Sharing Boulder

For our sixth episode we interviewed Sarah Wiebenson who is a senior project manager with the Community Vitality Department for the city of Boulder. I first met Sarah a couple of years ago through a program called the Boulder County Leadership Fellows which we both completed during the 2019-2020 cohort year. Sarah is a big believer in developing community through walkable neighborhoods that are tightly integrated with local retail and her efforts working for the city reflect those values. The names of many organizations and projects were mentioned in this episode. Please visit our website at https://sharingboulder.us/show-notes/ for links and other information related to this episode.

Hello Boulder and the wider world.  This is the Sharing Boulder podcast.  My name is Philip Ogren and for our fifth episode my co-host David Adamson and I interviewed the co-chairs of Bedrooms Are For People; Chelsea Castellano and Eric Budd.  

Our guests today run Bedrooms Are For People, a grassroots political organization focused on occupancy reform in the city of Boulder.  When this interview was recorded on April 17th, Bedrooms Are For People was working at full capacity collecting as many signatures as possible for an online petition to get occupancy reform on the ballot in November.  As of the release of this episode they have collected three thousand four hundred signatures which is a few dozen more than the 3,336 required by the city for the petition to be certified.  People living in Boulder are going to be hearing a lot more about this important reform in the coming months as voters prepare to decide which way to vote.  We hope you enjoy our conversation with Chelsea Castellano and Eric Budd.

Hello Boulder and the wider world.  Welcome to the Sharing Boulder podcast.  My name is Philip Ogren and for our fourth episode my co-host David Adamson and I interviewed planning board member Dave Ensign.  

If you are a developer that wants to build more housing in Boulder of any significant size, then your plans are probably going to be reviewed by the Boulder Planning Board.  The Boulder Planning Board is a committee that reviews development projects to make sure that they conform to Boulder’s zoning ordinances and are consistent with various land-use goals.  In addition to reviewing projects, the other primary role of the planning board is to help shape land-use policy in the city and county of Boulder.  One major focus of effort is to help author the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan which is a document that articulates our collective values around land-use and lays out a detailed outline for how to realize that vision.  The current comprehensive plan is 165 pages and covers a wide range of subjects such as housing, open space, the economy, social equity, transportation, energy use, among many others.  The plan is full of beautiful photos and detailed maps and is a fantastic resource for appreciating all the work that goes into making our city and county a better place to live for its residents – so you should definitely check it out.  

All members of the Boulder Planning Board are community volunteers that are appointed by city council.  They represent the public and are a voice from the community that helps shape land use decisions in Boulder.  Our guest today is the senior member and chair of the Boulder Planning Board, Dave Ensign.  We spoke with Dave about what the planning board is and what they do and then had a very interesting conversation about the gap that exists between the vision laid out the comprehensive plan and the reality as we see it on the ground.  Our conversation covered a range of subjects including diversity and inclusion, traffic, and the challenge of changing zoning laws.  We hope you enjoy our conversation with Dave Ensign.  

Hello Boulder and the wider world.  This is the Sharing Boulder podcast.  My name is Philip Ogren and for our third episode I interviewed my co-host David Adamson about his efforts to make his neighborhood an inclusive community.  David is the founder of the Goose Creek Community Land Trust – a nonprofit organization whose mission is quote: “To ensure our land widely benefits generations of today and tomorrow, we will create, preserve and advocate for housing that is permanently attainable for a diversity of income levels.” 

David lives on North St. just one block south of North Boulder Park.  We started our conversation on the far west end of the street where the construction of a multi-million dollar single family home is currently underway.  This episode was filmed on site at three different locations on North Street.  We want to encourage our listeners to check out our YouTube video of this episode which has the same audio as the podcast but also includes video footage of the neighborhood. 

Hello Boulder and the wider world. This is the Sharing Boulder podcast. My name is Philip Ogren and for our second episode my co-host David Adamson and I interviewed city councilman Aaron Brockett – a resident of north Boulder’s Holiday co-housing neighborhood. Aaron was on the planning board for five years before being elected to city council in 2015. I first became aware of Aaron’s work on city council when he was endorsed by a grassroots organization called Boulder Progressives in 2019 for being a candidate that quote “understands the connections between housing, transportation, and climate action, and has the will to implement real change in this area.”

In an upcoming episode I interviewed David about ideas for adding gentle infill projects to the street he lives on including a pilot project he has been trying to realize for years. But he has had difficulty getting the green light from the city of Boulder. We interviewed Aaron on January 30th, 2021 a day after the city council rejected further consideration of the pilot infill project despite Aaron’s own attempts to breath life into the discussion.

Our conversation covered a range of topics including the co-housing project he lives in in North Boulder, the relationship between community and sustainability, affordable housing, 15-minute neighborhoods, car sharing, and much more. This episode refers to a number of people, organizations, projects, and books. Please visit our website at https://sharingboulder.us for show notes and links. We hope you enjoy our discussion with Aaron Brockett.

This episode can also be viewed on YouTube: Welcome to Sharing Boulder – YouTube

Welcome to our first introductory episode of the Sharing Boulder podcast in which we explore issues related to land use and housing in Boulder, CO.  My name is Philip Ogren and in this episode my co-host David Adamson and I have a conversation about our new podcast.  We make no promises that we will never again wander from subject to subject as we free associate and pontificate about whatever pops into our brilliant minds like the way we do in this episode.  But this will probably be the only episode where we deliberately try to cover as much ground as possible as we give you a whirlwind tour of what our podcast is all about.  We hope you find our conversation entertaining and thought provoking and we hope you will join us in our mission to make Boulder more inclusive.  Welcome to Sharing Boulder.