Change is coming to Ridgefield. The city of about 7,000 people in north Clark County is planning for growth that will alter the size, culture, and zeitgeist of the area in the coming decades, with community development director Jeff Niten declaring, “By 2035, we’re expecting 25,494 people. So, that’s basically a tripling of the population.”
While such a prospect might be lamented by longtime residents who have affection for small-town life, the operative word here is planning. As in Ridgefield is planning for growth, rather than simply allowing it to occur by happenstance. “We want to make Ridgefield unique,” Niten recently told The Columbian. “We don’t want to make it feel like you could be dropped into any town in the USA and you could be anywhere. We want you to know you’re in Ridgefield.”
To get to that place, Ridgefield is facing a conundrum tackled by hundreds of small cities across the country in recent decades. As the “Small Town Planning Handbook,” published by the American Planning Association most recently in 2013, suggests: “Planning for change — for desirable change — must feature development that will meet local needs. At the same time, planning should discourage development that will reduce the community’s financial strength, physical appearance, or environmental quality. Simply put, quality of life is a town’s major asset, and the primary goal of planning should be to maintain and enhance a town’s sense of place: What makes it special and why people choose to live there.”
In other words, when growth is inevitable, cities must make that growth work for them.
For Ridgefield, the definition of desirable change is to avoid becoming a bedroom community to Vancouver or even Portland. Many new residents undoubtedly will be employed in those larger cities, but they still will desire to have shopping, dining, and recreational opportunities nearby. Ridgefield’s planning commission will consider adopting “density bonuses,” which would encourage mixed-use development, at a meeting today.
Meanwhile, the long-range vision also eschews box stores with huge parking lots, the kind that are a cornerstone of suburban sprawl. “That doesn’t fit out here,” Niten said. “We wanted to have design standards that ensure that’s not the type of development we’re going to get.”
Properly preparing for growth is one of the most important functions facing small-town governments. While some residents would prefer to keep their small town small, growth in Ridgefield is inevitable primarily because of two facts: It lies in reasonably close proximity to a major metropolitan center that is expanding; and a huge casino west of nearby La Center is close to completion. Growth in Ridgefield is inevitable; growth that destroys the culture of the city is not.
With that in mind, the authors of the “Small Town Planning Handbook” identify two primary mistakes made by small towns: They do not do a thorough job of planning, and they try to apply urban planning practices that might not be appropriate for a small city. Ridgefield officials are wisely attempting to avoid those pitfalls. As planning expert Bill Baker wrote in “How to Avoid Being Anytown, USA,” one of the keys is “a clear vision that crystallizes the city’s competitive advantage and distinctive strengths.”
Enhancing those strengths will be essential to the future of Ridgefield as it becomes a petri dish for how cities handle rapid growth. Change is coming to Ridgefield; that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
