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The Treasure Valley region of Southwestern Idaho includes two counties and 14 cities, including the state capital of Boise, and in 2000 was identified as the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. For over a decade the communities and stakeholders in the region have been concerned about the rapid growth as a threat to their high quality of life. A group of agencies and advocacy groups were successful in competing for a Transportation and Community Systems Preservation (TCSP) planning grant which funded the Treasure Valley Futures project which is aimed at building the capacity of local, regional and state decision-makers from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to better understand the linkages between land use, transportation, local and regional economics, and quality of life and cooperatively reshape their future.
Working as a subconsultant to Strategic Economics of Berkeley, California, CD+A was responsible for developing land use and urban design concepts and policies. Given the Treasure Valley’s fragmented political framework and deeply held beliefs around the importance of property rights, CD+A’s role in creating discussions which incorporated both a regional and a local perspective was critical and innovative. Stakeholder participation was initiated with a Bus Tour that allowed nearly 100 participants to see a variety of local development patterns in the Valley, and educated them about the patterns contribution to the sustainability, livability, accessibility and mobility of the region. As a part of the bus tour participants were also given the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the patterns in several locations regarding the relationship to regional and local quality of life. This successful tour built the groundwork and the momentum for a "Barriers Forum" which allowed regional stakeholders to identify barriers to "smart growth." CD+A prepared the booklet which was the basis of the Forum illustrating design alternatives for sites throughout the region. The Forum was then the starting point for the development of a tool kit of strategies and policy recommendations for overcoming the barriers. CD+A was responsible for drafting key tools related to land use and development policies and planning methods, and also edited several other portions of the tool kit. CD+A is currently assisting the team in preparing illustrative mappings of the two trend regional growth scenarios. Also, CD+A has taken part in several on-going education efforts sponsored by Treasure Valley Futures groups and the Congress for the New Urbanism.
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