🚀 go-pugleaf

murray@bullwinkle.raleigh.ibm.com (Charlie Murray) writes:
>...Last week I posted an article describing how Boulder is
>becoming too white and affluent, and I got only one response which
>basically asked "What's wrong with that?".  I feel, the Boulder that I
>know and love is fading away.

What can we say?  I saw what you wrote, but I certainly didn't have any
answers.  Yeah, Boulder ain't what it used to be.  What can we do?

(OK, I'm white and maybe affluent [I'm certainly not poor]...but what can I
do?  Move away?  Not clear that will help.:-)

People say things like "Boulder is a victim of its own success"...and sure,
it is.  So how do we set about failing?

Take housing prices.  Boulder is a desirable place to live, and one big
reason is that it hasn't been built out to the last square centimeter of
habitable land.  We could take off the planned growth, let building go
wild, and housing prices would drop (a) because it's not a tight market and
(b) because it would become a less desirable place to live.  Housing prices
keep going up...when people sell their houses, they don't *need* to price
them at whatever the market will bear, but it's unrealistic to expect them
not to do so. I don't see any plausible way to control the pricing.  (In
effect, we have local government controlling the supply of a commodity, but
no control over the effect this has on price of the commodity.)

Personally, I wish people would learn from what successes Boulder has had,
and apply the knowledge to their own cities and towns, instead of just
striking camp and moving here.
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@raven.eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado
	...Straight, but not narrow.