Plan for future before someone else does
Santa Fe has been a sustainable, settled place for a very long time. Long before Europeans, the area around the Plaza was the site of a pueblo called Ogha Po’oge.
Founder Pedro de Peralta established Santa Fe in 1610 as a royal city, to be settled and laid out in an orderly fashion in accordance with the Laws of the Indies, as promulgated by the Spanish Crown. In the past century, there have been at least three master plans prepared for the city of holy faith: the 1912 City-Beautiful influenced plan, the 1947 Harland Bartholomew City Plan and the 1999 General Plan. Each plan reflected the politics and attitudes of their times. Often, aesthetic preservation took precedence over cultural continuity. It has now been more than 20 years since Santa Fe has engaged in a full-fledged comprehensive planning process. Much has changed during the ensuing two decades.
It is precisely during uncertain and volatile times as the current pandemic, concurrent economic disruption and racial strife that long-range comprehensive planning is most important. Comprehensive planning happens when the community comes together to establish goals and policies that will guide our choices about leveraging our limited resources for the most benefit.
Over the past 20 years, the general plan has helped to guide and shape growth, but there have been myriad changes. We are now facing choices that will impact our city for generations. In the physical realm, we are experiencing accelerated effects of climate change. In the political realm, we now have more lands under city control through annexation and a strong mayor.
In the socioeconomic realm, we now have challenges of providing affordable housing, increasing income inequality and demographic shifts. There have been more folks moving to Santa Fe as climate and pandemic refugees.
We have choices to make with the redevelopment of the College of Santa Fe midtown project. We have choices to make even as we are talking about fast-tracking the sale of hundreds of acres of city lands because of the budget shortfall (selling our assets … without a plan). Los Alamos National Laboratory is expanding and making unilateral decisions (or not making them) that will impact the housing supply, traffic and transportation, and quality of life in Santa Fe.
The plan must be informed by statistically valid surveys of public needs and sentiments, along with effective ways to garner citizen concerns and ideas. It must engage our diverse neighborhoods and communities. It should integrate updated demographic and socioeconomic trends derived from the 2020 census. All city departments need to participate.
Think about how our City Different should be different. What kind of place do you want Santa Fe to be in 20 years? Some time, effort and expense invested now should yield much greater dividends and avoid detrimental decisions for years ahead.
To this end, I invite you to join me. Perhaps we should call this “Faith in the Future: Santa Fe 2040!” If we don’t do this now, then we will let others do it for and to us, and impose a future that we haven’t planned for. Reach me at danpava1955@gmail.com.
Daniel Pava lives in Santa Fe. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He served on the city Planning Commission from 2012-15 and was an environmental planner at Los Alamos National Laboratory for nearly 30 years.