Imagine living in a neighborhood where you’re a 15-minute walk or bike ride from all your daily needs — work, shopping, school, etc. Bend’s Comprehensive Plan calls them “complete communities.”

This kind of development gives people attractive options for leaving their car at home, reducing household costs while making our city healthier, safer, and more livable.

Right now, the typical Deschutes County household can expect to pay about $2,000 more over the next year thanks to higher gas prices. We are already spending over a quarter of our household income on driving. And driving rates as the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions as well as a primary cause of death and serious injury for all age groups. This really hurts because most people feel they have no option but to drive for most trips.

But there’s good news on the horizon. The state’s climate friendly and equitable communities rules, coming as early as next month, will accelerate the growth of Bend’s “complete communities” and make it easier for more people to walk and bike when they want to.

So how will we get that done? Presently, master planning is one way to accomplish our goals. A master-planned community aims to share infrastructure costs, place amenities nearby, and provide housing options at a variety of price points. This helps create mixed-income neighborhoods that also tend to be more diverse with more equitable public services.

In Bend, we have several examples of master-planned communities. NorthWest Crossing was a master-planned community begun in the 1990s. Petrosa in northeast Bend is another master-planned community that began construction in 2021. The city of Bend recently completed planning for a community in southeast Bend. (When the city leads the planning, it is known as an area plan instead of a master plan.)

Done well, master-planned communities can provide a variety of housing options with things like retail, schools, and parks nearby — with a way to walk or bike to them if you choose to! For example, Pacific Crest Middle School, constructed in 2015 as part of the NorthWest Crossing master plan, connects to miles of off-street trails and has become famous for its students who ride bikes year-round.

Master planning may not be a panacea, but there are real risks to developing large projects without it. For example, High Desert Middle School in southeast Bend was completed in 1993 without an area or master plan. Today, almost three decades later, it remains surrounded by 45 mph roads, incomplete sidewalks, and no safe crossings, and it suffers massive traffic and sometimes even crashes at pick-up and drop-off times. Several years ago, the school installed a raised crosswalk in the parking lot after a driver struck a girl so hard it broke her hip.

Sticking to our plans to build these safer, more convenient “complete communities” allows us to spend less on transportation and makes our city more livable. But it also means sometimes we have to say no to projects that are incompatible with those plans.

I suspect this was on the minds of Bend city councilors when they were asked to consider changing city land use laws for the Deschutes Public Library’s costly central library and performing arts center off U.S. Highway 20 north of Bend. Personally, I’m grateful that council decided to protect the integrity of our development code and comprehensive plan. I hope the library board comes back with a better approach that supports, not undermines, our city’s plans and goals.

Bend still has a great opportunity to grow in a way that doesn’t sacrifice safety and the climate, while lowering the cost of living and further improving our great quality of life. Good alternatives to driving mean less time at the pump and healthier, more livable community for us all.

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.