality, Conflicts & Public Citizenship
Speakers: James Martin, Shareholder, Beatty & Wozniak P.C.; Eli Wald, Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law; Susan Daggett, Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law

This session jumped into basic everyday questions that come up with legal and ethical dilemmas, not only with climate change, but with public and private sector issues in the workplace. It was very interesting to hear the sides of an active litigating attorney vs. a professor's view point. The discussion went back and forth between the panel and audience members which included planners and attorneys from the public and private sector. This session was a mix of philosophical discussions and specific examples of community issues and real life experiences. A few specific topics of discussion were:

Civil disobedience and professional conduct are related but there is a fine line. A summary of the Model Code of Conduct - rule 1.2d - which basically a lawyer can explain to the client the consequence of the civil disobedience action. This explanation is perfectly acceptable but assisting the client in fraud or criminal activity is not ok.

Representation of a client is directly tied to the firm and many times your personal views must be put on the backburner. Causes and political support is supported in some firms, but not all.
Political views of employees during work hours and private life within public sector government as well as within law firms.
Science, economics, law & practicality all are weighted when making decisions.
Legal ethical decisions related to obligation to disclose related to climate change

The speakers were a refreshing mix of expertise; academics; and real life. They were able to keep the discussion basic enough and in plain English for those of us who were not attorneys, but deal with many aspects of ethics and legal jargon.

10:15 Creating & Preserving Rural Housing

Roger Hara, Community Builders Realty Services; Susanne Anarde, CEO of Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC); Mark Berry, Law Offices of Mark Berry; Robin Wolff, Enterprise Community Partners

With more than 7 million rural renters being housing burdened, this session touched on some innovative approaches to housing affordability, such as modular units in Goodwin Knight’s Cottages developments and impact investing by the Telluride Foundation to make housing affordable to teachers and government employees in high rental areas. The greater bulk of the session was dedicated to programs available to assist and the urgent need to preserve existing housing in rural areas. Some federal and state funding is expiring or coming to term for many housing units in rural Colorado and elsewhere, and proactive measures will be needed to keep this stock available.

1:00 Mobile Workshop: Westminster Station Park

Jenni Grafton, Westminster Economic Development; Seth Plas, Westminster capital projects administrator; Kristina Evanoff, Westminster transportation and mobility planner; and Nicole Ankeney, Westminster senior landscape architect

The Westminster commuter rail station opened July 2016. Originally, the project was suppose to be a simple train station with a park-and-ride, but local leaders pushed for a greater possibility to be realized. The area immediately around the station functions as an outdoor amphitheatre, with a location for pop up markets and small vendor booths. Lighting effects grace the station itself. The surrounding 38 acres of brownfield was transformed into an award-winning park and stormwater management system. They naturalized a stream running through the area, protecting nearby homes while providing stormwater overflow facilities. The park contains a multi-use trail that connects the area to 145 miles of trails throughout the region and incorporates nature play techniques to help visitors creatively engage with nature instead of a passive tot-lot.

The built area around the station contains a multi-level parking garage which will be wrapped in mixed use stores and restaurants. The surrounding area was zoned mixed use with the intent to be redeveloped and transformed organically into a human-scale urban environment. There are 68 acres of developable land there, and a sound production industry cluster forming around long-time business Colorado Sound Studios. City staff learned the importance of communication with existing businesses and maintaining flexibility during transition.

A 38 acre park connecting regional trails, naturalizing a stream and providing stormwater control.

FRIDAY

8:30 Planning for Climate Change: Practical regulatory Strategies for Local Governments

Brian Connolly; Don Elliott, Clarion Associates; Molly Mowery, Community Wildfire Planning Center

Since the Mountain West will likely get hotter, drier, with storms more severe and fires more common, large scale interventions are necessary to avoid catastrophic damage and our land use patterns can help. Climate change gets more highly politicized as we get to higher levels of government, but local government is the best place to directly deal with the issues.

As general guidelines to all approaches, it’s best to align with other planning objectives, engage and educate, show effective, science-based approach, create financial incentives, and expect incremental change.

Flooding: Mostly happening in rivers, streams and smaller streams --- which more likely run through cities and towns. One community that the speaker had worked with had two 500 year storms within 3 years with a loss of life both times. Nationwide, we have 41 million people living within a 100 year floodplain.

