Regionalism evolves as a uniting force from Aspen to Parachute

Geographically, this interdependent community spreads with 15 arterial tributary valleys feeding into the main stems of the Roaring Fork and Colorado rivers. It spans from the Continental Divide on Independence Pass in Pitkin County, down the Roaring Fork Valley through Eagle County into western Garfield County, to the mouth of De Beque Canyon. Diverse landscapes include the high alpine to the upper Sonoran life zones, granitic 14,000-foot peaks to desert shales, and numerous ecosystems, from tundra to desert scrub.

The region contains an enormous watershed that feeds the Colorado River, one of the most important river systems in the Western United States, on which six downstream states and a region of northern Mexico depend for water diversions to slake an increasingly insatiable thirst.

This community is contiguous but divided, homogenous but diverse, connected yet fractured. This community is complex and often at odds with itself over its past, its present and especially its future. It contains microcommunities delineated by overlaps and separations, yet strongly influenced socioeconomically by Aspen and Snowmass.

Recognizing regionalism as a social and cultural value that provides strength and cohesion is gradually gaining adherents through a multiplicity of burgeoning social and professional relationships that are striving to transcend parochial differences.

Finding common ground

“This region is really one community connected by a very mobile workforce,” said David Myler, founder of the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition, a nonprofit that seeks solutions to affordable housing from Aspen to Parachute. “That workforce is mobile because of Highway 82 and I-70, but we are one community. Do we have differences? Of course: political differences, economic differences, all kinds of differences. But we’re basically one community connected by a workforce that drives up and down the valley every day.”

This community is made up of people we see in the grocery stores, at the gas stations, in the post office, on RFTA buses, highways and byways, ski runs, bike rides, wilderness trails, parks, concerts, hot springs pools and many shared public places. Here on our common ground, high in our mountain redoubt, we watch global events unfold while living across a diverse topography with disparate overlays of ethnicity, wealth, poverty, hard work, celebration, recreation, enjoyment and wonder.

Those advancing the notion of a regional community describe the need to unify this far-ranging space. They seek to establish a common thread of understanding in order to collaborate on a collective vision of community cohesion in pursuit of the humane values of dignity, respect, equal opportunity and well-being, all of which must be cultivated, nurtured and appreciated if this overarching community is to achieve a healthy, sustainable future.

“We’ve seen a shift since 2020 in community engagement,” said Evan Zislis, director of the Hurst Initiative at the Aspen Institute. “We’ve seen a willingness to reach out across party lines, across county lines, thinking and acting beyond the scope of jurisdictions in order to leverage resources, ideas and expertise. What I’ve learned is the power of collaboration when it is fueled by a commitment to each other.”

For the past five years, Zislis has formed cohorts of select community leaders, from Aspen to Parachute, who take part in discussion seminars designed to build civic relationships and community outreach.

“It’s easy to lose sight of who we are in this place,” said Zislis, “and it’s easy for us to lose visual sight of each other. We’re separated by topography, by rivers and mountains. There is some significant distance between us, so it’s easy for us to forget who we are until we just point out the obvious: that we share a workforce. All of these folks, in whatever industry they’re in — hospitality and tourism or outdoor recreation or construction — they all live and work in this region.”

Zislis and the Hurst Initiative cohorts affirm that regionalism must become a strength within a distended yet interdependent social network.

“Evan believes, as do I, that regional collaborative dialogue is the best way to find solutions for the challenges of the day,” Jeff Layman, town administrator of Silt, wrote in an endorsement on the program’s website. “To this end, he has worked to bring a diverse collection of folks together on multiple fronts to increase understanding and work cooperatively.”

“Part of this initiative,” said Zislis, “is getting people to remember that these are all stakeholders who are integral to the community — doctors, nurses, mental health professionals — these are folks who live throughout this continuum of geography from Aspen to Parachute. We could not survive without each other.”

A regional perspective, he said, is about improving the quality of life for the people who live and work here.

Live locally, care globally

Nurturing connectivity through regional relationships is important when considering population trends. The 2020 census showed slow growth around Pitkin County’s resort centers with increasing rates of unoccupied homes, happening in concert with what could be described as explosive population growth growth in the region’s last remaining bastions of affordability, in the Colorado River Valley between Silt and Battlement Mesa. Parachute and Battlement Mesa were among the Western Slope towns that saw the largest population increases in the last census, with Parachute up 28.1% and Battlement Mesa up 21.6%. 

This population growth is driven in large part by Latinos, who make up around 27% of the Aspen to Parachute population, with numbers concentrated downvalley. Garfield County’s Latino population increased 22% in the census.

In Pitkin County, the population rose only 1.2% between 2010 and 2020, according to the census. Meanwhile, the rate of unoccupied homes increased. In Aspen, the share of unoccupied homes rose from 40.7% to 42.9% of the housing stock, according to the census. This helps explain a vast number of nonresidents who move through the county on any given day. According to a 2020 analysis commissioned by Pitkin County examining 2019 data, peak population in the county, experienced around the Christmas and Fourth of July holidays, reached more than 53,000. Just under 18,000 were residents, with over 17,000 occupying overnight accommodations, 10,000 part-time residents and 8,200 commuting into the county to work.

