Closing Remarks at the 2005 Wheeler Business Roundtable, "Recreation and Real Estate: The New Realities of Development," Dr. Gordon Brittan

Imbalances

I have nothing to add to the many and useful policy recommendations made today. Instead, I’d like to try to put them in a somewhat larger perspective. My remarks fall under three headings.

First, there seems to me to be an important shift in the way growth issues are now discussed. The last time we spent so much time on "growth" in Montana was in the 1970’s. The focus then was on the limits to growth, and we all learned to use words like "sustainability," "steady state," and "carrying capacity." I’ve just finished re-reading a wonderful report written in 1973 by Dorothy Bradley’s uncle Richard for a citizen’s task force on growth in Colorado Springs. In many ways it is as relevant now. But it’s also almost entirely quantitative, and its clear message, for the most part ignored, was that the town had to recognize the finite character of its land, air, and water resources.

Now the emphasis is on quality, not on the extent of growth so much as on its character. The difficulty, of course, is that "quality" is so much harder to characterize, and perhaps impossible to measure.

I think, in fact, that the notion of "limits" to growth will be back with us in the near future, no where more than in connection with the energy required to reach and support distant and scattered settlements, but for now at least our problems have to do with shaping and not with curtailing it.

Second, I have only gradually come to realize what the underlying source of these problems is.

Full Discussion: http://www.montana.edu/wheeler/fall_2005_summary.htm