(journal)

Real Enviros Live in Town

As urban sprawl invades the Big Sky State, the city-or-country debate intensifies across the Rocky Mountain West.

By Alan S. Kesselheim

My friend Scott lives about eight miles outside of Bozeman, Montana, in a quiet development bordering Forest Service land, near the base of Leverich Canyon. I live two blocks off Main Street, in a residential district in the heart of downtown Bozeman.

Our lifestyle conversations always end on the same agreeable, but staunchly opposed, note. These periodic discussions are the sort friends have, a way of validating our decisions, sounding out the issues, rationalizing choices.

"Man, I am so glad to be living where I do," he'll say, after we've chased things around.

"I wouldn't trade with you for anything" is my final line.

Bozeman is one of those quality-of-life western towns. A place where people want to live. There are nearby ski resorts, blue-ribbon trout streams, trails and rivers and peaks without end. Yellowstone National Park is in easy striking distance. The local university adds a dose of cultural stimulation.

People want to retire in Bozeman. People want to find jobs in Bozeman, any job. Those with discretionary incomes or trust funds or the California blues tend to gravitate here. In the past decade Bozeman and the surrounding Gallatin Valley grew at an unprecedented rate of 34 percent, to 67,831 people. Montana cities like Bozeman and Missoula and Kalispell are growing so much that land-use planning has become the most contentious political hot button and citizens bitch about how horrendous the traffic has become. Recently, in Bozeman, there have been startling incidents of road rage. Here!

As in many destination towns, most of Bozeman's growth is occurring in the "doughnut area" outside city limits, which, depending on your definition, extends as far as eight miles—similar to the outskirts of Las Vegas, or Bend, Oregon, or Colorado Springs, or Flagstaff, Arizona. Zoning regulations tend to be less onerous outside of towns, land is cheaper, and people covet that buffer of space with a view, even if it is steadily being nibbled away.

A decade ago it used to be that every time I went for a bike ride through a section of countryside I hadn't been to in a while, I was shocked at the number of houses and subdivisions going in. Now I just expect this. Scott and his family used to live in town, a few blocks on the other side of Main from my house. But they decided they didn't like the noise. They worried about their kids and traffic. Although they considered other city homes when they went looking for a new house, it was the quiet outside of town that attracted them the most.

"I can go out my door and run on mountain trails," Scott says. "I see elk and bear and no people."

"True enough," I agree. "But that's only one set of trails, and everything else you do—everything—requires getting in your car."

It is certainly true that I don't have out-the-door access to a system of mountain trails the way Scott does. My paths are more suburban, more crowded, more often paved. If I want mountain trails, I have to drive to them. I have to deal with the noise of traffic and late-night parties and sirens. My view of the mountains is nice enough; I can see the Bridger Range out my kitchen window, but my view is cluttered with telephone wires and buildings in the foreground. I have to be vigilant about my kids' safety in ways Scott doesn't.

Every house in every subdivision requires a driveway, which, in Montana, can be a quarter-mile dirt road. These homes also need a septic system and a well. Never mind school-bus service, fire and police protection, snow removal, 911 coverage, and the rest.

But I go days without starting my car. I walk to my Main Street office. The kids walk or ride bikes to school. I can decide five minutes before showtime to go to a movie and still walk to the downtown cinema. The swimming pool is across the street from our house, the city library is three blocks away, the post office is a five-minute walk. We have ready access to the farmers' market, ice-skating rinks, tobogganing hills, and the historic business district.

It isn't that we don't drive. It's that we don't have to.

Scott, and the thousands of other people living in the doughnut, drive to work, drive their kids to school, drive to meetings and movies and stores. Many families need to drive two cars to handle the daily schedule's varied demands. A recent traffic study revealed that on just three of the streets that funnel people from the doughnut to downtown, upwards of 50,000 cars pass through every day. And Montana is not exactly what you'd call a gas-efficiency mecca; many people drive pickup trucks and SUVs.

Now, right about here, I could start sounding smug, even a little self-righteous. Fact is, however, that when we bought our house, a dozen years ago, we considered all sorts of places, both in town and in the doughnut. Only subsequently have I developed my passion for town life. It would be satisfying to claim premeditation, but it's just the way things worked out.

What it translates to, for me, is not smugness so much as a tremendous sense of lifestyle relief. That I don't have to drive means that I am free of a heavy burden of built-in frenzy. Frenzy that people get used to and stop thinking about.

