Capping Longmont’s growth is shortsighted

Richard Juday wrote about limiting growth in Longmont. His punchline was “Simply issue no more housing permits and utility hookups! Annex no more development land! Nothin’ to it really. And you’re done.” It’s not that easy.

While I completely agree with him about the desirability of limiting growth, his solution is too myopic and will fail. My family first moved to Colorado in 1978, when the population was around 3 million. It’s now 6 million. Boulder has had growth controls the entire time, yet they’ve failed to stop that growth.

Here’s the underlying problem: There is no governmental ability to limit people’s movement except at national borders. Cities and states can’t do it. The “problem” for Colorado is that it’s seen as a nice place with sunny weather and pretty mountains.

People don’t move to Cleveland,

Detroit or Boston, mostly due to weather. That’s why they lose population. Even within Colorado, people only move to the areas that are within view of the mountains. Nobody moves to La Junta or Burlington; they’re losing population too. This also holds true at the worldwide level and that’s why people want to move to the U.S.

If we follow Mr. Juday’s advice religiously, Longmont would become an island of high-priced/ low-density housing (like Boulder) surrounded by a ring of higher density and lower priced housing. If Colorado’s population gets to 9 million and Longmont stays at 100,000, is that really a win? I’d say no.

The population of the U.S. grows due to foreign immigration. If you want to limit growth in Colorado, you have to limit immigration to the U.S. It’s not that growth controls won’t work, but they have to be applied at the appropriate place – national borders.