Fort Collins - A Town Envisions the Future on Its Own Terms

FORT COLLINS, COLORADO — As this mid-sized city in the American West prepared to revise its long-term city plan last year — the blueprint for its future — the biggest challenge was the here and now.  

 

Tax revenues had plunged thanks to the recession. Retailing had eroded, in a place that had long seen itself as the downtown of far-flung rural northern Colorado, taking the health of the downtown with it. Even the mechanics of the planning process, using experts in transportation and economics paid by the city, posed a daunting hurdle, not to mention how to pay for the roads and redevelopment that planning usually promises.

“We could do an urban design plan, but we didn’t have the money to pay for any of it,” said the mayor, Karen Weitkunat. “It put a reality check on what we were here to do.”  Source: New York Times

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