Quote:
Originally Posted by Thundertubs
The Western US has a lot of small cities such as Bend, St. George, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Flagstaff, Nampa, Tri-Cities, etc... that have doubled in size or more in the last few decades. It's a very different built environment than older small cities such as Racine, Lancaster, Hagerstown, Muncie, Woonsocket, Duluth, etc...
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Yeah, from what I remember of places like Ft. Collins and Bend, it seems like what you often find is a small, but fairly vital downtown surrounded by a huge amount of very new sprawl relative to the original core, sometimes with some decent bike infrastructure going by beige "special" walmarts, if you know what i mean. It all is usually very new and clean feeling (at least to me), even the historic downtowns, and mildly copasetic as the mountains in the background always seem to blunt the impact of the kudzu like sprawl. There is usually some kind of frought development concern dominating the local paper and the old people talk in the cafes... although I'm sure the tone sounds more familiar to midwestern ears of late: jobs. I know Bend is hurting, I'm not sure exactly what the economy was based on before (it wasn't just beer), but I imagine it had A LOT to do with development, especially being on the sunny side of the mountains.
It's hard for me to pick on Bend, seems like they try harder than some other towns, at least with infill and the little core. When that much development is (was) blasting out of the nozzle, you gotta try even harder, I guess. Bike paths, sidewalks, and tighter sprawl (which almost seems like the mantra out there) isn't enough.