A story of place: Fort Collins, Colorado

Abstract

Fort Collins anticipates 100,000 new community members in the next 15 years. For better or worse, people have discovered that living in Fort Collins and on the Colorado Front Range has a lot to offer. The city has enjoyed a slew of top ten rankings over the years - most recently as the fourth happiest city in America by National Geographic. However, there are growing concerns about losing what makes this place special. While there is much to enjoy about a robust economy and real estate market, there are plenty of concerns, as well: high-end national stores pushing out opportunities for startups and innovative small businesses, rising housing prices and cost of living, headache-inducing traffic, an increasingly affluent and homogenized demographic, loss of farm land and open space, depletion of natural resources and the list goes on. These concerns ring true for many Front Range towns and cities, and raise important questions: Who do we become in the face of change? How do we protect that which is special? How do we respond to the forces of population growth and economic prosperity that are upon us? Understanding what makes this place unique through its patterns might provide some direction for answering these questions.