‘Opinion’ Archives
Ten Lessons for the City of Boulder from the Great Flood of ’13
Fourmile Canyon Creek jumped its banks to the north in several places west of Broadway, wrecking havoc down through light industrial areas (all photos courtesy Elizabeth Black) The “1000 year flood” is media hype; believe it at your peril. [...]
Other People’s Money
Screen clip from a City of Boulder online zoning map Macon Cowles and Steve Pomerance (Boulder Daily Camera, January 5) both address the same issue: what Cowles calls using Other People's Money and what economists frame as externalizing costs. [...]
When Urban Dwellers Become Livestock Farmers
A hen from our flock “'Where's André?” “Out in the garage, sharpening his knives.” We begin walking towards one of the outbuildings when the farmhands yell out “No, not there, the garage!” We are oblivious urban dwellers who [...]
Vote No on 310
Rail cars loaded with coal Why is Xcel fighting so hard to stop Boulder's effort to start a municipal utility? Make no mistake, Xcel is behind the wording of Question 310, and is behind the many mailings and full-page ads in support of the [...]
All the Easy Things Have Been Done—a Response to Ken Wilson
Second Flat Iron, Boulder, CO by Chad Podoski (flickr creative commons) Good grief, Ken Wilson is such a raging pessimist. We get it, Ken, this is going to be hard. But evidently you did not get the memo: All the easy things have been done. Yes, [...]
Utilities Can Make Huge Business Blunders Too
Ralph Shnelvar asks us to imagine a catastrophic business blunder by the City of Boulder. We don't have to imagine this, as such a thing actually happened...to a utility. Montana Power would have been a 100-year-old company if it had survived [...]
Theory in Practice: PLAN-Boulder County’s Blue Line
Editor's note: This article was adapted by the author from a paper written for an urban planning course at Cornell Driven by a localist philosophy of city planning, in 1958 a group of City of Boulder residents initiated an enduring shift in [...]
Electric Bikes on Boulder’s Paths
The last year has seen a flurry of Letters to the Editor in the Daily Camera from cyclists and pedestrians alike, frustrated at each other's behavior on the Boulder Creek Path, and other well used parts of our path network. The debate has recently [...]
This Is Too Long—Polonius to Hamlet
AN IMPROVISATION In Two Parts and Sixteen Fragments Part I There is little point in being as old as I am unless it makes me the oldest living remnant of this or that. I have claimed to be the oldest living writer about angling in [...]
Rocky Flats and the Risk Society
In 1992, German social analyst Ulrich Beck offered a compelling critique of modern industrial society with his book Risk Society. As articulated by Beck, a “risk society” is one in which risks Are readily produced by human action, Are [...]
