Name some positive things growth in Boise has brought: (Nampa: townhomes, job market)

[Anchorless]

I know I'm usually the negative-nancy around here, especially in regards to growth, but I'm curious to see the different responses as to what has been nice about all of the growth the past 10 or so years.

- Improved downtown. There wasn't a lot going on downtown a while back, and it's great that its becoming more and more alive. I think the planning has been really good, with a great mix of local retailers, keeping big chains out, and a great selection of restaurants. I'd like to see more entertainment options, but not too much more. Certainly no more bars or clubs. I'm curious to see how all of the new residential spaces will work out - hopefully it won't kill the vibe. I'd also like to see a bit more business go in downtown.

- Increased diversity. It's great to look around Boise and see more and more people with different experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles.

- Improved educational facilities. Though certainly not world class or anything, it's good to see local education be improved, especially at Boise State and with the new community college coming in.

- Innovative development. Despite all of my protesting about development in the Valley, there have been a strong core of people (whether new to the area or not) who do care about developing the correct way. There are a lot of green developers, and projects like Bown Crossing and the Banner Bank building are great projects. I don't mind the downtown revitalization project, although it does reek somewhat of gentrification. And even some of the planned communities, as horrible as it is to see where they're building, they do have pretty innovative designs.


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I could go on and on about the negatives (the sea of new housing, development threatening our foothills, water supply, and our natural wilderness areas, increased crime, traffic, pollution, things becoming more and more expensive, endless retail, strip malls, and suburbia, a horribly tight job market, consumerist exploitation, opportunism in general, and on and on...), but indeed there are a lot of things that are good about where we're at now, for sure. And these things deserved to be highlighted.

More to come...

[Sage of Sagle]

[tongue in cheek]

WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ANCHORLESS?

[/tic]

[Katera]

I'm curious Anchorless, why do you have "suburbia" listed among the negatives? Suburban communities thrive on family, friends, churches, schools and playgrounds all within a short distance. Why is that a bad thing?


p.s.

Opportunism also listed? Err, this entire country including its free market is "opportunistic" by definition. I do feel for anyone that has to sit by and watch their community change into something different. I saw that happen to my little foothill town Glendora in So Cal and it was no fun.

[Anchorless]

Originally Posted by Katera

I'm curious Anchorless, why do you have "suburbia" listed among the negatives? Suburban communities thrive on family, friends, churches, schools and playgrounds all within a short distance. Why is that a bad thing?

Not to stray too far off topic, but...

I don't mind suburbia if planned right. If a suburb can be designed to be a live/work community, a walkable, self-contained neighborhood, then great.

But modern suburban flight (ie, MOST suburbs) does nothing but encourage more sprawl (infill, and those priced even further from the urban core), more traffic, more air pollution, more waste of resources.

I mean, Nampa, Caldwell, Kuna, Star, and even Middleton and Emmett are starting to experience what has already happened everywhere else (and to Meridian and Eagle) - it all becomes just one large, sprawled metro area.

Originally Posted by Katera

p.s.

Opportunism also listed? Err, this entire country including its free market is "opportunistic" by definition. I do feel for anyone that has to sit by and watch their community change into something different. I saw that happen to my little foothill town Glendora in So Cal and it was no fun.

Opportunism is a double edged sword - for every good thing that comes with people taking advantage of situations, you have people looking for ways to make the most money with the least amount of effort on their part, usually through exploiting resources, land, and/or people. And once some of these things are exploited, it's permanent (or at the very least, long-lasting).

I mean, take a look around the country and see how so many great places have been absolutely devastated by opportunism.

[Katera]

Originally Posted by Anchorless

Not to stray too far off topic, but...

I don't mind suburbia if planned right. If a suburb can be designed to be a live/work community, a walkable, self-contained neighborhood, then great.

But modern suburban flight (ie, MOST suburbs) does nothing but encourage more sprawl (infill, and those priced even further from the urban core), more traffic, more air pollution, more waste of resources.

I mean, Nampa, Caldwell, Kuna, Star, and even Middleton and Emmett are starting to experience what has already happened everywhere else (and to Meridian and Eagle) - it all becomes just one large, sprawled metro area.



Opportunism is a double edged sword - for every good thing that comes with people taking advantage of situations, you have people looking for ways to make the most money with the least amount of effort on their part, usually through exploiting resources, land, and/or people. And once some of these things are exploited, it's permanent (or at the very least, long-lasting).

I mean, take a look around the country and see how so many great places have been absolutely devastated by opportunism.

Fair enough. I hear what you are saying and tend to agree with a lot of it. Perhaps not all, but a lot.

[AlleyTD]

Originally Posted by Sage of Sagle

[tongue in cheek]

WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ANCHORLESS?

LOL ...


ME ... that is a positive thing growth has brought to Boise

[Sage of Sagle]

You know, I think one very positive way to grow is to look at place that have grown with reasonable infrastructure and civic planning, plenty of open space, leaning way toward R1 zoning that has 1-2 acre minimum lot sizes, required setbacks for commercial properties with greenbelts, etc.

For example, when driving through parts of the SF Bay Area, you can run across areas where they eschewed high density housing decades ago to focus on minimum lot sizes being .5 ac or larger, where many of the thoroughfares have side or center greenbelts with horse trails or bike paths OFF the street, where instead of having a grid of medium-duty arterial routes all packed with strip malls and cookie cutter tracts walled off from each other, you have 1-2 main streets that area a shopping district with well pre-planned high flow traffic arteries to/from AND AROUND those areas, you have residential areas with .5+ac sites (land is still cheap in Idaho...why not?), you have a mix of SOME moderate-density housing in developments like townhomes in hip areas (walking distance to colleges, arts, music, etc), and so on.

It's all very doable...and one reason why I will fight to the death to keep our county's minimum subdivision size rule (currently 5 acres minimum per residence with the exception of grandfathered lots). Near me there is a new development with 75 acres of land. Now, if this were elsewhere, you'd see a developer touting "40% green space" and such balderdash...

Well, with suburban .20ac lots, even at 40% green space it means 225 new homes, all packed in close to each other, but with neaby greenbelts, right? Only in North Idaho, it's ONLY FIFTEEN new families moving in...what, 45 people to your 600?

I'm not touting North Idaho here...what I'm saying is that while I like the libertarian ideal of developers being allowed to do what they want with land to SOME measure, I do believe that planning and zoning rules are for the betterment of the people already living in an area and that should trump new growth.

What would y'all from Boise think of a new development, say 1000 acres, where you didn't NEED any "open space" because EVERY home was .5 acre lot, thus given the fact that a 3000sf home is approx. 7% of an acre, in essence you sell 2000 home sites on that 1000 acres, but you have 86% appearance of open space. You can even tree your property and NOT SEE your neighbors, yeah?

Anchorless, I'm just thinking out loud here, but this type of thing works in other areas, why do you think it's not more prevalent in the Boise area...developer profit taking?

[buckleyclan]

From a development perspective, the reason you see more lots per acre to begin with is
that the builder has to pay for all the infrastructure he provides. The more growth, the higher demand for *better* infrastructure. The developer knows from experience that *most* folk would rather have a .25 acre lot with a 2500 sf house for 350K instead of a .50 acre lot with the same house for 500K. Houses are the cheap part of construction. Land development, (think underground utilitites, zoning, building permits, dev. fees, school fees, service agency fees, school fees, etc.), is the expensive part.
That said, developers are in it to make a profit, but so are car dealers, dentists, and grocery stores.