By Ned Farquhar
Of the Journal
Cities make choices. In the West, more and more are choosing public transportation, water conservation and growth management.
Houston, the city that made the choice not to zone, is choking on its own fumes, traffic and chaos. Even before the rise in gasoline prices in the past few years, Houston-area residents cross-commuted like crazy, finding new jobs in new suburbs. That meant spending more on transportation— wasted money, unlike investments in housing and education— than on their mortgages, and throwing away hours that they could have spent at home or with family.
In contrast, places like Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland and now even Phoenix are putting in light rail, attracting thousands of new residents to live downtown, and celebrating their community and vitality.
Albuquerque, for once, seems to be pursuing its own positive model for urban growth— one that holds some promise for the future of western cities. It's Mesa del Sol.
Forest City Enterprises, which is developing Mesa del Sol, promised to build a foundation of employers before adding in housing. That's been happening, with the most recently announced big new employers being a German company building a big solar panel manufacturing plant and a financial services company opening up a large back-office operation. Few developments— and none previously in Albuquerque— achieve that kind of mixed-use balance.
The 6,000 acres of Mesa del Sol are close to the airport, a rail line and an interstate highway. They are on the same side of the Rio Grande as Downtown, and not too far away from the employers who line the corridors east from Downtown— hospitals, higher education, Uptown, Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories.
Mesa del Sol makes sense for future urban growth. Development there could help swing economic gravity back toward the core of Albuquerque, where revitalization (though gaining momentum) continues to get hung up on uncertainty and occasional false hope.
In the mid-80s then-state land commissioner Jim Baca started planning for Mesa del Sol to become an urban growth area for Albuquerque, leading to the annexation of the area in the early '90s. Baca deserves credit for the vision, although the project languished until Gov. Bill Richardson targeted state funding for needed roads and wooed the master developer.
Albuquerque doesn't help itself by growing every direction at once. It shouldn't provide incentives for growth in too many places at once. It should concentrate on revitalizing existing areas, strengthening its public transportation networks, and growing Downtown and at Mesa del Sol. Those are the paths to a healthy city 25 years from now.
Riding the ligh trail into Portland from the airport last week, I was struck by the crowds of people, many with starter jobs, who seemed happy to be on the train. A group of four young men talked about how the $2.05 fare for a light rail trip "saved their lives" so they could hang out and party on Friday evenings. For other low-income people, it's proven that public transit is the ladder into the middle class. Public transit is way more expensive and difficult in sprawling cities than in cities where growth is managed.
West Side residents, who deserve schools, police, streets, parks and transit, have grown tired of the constant rollout of new subdivisions. Every new subdivision brings more homes, more traffic, and more people in a badly choreographed ballet that features public services about 10 years, sometimes 15, too late.
Last month census officials announced the New Mexico is the 13th-fastest growing state. That's quite a jump from our usual place in the middle of the states. A lot of that growth is happening in the middle Rio Grande region. Rather than offering the exact same cookie-cutter subdivisions that are springing up in other suburban areas, Albuquerque and Forest City are putting together a community where quality of life is likely to keep improving.
Such a place attracts new residents, and new jobs, and long-term investment. This helps a city earn its place in the West's future. You can't say that about a lot of the growing areas in and around Albuquerque.
Ned Farquhar, energy/climate advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also served as senior policy adviser to Gov. Bill Richardson. E-mail: inthewest@comcast.net.
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