Yesterday, Aspen City Mayor Steve Skadron spoke to Queenstown Chamber of Commerce members during a business lunch and gave insights as to how Aspen had handled some of the pressures Queenstown is facing.
The Aspen delegation has spent a week in the Wakatipu talking to business and community leaders about some of the similar pressures they face regarding housing affordability and workforce housing and transport.
Mr Skadron encouraged Queenstown residents to ``protect'' what was a ``gem'' of a town.
``You see the stress points and the way your community is suffering under the weight of your own success.
``Zone it like you mean it.''
Mr Skadron said Aspen City had a ``really complex land use code'' to support a ``healthy, year-round community and a vibrant visitor-based economy''.
Developers faced a ``mitigation rate'' to allay pressures development placed on a community, which included having to house 65% of the employees a development generated.
The workforce housing programme was a ``miracle'', because the workforce lived in the town, but it was not without issues.
The programme was designed in the 1970s as ``transition housing'', aiming for people to move into the free market within a year or two.
``What wasn't envisaged was that our free-market values would become the most expensive in the world and no regular person can go from an affordable housing unit ... into the free market because ... the price of a single-family home in Aspen is $[US]6.4million [$NZ9.2million].''
Next year, the city would begin a world-leading three-month transport ``experiment'', aiming to reduce congestion and remove 300 vehicles from the town centre using a variety of measures, including revitalising the urban centre with pedestrian zones and public spaces.
For the first week everyone would ``hate it, and I will be responsible for single-handedly ruining Aspen forever''.
``And then they're going to say `This has worked'.''