Some practical steps for communities:

Require higher elevation above Base Flood Elevation. Ensure certain critical buildings (hospitals) are high enough so they can function during a flood.
Permeable Ground Floor Design. Allow water to flow through the lower level or crawl space of buildings.
Revise Setbacks. Adjust setbacks to be measured from the FEMA floodplain boundaries vs property lines. Allow automatic adjustment of side and rear lot lines to allow homes to be built on the same lot but further from flooding risk.
Construction size limits. Reduce the maximum size of allowed structures near flood risk areas to reduce max occupancy or frequency of occupancy. Remember, it's still a reasonable economic use of the property to make it a smaller seasonal use-type structure. Restrict expansion of buildings in a floodplain by more than 25% to limit damage and use.
Clustering and development rights pooling. Where a subdivision would require multiple single-family lots, require clustering of smaller lots away from flood risks. Allow lots closer to flood risk to transfer building potential (units or floor area) to lots located further from flood risks.
Flood-accommodating open space designs. Revise open space requirements to reserve some area for temporary floodwater accommodation areas (i.e., parks that can flood).
Focus on political realities. Emphasize total dollar costs of not doing some measures including, temporary staff, road and infrastructure repair, operating shelters, etc. Don’t try to prevent people from building anything; they are entitled to a reasonable economic use, but emphasize what they CAN do on the property.

Wildfires: “If you’ve taken decades to get into a problem,” said Molly Wowery of the Community Wildfire Planning Center, “it’s going to take a lot of time to get out of the problem.” Climate change can be seen as an accelerant for forest fires. Poor land use decisions have combined with poor forest management which are now coupled with climate change to produce ideally dangerous conditions for wildfires which directly affect communities.

Some practical steps:

Start with your comprehensive plan. Get good policy on hazard mitigation. Where do you want to grow? Where’s your hazard risk map? Do they overlap?
Subdivison Regulations. Planner’s opportunity to influence development through application requirements for fuel management, lot siting, phasing, access, water supply, and more. Remove trees and sculpt the mitigation before people purchase lots.
Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Code. Address building standards, access, water supply, vegetation management. WUI codes are a minimum standard.
Vegetation Management. Manage what’s around your structures. Address appropriate placement and type of vegetation in wildfire-prone areas and include plan selection lists. The first 5 feet is the most critical around a structure for wildfire management.
Setbacks / Hillside Protection Ordinances. Increase setbacks from steep slopes and can be combined with other hillside and hazard protection objectives.
Site specific assessments. Often many of these are voluntary and educational for property owners which fire districts / departments can help with.
Enforcement. Ensure wildfire risk reduction occurs on building, site and other features. Can be enforced through nuisance provisions, weed/hazard abatement programs, agreements at application, and others

Urban heat islands. There are real tangible issues with urban heat islands including increased energy consumption from running A/Cs more, elevated air pollutant emissions, human comfort and health issues, and water quality impacts like toxic algae blooms from warmer water.

Green roofs can help, but there are many ways to respond. The speaker reviewed Denver’s green roof initiative as a case study. Green roofs do reduce energy demand, air pollution, and stormwater management, BUT they can require more water and increase already high construction costs which exacerbate affordability issues. Their original ordinance specified green roofs, but after working with the public to modify the ordinance, now it’s about having a cool roof using a combination of options including green roofs like light colored roofing, greenspace around the buildings, and solar panels.

8:30 The Role of Water in Livable Cities
Kathryn Weismiller, Denver Water; Austin Troy, University of Colorado Denver; Mary Ann Dickinson, Alliance for Water Efficiency;

This session looked at how landscapes, land uses and water use intersect. The benefits of open/green space and how it's used now and in the future is very important for many reasons, including psychological and physical. Water scarcity should be in our planning documents moving forward.

The types of vegetation can make a difference. Communities should review how tree canopies shade lawns and other plant materials affect the amount of water used on site. Urban forestry can be used for cooling structures and parking facilities. Older established trees use less water and provide a better benefit than younger newly planted trees and plant materials attempting to get established.

10:15 Resilience Planning for Uncertain Futures
Kate Guibert, Colorado Department of Local Affairs; Imogen Ainsworth, City of Durango

Defining resilience can be hard. It’s not as loaded a word as sustainable, but it’s becoming so. Colorado’s Resiliency Office has defined it as “The ability of communities to rebound, positively adapt to, or thrive amidst changing conditions or challenges—including human-caused and natural disasters—and to maintain quality of life, healthy growth, durable systems, economic vitality, and conservation of resources for present and future generations.” Their role is to lead out in the state on resilience, providing technical assistance to implement resiliency planning, to build resiliency into State investments and grants programs, and to support long-term recovery efforts after a disaster.

The session focused on case studies from Arvada and Durango, Colorado. They discussed how each community looked at and addressed resilience, examining resiliency challenges like: demographics, natural hazards, budgets and funding, infrastructure decline, community health, housing, watersheds, economic and social stratification, and social cohesion. They ensured the outcomes were action oriented and cross-departmental.

12:00 Carver Colloquium -- The Rights of Nature: Should Bodies of Water have Legal Rights?
Jan Laitos - University of Denver, moderator; Laura Chartrand - Chartrand Law, LLC (Against); Grant Wilson - Earth Law Center (For).

The Carver Colloquium presented a debate-style arguments around the question, should nature have inherent legal rights. Each side presented their arguments, then rebutted each other’s positions. The audience was able to submit questions for each panelist.

