It’s September, which means local students are returning to school, boats are being removed from area lakes, and college football is underway. Sunset is moving earlier, and with it, nighttime air will soon be brisk enough to require a jacket. And like clockwork, hordes of apple fanatics and corn maze enthusiasts will soon descend on Green Bluff.

With the traffic that can snarl the area’s roads on popular weekends, it can be easy to forget that Green Bluff is a valuable, working rural farmland with a long history. First a gathering place noted for its thick green grass and evergreen trees, local Native Americans hunted game in the area at least 200 years ago. European settlement brought significant change and development. As the area was colonized, the tribe lost its ancestral land, trees and stumps were removed, and homesteads and strawberry farms were established. The first grower’s association formed in 1903. And while the area’s production has changed many times over the years, it now hosts almost 40 growers of various crops, and its popularity derives both from its preservation and proximity. 

While other small farming communities immediately surrounding Spokane have long since been overtaken by sprawl and suburban housing developments, Green Bluff provides a strong example of the possibilities when we keep our urban places urban and our rural places rural. Instead of tract housing, suburban strip malls, and woefully inadequate built-for-farms-not-homes transportation systems, we can instead have sustainable agriculture, family owned farms, and local meats, vegetables, and produce.

Spokane has historically been a laggard in recognizing this opportunity. Areas like Moran Prairie, Five Mile, and North Indian Trail—which once provided food for a growing city population and were never designed for large-scale housing development—have become large suburbs with inherent traffic problems and no real economic activity other than retail. Washington’s Growth Management Act (GMA) is meant to halt the relentless drive of suburbanization, particularly in cities and regions with plenty of developable land. But despite massive redevelopment possibilities in the core of Spokane, Spokane Valley, and Liberty Lake, our county retains one of the largest urban growth areas in the state, hampering efforts to slow sprawl.

So, what could we do to fix this problem and keep our rural areas rural?

Locally, we could prioritize infrastructure development—like roads, bridges, and transit improvements—in the center city, providing incentive for more development to take place there. The City could develop stricter guidelines on utility extensions to rural and suburban areas. The County could update its Comprehensive Plan to preserve farmland and disallow future sprawling subdivisions. It could reduce our massive Urban Growth Area. The state legislature could update the GMA to strip counties of expansion authority in certain cases or increase property taxes in rural or suburban areas, which cost more to service.

Given the climate, livability, and resiliency benefits, I shudder to think of losing more local farmland. Let’s use every tool available to preserve what’s left for future generations. 

Anthony Gill is an economic development professional and founder of Spokane Rising, an urbanist blog focused on ways to make our city a better place to live.