Oh, to be a stray in San Francisco, where a software billionaire’s gift has made animal homelessness a Cinderella experience. Once picked up from the streets, cats, for example, move to a loft where they can choose to watch mice run on television or loll on top of a six-foot climbing tree. Piped-in air to […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Tickling the green funny bone
In the increasingly crowded world of Web magazines focused on the environment, it’s getting hard for the green at heart to decide what to bookmark. Which is why the founders of Grist magazine have injected something rare into their coverage of the often depressing retreat of the natural world: humor. “We’ve tried to cut through […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A botanical El Dorado
A new quarterly journal from the Siskiyou Field Institute in Cave Junction, Ore., devotes itself to “trees, rocks, critters, creeks, humans, snakes” – the list goes on to include little-known but wonderfully named species like “chalcedon checkerspots” and “hooded ladies tresses.” All inhabit a landscape that ecologists call the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. It includes the Pacific […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Backtracking
“Western road maps are full of old trails: the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Sante Fe Trail, the Outlaw Trail, and the Nez Perce Trail. Their vague lines connect the West that was to the West that is. They may even stretch to the West we imagine will be. But underneath them, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘Start letting mom pack that trunk’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Davey is the president of the Valley Improvement Association: “Horizon’s plan was not a shabby idea. On paper it looked very good. The problem was that they were working in an agricultural area, and the county was not equipped to handle it. This […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘It’s a clash of visions’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ray Garcia is president of the Historic Tome Adelino Neighborhood Association: “This place is different. It’s special. This is the second oldest community in Valencia County. We’re pretty tough, like those old cottonwoods, no? “We formed a neighborhood association two years ago to fight […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘The bridge is only part of the puzzle’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alicia Aguilar is a real estate agent and Valencia County commissioner: “When I first came into office, we were one of the fastest growing counties in the state and I didn’t see any planning going on. Bernalillo County had tightened its regulations on mobile […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘No one is at the steering wheel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Lora Lucero is vice president of the New Mexico chapter of the American Planning Association: “Who’s guiding growth right now is no one. No one is at the steering wheel. It’s occurring very haphazardly, it’s occurring incrementally, project by project, application by application, and […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Heard around the West
Think about writing an almost minute-by-minute record of your life: documenting the shoes you’re wearing, rating brands of snack food and occasionally taping to your notes samples of recently harvested toenail clippings. Would anyone bother reading or even handling this intimate minutia? Sure they would, said octogenarian Robert Shields in Dayton, Wash., who obsessively noted […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Road Block
A pack of ‘Chicanos, Marines and hippies’ steps into the path of New Mexico’s sprawl machine
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Hear that whistle blowin’
A modern-day railroad baron stakes a claim in an ambivalent town
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Old West guns down growth initiatives
Well, so much for the great land-use greening of 2000. Colorado and Arizona’s bold citizen initiatives to toughen their states’ growth-management rules both went down in flames. Colorado’s Amendment 24 rode high all summer, but support for the proposed constitutional amendment to require towns to map future growth and obtain voter approval for changes fell […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
In Arizona’s growth fight, advertising defined reality
The television ad showed a truck unloading a port-a-potty in the desert, while a family of four stood by with forlorn faces. A voice-over warned that if Arizona’s growth-control initiative passed, a family wouldn’t be able to get water or sewer for a new home outside the boundaries. As a youth walked into the port-a-potty, […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Sprawl will be televised
ARIZONA, COLORADO It seemed obvious. The media love controversy, and in Arizona and Colorado, growth-control initiatives on the Nov. 7 ballot have been extremely controversial (HCN, 10/23/00: Arizona’s 202 takes aim at sprawl). So of course the public-minded, public-broadcast stations would want to air Subdivide and Conquer, a film about sprawl. Yet the film has […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
‘Re-inhabitation’ revisited
The new invasion of the rural Northwest
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Heard around the West
Is this a tale for Ripley’s Believe It or Not? A moose in Whitefish, Mont., threw itself at a car driven by a woman who loves moose so much her license plates read moosie1 and moosie2. The suicidal moose, probably a victim of raging hormones during the rutting season, “really shook up the driver,” reports […]
Posted inNovember 6, 2000: 'Re-inhabitation' revisited
Outlaws on an upscale road
When I moved to Teton County, Wyo., two decades ago, I lived in a sagging, second-hand pup tent for the summer. The tipi I moved into that winter felt palatial by comparison. Almost everyone I knew then lived in wall tents, tipis, yurts, or cabins with no plumbing. Even when the temperature fell past 30 […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Where cultures collide
Travelers on Route I-84 may speed past Ontario, Ore., with nary a glance. But the decision not to stop at this agricultural center is their loss, because the town houses one of the best historical and cultural centers in the West. The Four Rivers Cultural Center celebrates the confluence of cultures in the Western Treasure […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Arizona’s 202 takes aim at sprawl
Note: a sidebar article, “Colorado’s growth amendment rouses voters,” accompanies this story. ORACLE, Ariz. – On a Pinal County cattle ranch about 30 miles northwest of Tucson, El Salvadoran-born real estate broker and developer Alex Argueta envisions thousands of homes, as well as shopping centers, high-tech parks, vineyards and several resorts and golf courses. He […]
Posted inOctober 23, 2000: Stalking Slade
Colorado’s growth amendment rouses voters
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Landscape photographer John Fielder is a household name in Colorado, but he hasn’t had time to document the changing aspen leaves this fall. He’s too busy championing Colorado’s proposed Amendment 24. “From now until Nov. 7, the camera’s packed away, until we […]