Whatever a place is officially called—Eek, Alaska or Little Heaven, Delaware; Hopeulikit, Georgia or Goobertown, Arizona—it matters most to the people who simply call it home. And what matters most to those people are the alternately galvanizing and distressing changes that inevitably turn up on every community’s doorstep. Blaine County, Idaho is home to the Sun Valley ski resort, more than 20,000 residents, and 2,656 square miles of stunningly beautiful canyons and mountains. Scattered among them are second homes worthy of a centerfold in Western Living, productive ranch and agricultural lands, and recreation opportunities galore. It is tempting to assume that this place, with so many amenities and so much wealth, would be immune to the land use planning challenges that face inner-city neighborhoods, sprawling suburbs, and fading rural communities. Blaine County is hardly immune, though, and now faces the same issues as most other areas, from affordable housing and transportation to growth management and resource conservation.

With growth rates nearly double the state average and local workers forced to move into affordable communities down the valley, Blaine County citizens (both newly-arrived and deep-rooted, seasonal and year-round) have begun to see development spreading out into the canyons and daily traffic congestion reminiscent of rush hour in large cities. Ironically, Blaine County’s most valuable assets (natural resources, quality of life, and recreational opportunities) continue to draw people who want to live and play in this storied landscape, but their arrival threatens the very character that attracted them in the first place. Residents and local officials realized that a concerted effort to guide growth would be necessary to protect the region, and enacted an emergency moratorium on new subdivisions in 2005, buying time to address the problem. County commissioners hired Clarion Associates to conduct a county-wide planning initiative, known as Blaine County 2025, which involved elected officials and planning staff, Citizens for Responsible Growth, the Orton Family Foundation, and community members.

Visioning is a common element in planning processes, but the Blaine County public was already weary of the typical meetings and distrustful of government. Rather than asking the public to come to them, project partners met citizens on their own turf with an innovative “Road Show.” A presentation of alternative growth scenarios using CommunityViz appeared in grocery stores, hospitals, daycare centers, and online; people were given a chance to complete surveys and provide feedback after seeing the presentation. Blaine County didn’t abandon public meetings entirely, but made them more interactive and appealing with the inclusion of keypad polling. Perhaps most importantly, Blaine County and the local media positioned the process as a campaign to define the future of the County rather than just another planning exercise. Clarion Associates distilled a preferred growth scenario from a mass of data and feedback, and by January 2006 presented a vision that reflected the public’s desires to balance costs, concentrate development patterns, and protect the area's natural and cultural character.

Recommended changes to zoning patterns followed from the comprehensive vision, but soon spurred disagreement and even animosity. Residents may have been agreed on values, but citizens divided into stereotypical interest groups when faced with specific policy tradeoffs, which threatened the whole process. Through some combination of luck, diligence, and skillful mediation, however, officials pieced together a set of new ordinances and policies that most citizens could live with, even if they were not enthusiastic about the plan. Community values, and perhaps more importantly the tradeoffs between them, determined the nature of the final codes, many of which were officially adopted by public referendum in November 2006.

While Blaine County failed to construct an undisputed policy, it did manage to start important conversations, encourage collaboration, and identify critical (if small) areas of common ground. Many view complete agreement in a community as a panacea for planning, but perhaps such consensus is only possible in communities that fail to think deeply, engage in place, or celebrate diversity. If that is the case, then the type of lingering disagreement and uncertainty seen in Blaine County may not be a quandary, but an indication of community vitality and attachment to the places called home.