Summary of the For position: Nature should have inherent legal rights. Nature is under severe strain and lacks the standing and proper representation within our legal structure. Many species are extinct or at risk of extinction; many forests are severely depleted; water and air pollution threaten all habitats. Current laws prioritize corporate interests and profits over human health and nature’s existence. Currently, nature is viewed as property.

He advocates for legal guardianship of nature along with fundamental rights to health, restoration, biodiversity, etc. In theory, a mountain could sue a ski resort, or a river could sue a power company operating a dam. Other countries have already pursued this: Columbian courts recognize river rights, New Zealand has given some forests rights, and India has started recognizing river rights. He views this as the next human rights movement that needs to happen urgently before further degradation and extinctions occur. “I want nature to have a voice at all levels of government,” said Wilson. “Ecocide is a crime and it should be punished.”

Summary of the Against position: Current legal system is working and a major shift would cause chaos and ceaseless lawsuits. She advocates for a less revolutionary approach, allowing current systems to progress. She views the nature rights movement as an idealistic philosophical movement and not a scientific or technical one. Our current environmental law scheme is not static and laws continue to evolve to protect the environment.

Current laws have had an impact, reducing pollutants and progressing towards better protections. In many cases, nature already has advocates (Wild Earth Guardians, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club) who regularly sue on behalf of species and habitats. The type of radical overhaul proposed would waste massive time and money which could be used to help protect our environment. She expressed logistical concerns with how guardianship would be decided, how competing interests would be resolved, and when and how law suits would rise. Discussion, debate, compromise and hard work creating a robust stakeholder system and management plans is a better path forward. “We are making the environment better,” said Chartrand. “To suggest that we need a constitutional amendment, I think, frankly is dangerous.”

1:45 Putting Stewardship on the Map: Using Mapping Tools to Build Partnerships
Austin Troy, Chair, University of Colorado Denver; Travis Warziniack, Colleen Donovan, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station; Dana Coelho, Metro Denver Nature Alliance

This session discussed the approach of answering the question, “who takes care of our environment?” The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) surveyed civic groups asking about each group’s responsibilities. They created a directory and clearinghouse for other organizations and researchers, as well as created an online database that shows who provides stewardships for various areas including: urban tree canopy mapping, urban forest planting and stewardship, urban park management and user experience, invasive species management, river corridor restoration, recreation access, stormwater management, urban hydrology, cultural landscapes, and urban agriculture and food systems. This helped identify overlapping stewardships, networks for organization and action, and the geographic turf of various entities.

3:30 Fast and Furious Session

Natalie Gubbay - Colorado College: State of the Rockies Project - presented on spiraling up through drought responses in Colorado’s agricultural communities. Drought is community level phenomenon that requires a community-level response. She worked with communities to develop neighborhood assets map using the Community Capitals Framework of social, economic, natural, human, built, and cultural capitals. For rural areas drought exacerbates existing issues in rural areas: outmigration, job loss, depression, economic strain.

Grace Harmon - Colorado College: State of the Rockies Project - presented on water sharing agreements along Colorado’s front range. It was about the sharing of a water right between two consumers. There are high transaction costs of negotiation between users and only three have been completed within Colorado.

Chaz Bacauili - Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy - presented his storymap on The Hardest Working River in the West, about the Colorado River. The impressive compilation of data and information highlighted the intense down-river / lower basin useage in the urban areas of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Diego - mostly for agriculture uses. Native tribes own one-fifth of the water rights, but don’t have settled claims and so their use is still disputed.

3:30 Nature-Based Solutions for Our Regions’ Most Wicked Problems

Dana Coelho - Alliance Director, Metro Denver Nature Alliance; Josh Phillips - Director of Planning and Implementation, High Line Canal Conservancy; Cathy McCague - Program Manager, High Line Canal Conservancy

This session focused on two case studies: 1. The High Line Canal Conservancy’s Stormwater Transformation and Enhancement Program, and 2. The Metro Denver Nature Alliance’s emerging Regional Vision for People + Nature - and others from Atlanta, GA and Kansas City, MO.

Green infrastructure is an adaptive and innovative reuse which includes a canal that could be wet 100+ days per year. This also includes a canopy which improves air quality, sequesters carbon and mitigates heat island effects. There are an estimated $30 million in potential savings (Green vs Gray) on the cost for the High Line canal stormwater system: ~$45 million in comparison to the ~$75 million for traditional infrastructure. This 71 mile greenway system provided many benefits to both the changing climate and the needs of the users in the area. Benefits in this case showed they out weighed the costs in this dual purpose solution.

The engagement on this session was great in that we utilized an online/app www.menti.com. They provided a password and we defined “nature”. It was a real time process that lead the discussion and highlighted how many people in the room had different ideas.

Summaries from Selected Sessions of the 2020 Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute

SUMMARY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY