Small City Urbanism: Estes Park

A lot of my examples on this blog come from larger cities. This is natural, because density is one of the major components of successful urbanism, especially both walkability and transit, and even more diffuse large cities often end up with what we might call accidental pockets of density: put enough people in a city and some of it has to be dense. But the QCA itself is not particularly large or dense (148th biggest MSA in the USA!), so it's worth checking in on some smaller cities that have different things going on.In this case I want to look at Estes Park, Colorado. Now, Estes Park has some distinct things going for it: it's a heavy tourist town, right next to Rocky Mountain National Park and all the majestic wonder that comes with that.Nice backdrop, am I right?That in turn means that there are a few distinctive features of Estes Park's urban form and planning that may not be replicable elsewhere, but I believe that there are nevertheless lessons that we can take.1. Know…