By Ian Corder, Associate Planner

This June, Lone Tree attended the “Planning to Thrive Colorado” Symposium to learn about integrated planning strategies that promote sustainability and equity. Planning Division staff attended the event and were joined by Planning Commission Vice-Chair Alecia Brown and Commissioner Glenn Hertzler. Symposium speakers discussed opportunities to improve growth management and coordination at the state level to support local planning efforts, particularly as they pertain to comprehensive planning. Learning outcomes included a better understanding of the important role a modern comprehensive plan plays in promoting a diverse and resilient local community. The symposium was timely for the City of Lone Tree as we continue to see exciting new development and we begin work on an update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan in 2023. Below are a few of the key takeaways from the event:

Environmental Justice

Climate change has become front and center at the local, state, national, and global levels. As we consider ways to mitigate its impacts and integrate sustainable land use practices, it is important to ensure the equitable implementation of those principles, as the City recently did with its 2022 Municipal Code update in which the quality, sustainability and the affordability of housing materials were considered in Lone Tree’s Design Guidelines and Standards for Architecture and Site Planning.

Population Growth and Migration

Despite media reports of booming population growth in Colorado, State Demographer, Elizabeth Garner, reported the state is seeing a significant decline in population growth, as well as an increasingly aging population. This demographic shift has implications for our labor forces, and also impacts housing needs and opportunities. These are important considerations when planning for the provision of a mix of housing options to meet the needs of an aging population and to attract a diverse workforce. As stated by Garner at the symposium, “A job is a person, and a housing unit is where that job sleeps at night.”

Sustainable Infrastructure

Infrastructure is a broad term encompassing many of the resources and services that we rely on daily. However, we don’t always consider how they are interconnected – even within the context of road networks/connections. Mark Reiner, Director of Resilient Infrastructure at Jacobs Engineering, emphasized the importance of considering how infrastructure failures impact the resilience and longevity of our broader infrastructure system. Using the example of water main breaks that can shut down entire city blocks, redirecting traffic, and placing unplanned strain on road infrastructure, Reiner outlined the importance of integrating sustainable infrastructure management into the overall planning process to build out and fund those resources more efficiently.

Integrating Current Conditions with Growth

Rodney Milton, the President of Urban Land Institute Colorado, highlighted one of the most important questions to be asked during the comprehensive planning process, “What does this city want to be when it grows up?”. Milton critiqued the planning profession, pointing out that we focus on current conditions, but often lose sight of impacts over time. As cities grow and populations age into new generations, so too do their preferences and needs. At what point does the existing character become the old character? How do we balance the impacts of the current economy with the needs of the future economy? Milton outlined a three-pronged approach to comprehensive planning:

  • Urgency – What does the community need right now? Who are the stakeholders and how do we engage them? What can we do right now and what do we need to do moving forward?
  • Design – How do we design the built environment to address the needs of the community? What kind of goods and services do we need to consider as we grow? How do we retain our residents and promote a healthy workforce?
  • Implementation – With a shared and equitable vision of what the city wants to be when it grows up, how do we raise that city? Using the items identified in the urgency prong, what items need to be prioritized as we set goals for the community?

Milton’s approach to the comprehensive planning process emphasizes the need to engage the community in continuous conversations, as opposed to collecting feedback and prioritizing community input based on the most loudly held opinions. Comprehensive planning should promote conversations amongst the community that allow them to identify issues, reach compromises on issues, and apply those compromises to how the plan will be implemented.

The Symposium closed with a statement from Reverend Jessica Abell of Together Colorado, who compared land use to the way we interact with our homes. To paraphrase Abell, “sometimes a kitchen is where we make food and sometimes it’s where we congregate and play games, so why not apply the same flexibilities to land use?” While current community planning is important, we also need to acknowledge the need for communities to be flexible and adapt to immediate changes. The best way to do this is to develop an integrated comprehensive plan that promotes coordination and immediate action, as opposed to locking the community into limited, piecemeal action. The comprehensive planning process is not only an opportunity for an individual community member’s voice to be heard, but also an opportunity for individual community members and outside stakeholders to create a shared voice!

We hope you enjoyed reading about this recent event and look forward to having you join the City at the table in the future when we begin discussing Lone Tree’s future and a shared vision for its growth and resiliency.

For more information about Planning to Thrive, click here.