Raymond S. Rodgers is a Canadian planning consultant who took a busman’s holiday at a half-dozen ski-oriented, year-round residential communities in the U.S. far west. Between climbing expeditions he observed their functioning and visited with local planners. As winner of a competition to plan the 600 acre Burke Mountain community near Vancouver and current planner for a 600 acre Mountain Village outside Abbotsford, B.C., and with a total of more than 6,000 acres of residential planning to his credit, Rodgers’ comments on these U.S. areas provides an opportunity for objective, knowledgable and critical examination.
In a sense, the use of ski areas in summer is usually a case of demand following supply. The scenery is usually just as handsome in the next valley, but the next valley over doesn’t have the accommodation or other people to look at. Apart from a few rounds of tennis, or some modest strolls around town, many visitors and even residents make little use of the outdoor terrain. The glamour of skiing, and real or imaginary apres ski, manages to maintain its drawing power all year, but without the exertion.
From a planner’s perspective, the interesting questions include: how responsive the layout is to the real summer function of these places (people watching), the needs of the permanent residents (particularly adequate housing) and the general problem of community form which determines the lifestyle in the fuller sense of the word, winter and summer.
Mountain communities are usually linear communities. They tend to be strung out along valley bottoms. The problems thus include having enough width at the focal point to make a well-rounded (forgive the pun) community center; or providing a linear commercial arrangement adjacent to an unclogged access route. The competition between land uses is fierce, and the much-beloved automobile creates even more problems in valleys and on slopes than it does normally.
Despite the ever-present example of the ski-lift, no such community in North America has made a serious attempt to mitigate its problems by use of a proven mode of transportation: the inclined elevator or tram. The inclined mode permits a community to use its third dimension, the slopes, without cut and fill damaged to the environment. It can thus permit concentration of serviced housing, commerce and ski recreation at a focal point. Furthermore, inclined development means stacked housing, which provides an opportunity for each residential unit to have its own patio and view.
The use of inclined mode around the world is well known to observant travellers, and North American examples do exist (e.g., a private development in Santa Monica, a public facility in Quebec City). An incline designed to carry loaded railcars upslope at the Ross Dam in Washington has been used for public access now for some thirty years. But residential and general community use in mountain communities has just not clicked as yet, despite construction and operating costs comparable to alternatives (roads and busses) at selected locations.
Incline Village, a most suitable location at Tahoe, doesn’t have an inclined mode. But Tahoe does have a traffic mess, a giant linear run around the Lake, and a string of facilities (of which Squaw Valley is one) which are appendages to the general desecration. In many ski communities the slopes belong to the federal or other jurisdictions. There are exceptions, however—Aspen’s north slope is one and seems geologically stable.
Aspen is trying to respond to linear form by providing modest bus service around town and to its developments down valley. Automobile-pedestrian separation is being encouraged at the core by a mall. It will require off-mall parking to work properly and plenty of on-mall public benches for the best people watching.
Based on an older community, Aspen does have some niches for the working class. The Aspen area (Pitkin County) land use code has a provision requiring new developments to include varying proportions of “moderate income” housing. In the case of “residential” developments the proportion is 50%. Aspen’s planning department, which is one of the most trendy in North America, and very good in environmental applications, is at the top of a gold-carpeted flight of stairs in city hall. Developers tread softly.
Jackson’s planner (alone, brand new and no secretary in evidence) is in a basement room. The county has not had a planner and it shows. Teton Village, which is a planned unit development around a ski lift, is built on the conjunction of alluvial fan and floodplain. The community, Jackson, is miles away, very brassy—but alive. It is not too late to address the problems, of which transportation is a doozer. Opportunities for properly landscaped slope development exist.
Mazama, Washington, is a “maybe” dream. Aspen corporation has been looking at Goat Creek for a major facility. Speculators are at work. Fifteen miles away is an existing cute summer tourist spot, Winthrop. No horrors have been perpetrated as yet. If Goat Creek happens, this is an ideal opportunity to do something right from scratch. A real plus is the existing village of Twisp, a short drive away, with its own economic base in logging and a start-up supply of worker housing.
McCall, in one sense, is a miniature Tahoe. Harrah’s have bought a large chunk of lakeside. Existing cottages ring the lake, so the pattern is already established: private closure like most of Tahoe. The lifts are 10 miles out of town. But more than any of the other locations in this survey, McCall has its own non-tourist economic base and a sense of community which will ride with the ski development. There is room for a controlled access bypass around a potentially interesting commercial centre. Too bad about the lake.
Sun Valley is very interesting from a planning perspective. SV development proper, as distinct from the adjoining village of Ketchum, is based on the Radburn concept: cars are parked at block periphery, and movement within each block is along a pedestrian spine. At Sun Valley, it manages to work. Even so, the more intense community life seems to focus on the conventional commercial blocks (only about four) of Ketchum, rather than SV’s shopping mall. There is a short stretch of undeveloped land, presumably a shield, between SV and Ketchum. This shield could better become a functional link between two parts of what is one community, like it or not. A rear-access parkade, with pedestrian shopping in front, would help alleviate the parking problems of both SV and Ketchum.
Older valley towns, like Hailey, provide some residential space for workers. Careless development, however, could produce the usual linear road rpoblem. SV has a mini-bus reaching into Ketchum but no further (ski lift excepted). There is some unwise creek development asking for remedials.
Last and least in this survey is Vail—the most sterile of the lot. The developers have deliberately created a linear form, with only a mini-bus as counterpoint. They have made a valiant attempt to provide parking and pedestrian spaces. There is no place for the working class and you will get blank stares if you ask residents where the gas attendants and ice-cream girls live.
Despite good enough architecture, it is this social blandness which makes for such a dead community centre. The condominium owners must like it that way, but the corporation is known to be concerned about the need for service housing.
In all the established, name resorts housing prices are astronomical—close to those of Vancouver BC, which are next to the moon. This reflects artificial restrictions on supply, created not so much by legitimate environmental restraints as by inadequate services (hardward and software) and land monopoly, withholding suitable slopes from sensitive, imaginative development.
