Small City Urbanism: Estes Park

A lot of my examples on this blog come from larger cities. This is natural, because density is one of the major components of successful urbanism, especially both walkability and transit, and even more diffuse large cities often end up with what we might call accidental pockets of density: put enough people in a city and some of it has to be dense. But the QCA itself is not particularly large or dense (148th biggest MSA in the USA!), so it's worth checking in on some smaller cities that have different things going on.

In this case I want to look at Estes Park, Colorado. Now, Estes Park has some distinct things going for it: it's a heavy tourist town, right next to Rocky Mountain National Park and all the majestic wonder that comes with that.

Nice backdrop, am I right?

That in turn means that there are a few distinctive features of Estes Park's urban form and planning that may not be replicable elsewhere, but I believe that there are nevertheless lessons that we can take.

1. Know Thyself

Estes Park has a tourist economy, and that means both a strong income base (hotel taxes, high property values that lead to tax income) and a highly seasonal, highly predictable stream of where people are and where they want to go. Not every city has that; most don't, in fact.

But I've been in places that take those advantages (and they are both advantages in the senses I'm talking about today) and don't do as much with them as Estes Park does.

Estes Park does a really good job of signposting (which I've recently mentioned can be a really helpful element in a good system). Because they know where you want to be, and it's a fairly small area, they could take one of two approaches: trust that because it's small and everyone has a smartphone, they can find anything anyway, or invest in making it really easy to navigate because it's small and predictable.

Taking option 2 is great urbanism, in my opinion. 

This is the equivalent of a single metro station-level map, but it covers most of downtown Estes Park (really, all): but why not do that? Why not make it so that anyone who is anywhere in town can easily find their way around? 

Knowing the town and where people will go isn't a failing or a weakness; it doesn't make your town better if there are secrets about how to get around it. Instead, allowing people to actually navigate, visitors or not, is beneficial to everyone, from shopkeepers to tourists to even locals.

2. Build Attractive Spaces

Yes, there's money floating around Estes Park. But they use it for public amenities, in a way that I really appreciate.

There are a lot of small, pleasant amenities in the city center, focused on the lake and the rivers flowing into it, like this bridge and the two spaces on either side of it.

And even the bear-proof trash cans (another public amenity, but a very necessary one in mountain-area Colorado) can get some personality, though I doubt this one was provided by official sources.

I have other pictures, but they have kids in them so I'm omitting them here. Just know that downtown Estes Park leans into being a place people would actually want to spend time in addition to spending money, rather than forcing you into paid spaces as the only option, and that's a really great idea.

3. Target Transportation

Estes Park provides free shuttles in and around the town.

Now, the question of free transit is hotly debated. But my point is less that this is free, than that it exists at all, and it's treated as a basic amenity to reduce crowds, allow parking of private cars to be in less valuable areas, and keep people moving around the town. Free helps because it reduces the barriers to use, and because oddly tourists who are already spending hundreds if not thousands to be there can be highly cost-conscious around the margins. But the point is frequent and predictable transit.

15-20 minute headways in a town the size of Milan, IL. On multiple routes.

Yes, that's the tourist demand speaking. I'm not downplaying that. But I'm admiring that they use the tourist demand to generate this. Making transportation a key allows that downtown to be walkable and pleasant, instead of a highway during tourist season.

What could the QCA learn here? Well, we don't have the same tourist demand. But we do have the issue of some of our predictable corridors getting treated like highways around major events like the farmers' market and baseball games at Modern Woodman. Perhaps we could concentrate transit around those in a helpful way, increase signage and visibility of the fact that there are other parts of downtown Davenport (and across the way, Rock Island) that visitors could also patronize easily, and keep improving those spaces (the latter is underway)? 

Estes Park is a unique case. But it is also tiny and yet urbanist in many ways that other small areas could do more to emulate.