Template for a Toolkit: Community Growth Options for Farmington and Rosemount

Proposals for higher housing density and compact neighborhoods often raise community concern. In light of the rising economic, social, and environmental costs of sprawling development, civic leaders and planners in rapidly growing communities on the Twin Cities metropolitan edge need the tools and resources to rethink traditional suburban approaches to development and to address citizen concerns about more compact and higher density development patterns. Working with the developing communities of Farmington and Rosemount, the authors—both faculty members in the Department of Geography—created alternative development scenarios for the two cities that demonstrated the economic and environmental costs of standard suburban single-family development, the link between this type of development and limited housing affordability, and the relationship between design and successful higher density developments that respect community character. In addition to this report, a summary of the project can be found in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue of the CURA Reporter.This project was supported by a grant from the Community Growth Options (U-CGO) program, a joint project of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, with funding from the McKnight Foundation