For people like Scott, every trip to town to get kids or go to work or make a meeting entails leaving home a minimum of 20 minutes ahead. That's hours a week that could be devoted to more sleep, or household chores, or some exercise, or playing catch with the kids, or enjoying a quiet cup of coffee with the paper before the day starts.

I don't envy Scott. The "frenzy factor" also requires an intense level of daily planning and maneuvering: Who picks up and drops off whom. Which car to drive. What stuff to cart to town to cover the day's demands.

The other week Scott stopped by the house and was chastising himself. "I wanted to get in a run today, but I left my running stuff at home," he grumbled.

I was good. I resisted temptation, kept my mouth shut.

Then there's the gas. At $1.50 a gallon, with two cars, pretty soon you're dropping $5 every day just doing your job and treading water with the chores. That's $150 a month without going anywhere.

This is all about progress and growth, western-style, and it's happening in every Rocky Mountain state. In the past decade, building permits issued by the Bozeman Planning Office almost doubled in the area within three and a half miles of the city limits. Fields where, just a few years ago, I used to routinely see herds of elk and pockets of wetlands are now sprouting Tyvek-clad new homes. It doesn't take much of this before I get wistful remembering the open spaces and scattered livestock herds on the ranch land that used to surround town.

And every house in every subdivision requires a driveway, which, in Montana, can be a quarter-mile dirt road. These homes also need a septic system and a well. Never mind school-bus service, fire and police protection, snow removal, 911 coverage, and the rest.

In recent years the Montana Department of Environmental Quality has been swamped with more than 1,200 applications annually for sewage-treatment systems—so many that almost all are approved without a site visit. Six miles to the west of Bozeman, nitrate-contaminated groundwater was blamed on faulty septic systems. A state audit found a proliferation of problems, including wells drilled right next to septic systems, homes built on top of drain fields, and several houses using sewage systems designed for one dwelling.

Progress this may be, in a short-term sense, but our county commissioners bemoan the expense of subdivisions. In fact, every tax dollar contributed by far-flung developments is offset by about $1.50 in infrastructure demands.

Since I bought my house, I've started to appreciate some unexpected subtleties about the town-or-country choice as well. More and more, I think there are social and community implications. Bozeman is the first place I've lived where I've had a strong sense of community. Part of that comes from being here for 20 years, but a big part of it has to do with living in the center of town.

I like to say that about 30 percent of my wife's gardening schedule is actually devoted to socializing. Some days it seems like every time I look out the window, Marypat is standing there, trowel in hand, chatting with a neighbor, or talking to somebody who stops their car to ask about her choice of ground cover, or hailing a jogger going past. A staggering amount of community interaction seems to come down the sidewalk while Marypat weeds.

For me it's more likely to happen on the walk to work, or at the post office, or in the coffee shop where I get my midmorning cup. Conversations are about local politics, a recent letter to the editor, the new elementary school principal. Pretty regularly I run into city or county politicians and get to raise questions while we wait for the walk light on a street corner.

Don't get me wrong. Subdivisions are communities, too. Scott has great neighbors who interact all the time. He and his wife are involved in civic events. But it isn't, I don't think, the same as spontaneous post office or gardening encounters, and whatever causes the two of them participate in add another layer to the frenzy equation.

Well, okay. Not everyone wants to live in town. Space and a view, peace and quiet, access to open country—all compelling factors in choosing a place to live. The very things that draw people to the Big Sky State.

But more people could live in town. If they did, there would be more country to enjoy, better air to breathe, more elk to look at, and less traffic to complain about. More places like Bozeman could do a better job of improving the prospects for living in town by encouraging denser cluster developments, making trails and parks and bike paths integral to a community design, and preserving the open spaces that remain.

As for me, when it comes down to it, I'm just as selfish as the next guy. I haven't persisted in my town habit out of ascetic values or curmudgeonly spite. I feel lucky to live where I do. I wouldn't trade for five acres and a big view even if I could. I'd lose too much. Besides, we just put our second car up for sale. We figure we can save $100 a month being a one-car family.

Alan S. Kesselheim is the author of eight books as well as hundreds of magazine articles. His latest book, The Wilderness Paddler's Handbook, is published by McGraw-Hill.

© 2003  NASI