Growth is actually standing in our way. It is blocking us from achieving true prosperity. It is diverting precious resources that could be invested in positive improvements for our community, but instead are spent subsidizing growth and then trying to mitigate its impacts.

At the current growth rate, Colorado Springs is doubling its population every 35 years. At that rate, in 2034 our metro area will exceed 1 million people. And in 2069 we’ll hit 2 million. Is that our prosperity strategy?

Growth consistently ranks one of the top concerns in citizen surveys. Most of us lament the increasing traffic, declining civility, noise, longer lines, deteriorating air quality, overcrowded and strained schools, and rising taxes that come with growth. But most of us accept it as a necessary evil. That’s because:

1) some of us believe community growth is inevitable
2) some believe a community must grow or it will wither and die

It turns out both of these beliefs are myths. Growth occurs when and where it is made economically attractive. And perpetual growth is a very unhealthy state for a community, just as it is for a body. A truly sustainable community does not expand beyond its carrying capacity (the size that can be sustained without using up local resources or importing resources needed by someone else). A truly healthy community does not need constant expansion to meet its needs.

Rather than enriching our community, the brisk growth of the 1990s has put a strain on city and county budgets. Police and fire response times are longer, our park systems are under siege and jurors must sit on the floor of the overcrowded jury room in our brand new county courthouse.  Traffic congestion delays have quadrupled. Infrastructure backlogs are staggering. Transit and other vital city services are on the chopping block rather than being improved.

The current City Council grew up in the era of settling the wild frontier, when there was a sign on the outskirts of every town: “Watch Our Community Grow.” That era is behind us, but this council’s solution to the problems growth created is to grow more. Renowned community planning consultant Eben Fodor, author of the book Better, Not Bigger says, “Growth is presented as the solution to problems it has never solved. It didn’t solve it last time, but this time it will.”

The growth-based model of local prosperity is yesterday’s news. It’s time for a modern approach that recognizes expansion no longer provides economies of scale; the costs of growth outweigh its benefits and it’s time we adopt a long-term prosperity plan that is truly sustainable. Growth is not. See my plan for a healthy local economy for more information about what we can be doing.

More on growth…

During the 1990s I became concerned about the price we were paying for growth through declining quality of life in Colorado Springs. I began to study the choices we were making and the results. What was growth doing to our community? Where was the prosperity growth was supposed to bring? What about the costs? And what about water to meet the needs of an ever-expanding population?

I became concerned that our city had an unsustainable prosperity strategy. We were bumping against the limits of our water supply with the drought that began in 2001. Did it make sense for out town to plan on doubling its population every 30 to 40 years in a state with a very limited water resource?

Growth costs our community hundreds, of millions of dollars every year, but that is a fairly well-kept secret. Growth-boosters hire economists who don’t count all the externalized costs of growth as a negative when tallying up the “benefits” of a growth boom. Here’s just one example: they say every primary job lured to town by discounted utility tap fees and tax rebates has a multiplier effect that leads to a couple more secondary jobs. If that’s true, and if only 1 in 5 newly attracted jobs goes to a local resident (as studies indicate), then every new primary job brings into our community a four new families, families that do not pay enough taxes to cover the cost of municipal and county services. By subsidizing new subdivisions, our town is “selling” itself to new families at a loss, and hoping to make up for that loss through volume. No matter how many new families we attract with discounted utility connections and inadequate impact fees, a loss is a loss – only it gets bigger and bigger.

So it’s really no surprise our city and county governments are a complete mess. While made worse by the global economic meltdown, our mess has been in the making throughout the 15-year growth boom that just ended. The costs of growth are strangling this community, diverting precious resources that should be invested in positive things that improve our community instead of noble, but inadequate efforts to mitigate the damage growth brings.