Bringing urbanism to the mountains

A small ski resort town wants to guide growth and calls in expertise from the outside. This past February, CNU Director of Advisory Services James M. Moore and a team of CNU members traveled to California's Sierra Nevada mountains to show how new urbanist principles can guide development in the small town of June Lake. The two-day educational workshop was the first of eight that CNU plans for various locations in the mountain states in the next six months. For the past year, CNU has been nurturing regional partnerships that bring local residents, elected officials, and developers on board in support of the New Urbanism. The partnerships are bringing the principles of the Charter to some of the fastest-growing urban and rural areas in the western states: the Treasure Valley around Boise, Idaho; the state of New Mexico; and California’s Sierra Nevada. Resort sprawl looms June Lake is about to make some big decisions. Its intact 1920s subdivisions have a total population of just 640, surrounded on most sides by 10,000 ft. mountains on Forest Service land. Only 90 acres of developable land remains, but county plans call for a buildout that will increase the valley’s population to as much as 12,000. With a nearby airport soon to start accepting 747 jets, and a proposed ski resort expansion of up to 3,500 beds, residents fear that their human-scaled villages could become resort sprawl. Faced with these challenges, the Mono County Department of Community Development called in the Sierra Business Council, a nonprofit organization consisting of 600 businesses based in Truckee, California. The SBC's mission is ideal for this situation: It aims to accommodate economic growth in the mountains while retaining the character of the region's small towns and cities. The work is funded by a grant from the Packard Foundation. Without such grant funding, this small town would never have been able to bring in outside expertise. Darin Dinsmore, Director of Town Planning Services at SBC, helped the town form a 21-member citizens’ design committee, which will guide any large-scale development in the town. In collaboration with CNU staff, Dinsmore organized the February workshop to draw on CNU members’ expertise in dealing with such a development challenge. The team was made up of Moore, Tom DiGiovanni, John Anderson, Peter Swift, and Phil Erickson. A lasting effect The workshop focused on creating human-scaled development patterns while incorporating surrounding open space into the community. It showed examples of what types and forms of residential and commercial development could reflect and preserve the existing character of the built environment. Dinsmore sees this effort as more than a two-day planning effort. “It is an enduring, community-based planning system,” he says. The citizens’ design committee and local leaders now understand New Urbanism — by the end of the workshop, local officials were asking how to get the principles of the Charter codified in their General Plan (now up for revision). Based on the workshop, CNU and SBC are now producing a booklet describing the process and principles of New Urbanism, as applied to fast-growing rural areas such as June Lake. This design manual will guide communities throughout the Sierra, and around the country. Moore and Dinsmore presented the June Lake workshop at the American Planning Association conference in New Orleans, March 14.