The region’s growing downvalley workforce migration along with a shrinking stock of local-occupied housing in Aspen has contributed over the years to what many perceive as a diluting of the once-cohesive Aspen community. Demographic data supports the observation and concern shared by many, that a key driver shaping the community is more luxury, oftentimes vacant homes upvalley requiring increasing services provided by those living downvalley.

In the farthest western reaches, the echo of regionalism as defined by mutuality with Aspen may seem dim. Divergent community values maintain barriers even while socioeconomic linkages have become stronger.

“I don’t know that I would define Aspen to Parachute as being one community,” said Parachute Town Manager Travis Elliot, “but we’re certainly interconnected by a lot of the challenges we face and by the people who go up and down the valley each day on super-commutes. There are a lot of organizations that work together on a lot of projects and initiatives. I can’t even count the number of nonprofits that stretch down the valley and help us with community challenges.”

Basalt Mayor Bill Kane also acknowledges differences. “Basalt is different from Aspen, and Carbondale is different from both,” he said. “They each have unique qualities, and that’s good.” Having lived in both Aspen and Basalt, Kane appreciates cultural diversity and community independence. “It used to be that living downvalley meant relying on Aspen’s culture and entertainment,” said Kane. “Now, Basalt has its own culture, and so does Carbondale.”

Cultural context is subject to external forces, however, including the arrival in November of 80 South American migrants who began taking shelter under the bridge at Highway 133 and Highway 82, at the edge of Carbondale. This displaced group of Venezuelans seeking succor in the U.S. had made a harrowing journey to Colorado at the onset of winter. Suddenly, the woes of the world were delivered to our doorstep as a test of our regional community to care for an influx that may be more than any one municipality can manage.

Such emergent global perspectives force us to bear witness to the larger community of mankind in a world torn by upheavals where millions flee for their lives from a rising tide of climate change, war and civil unrest. Dramatic changes are sweeping across all nations and all peoples, altering the interconnected human fabric that spreads in an overlay across it all.

Accommodating, willingly or not, these externalities requires a strong, positive regional identity to avert despair and emotional fatigue. Regionalism could provide the necessary cohesion to live locally and care globally.

New context for connectivity

“When I look at this valley,” said Clark Andersen, founder and director of Community Builders, a nonprofit that provides vision to communities in crisis, “my dream would be that we can rethink who really is part of our community with a much more expansive look. We must look beyond what we have today and ask: What if we took a radical re-imagining of what this place would be like if we all worked together to create a valley or region that’s connected with neighborhoods, with real people living in them who feel like they’re connected to this place, and that we’re not just cogs in a machine feeding a set of jobs that are supporting a pretty small part of the ‘community’?”

Within that community, at times we bump up against one another begrudgingly, and at other times we encounter one another with pleasure and joy for what we, together, derive from the sense of being in an extraordinary place. As we fuel this high-octane economic engine, it’s hard not to feel like a cog, whether building infrastructure or conserving open space, wielding a nail gun or writing a newspaper column, driving a bus or performing surgery, controlling avalanches or administering first aid, teaching children or caring for seniors.

“A regional perspective is especially important for our rural resort community because of where we are located geographically and by our historical context,” said Allison Alexander, director of strategic partnerships and communication for the Aspen Community Foundation. “In the last few years, more of our workforce has been moved farther and farther away from what is considered the center of our economic region. It is important to think about how those community members and their families are cared for, wherever they are in our region. We are at a moment in time where thinking regionally is really critical.”

A high-functioning regional community can orchestrate the energy, vision, contention, love, care, disappointment, frustration, joy and sorrow of those who live, work and socialize in close proximity and in common purpose toward the pursuit of happiness, a founding promise of the American experience.

“We are growing out of the parochial identities that we had for decades when we were all more isolated,” said former Aspen Mayor John Bennett, who recalls when the city “was quite a distance mentally, socially and psychologically from the rest of the valley. There really wasn’t a lot of social communication between communities, and that has really changed because people are on the move much more and from farther distances. There is also a growing sense of regional identity that we, as a valley, are all in this together and not in isolated silos anymore.”

Mutual self-interest within this region seems to be nurturing a citizenry poised to carry a burden of labor and to make a commitment to creating and improving a cherished place to live, brimming with rewards, challenges and responsibilities, in equal measure.

This extended rural community, aligned along urban highway corridors, is our communal home, a place of unique cultural characteristics where we ideally discover spirit or soul, the intangible spark that many fear is in decline. Be it ever so humble or grand, messy or vital, home is what community is all about. And the stronger the sense of home, the stronger the people who live here.

This story was published in the December 23 edition oof Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

The next installment in this series celebrates holiday potluck dinners where sharing food with neighbors and newcomers contributes calories for nourishing community.