Where We’re Headed

The future to look forward to

Climate Action

Destination: Deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and readiness for the future while making life better in boulder.

Path to getting there:

  • Increasing our commitment to climate action through strategies for access, or reaching the things they need through safe streets, mobility options, and housing options that will make our community more resource-efficient and resilient

  • Undertaking new interventions that make structural improvements

  • Integrating climate action into the regular business of the the city

  • Continuing to innovate—and strengthening the way innovation happens

Here’s what’s in the works.

Areas where work is in progress: Climate action update, Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, long-term financial strategy, and various more substantive proceedings in the following sections.

Completed since 2024:

Safe Streets

Destination: Zero deaths and serious injuries, with a comfortable experience for being outside cars—which unlocks more options for mobility

Path to getting there:

Implement evidence-based treatments

Innovation

Mobility Options

  • Codify the mission of a people-centered, transit-rich, car-optional, safe Boulder in our city code, public plans, and processes. Use the city’s full suite of resources to allocate rights, privileges, investments, and space towards these ends and ensure that budgeting, the responsibilities of departments and staff, interdepartmental coordination, and outwards advocacy is aligned towards these ends.

  • Further develop and widen the use of programs that manage travel demand through economic, behavioral, and administrative carrots and sticks. At the same time, improve our use of behavioral science in these programs to make it more natural and automatic for people to choose options that lead to cumulatively fewer vehicle miles.

  • Reform land use to reduce distances between endpoints by letting people live near where they want to go and creating more flexible and integrated uses rather than housing-only vs. retail-only. As part of this, make our streets systematically safe so that people walking or otherwise outside vehicles can have safe passage, including for kids, seniors, and people with mobility challenges outside vehicles.

  • Evolve our car-centric transportation system into an ecosystem of multiple interoperable modes. This means a plush network for bicycles and micro-mobility, which includes a more comprehensive grid of protected bikeways, secure parking and facilities to freshen up and stow things at destinations, and e-bikes accessible to all. It also means a high-frequency, comfortable system of public transit both within Boulder and to/from outlying locations.

Housing Options

Destination:

Path to getting there:

  • Reform zoning to make it easier to encourage infill development and build more middle housing options. Allow more forms of development by-right, especially middle housing, and reduce minimum lot sizes, switch long lists of requirements to lists of specific disallowances, and set out corridor plans for more people-centered, transit-oriented spaces on busy roads. Encourage granny flats and accessory dwelling units.

  • Cut parking subsidies. Reduce and eliminate parking mandates which increase the cost of construction and reduce the amount of housing that can be built.

  • Get the most out of strategic development of large areas. As we consider the future of the airport, the Area III planning reserve, and CU South, be visionary with the possibilities for land use and make sure these large parcels follow a carefully-considered development plan

  • Reduce administrative burdens. Simplify planning and permitting by lowering requirements involved in the entitlements process, ensure requirements for development are clear, reasonable, and well-enforced, and pursue opportunities to remove bottlenecks identified by staff.

Completed since 2024:

Inclusion

Destination:

Path to getting there:

Completed since 2024:

Affordability

Destination:

Path to getting there:

Completed since 2024:

  • Minimum wage increase