The Census Bureau classifies Fort Collins and Loveland as a single Metropolitan Statistical Area – but that's not how it feels on the ground.

When you're driving north from Loveland to Fort Collins, you pass through open space separating the two cities. To the east, you see broad swaths of agricultural land and prairie, and to the west, you see the hogbacks and foothills of the Rocky Mountains. As you approach Fort Collins, you see Horsetooth Rock rising above the city. Horsetooth is a landmark that's more humble than the Flatirons of Boulder but every bit as distinguishing of this place.

That's why for the past 30 years the Fort Collins city logo has included a depiction of Horsetooth as an integral part of the design. Whether you like the logo or not (I'm ambivalent about it), it connotes one place only: Fort Collins, Colorado.

But now, the city government has contracted with North Star Destination Strategies ("Community branding experts") to develop a new brand and marketing campaign for the city. As part of that, North Star has created a new city logo, which – if you believe the letters to the editor of the Coloradoan and the blog articles you can read online – the people of Fort Collins reject as being unrepresentative of the city.

Criticism of the logo often cites confusion over the "meaning" of the brown and blue swooshes. According to North Star, the brown swoosh represents the Fort Collins foothills, and the blue swoosh represents the Cache la Poudre River, which runs through the north part of town. Many people enjoy the river for recreation, and historically, the river has been important for the city's development. But, few residents would consider the river as a defining city landmark (especially when compared with Horsetooth and historic Old Town).

Graphically, North Star's logo falls flat. People don't get it, and can you blame them? Fort Collins sits on the western edge of the shortgrass steppe, which is a semi-arid biome. It doesn't rain much here – and perhaps North Star has heard about the scarcity of water and the "water wars" in the West? We're combatants in that – so, the color blue is the last color anyone thinks of, when they think of Fort Collins. North Star's brown and blue swooshes would probably work better for a city located near an ocean.

North Star's proposed tag-line is also problematic. "Where renewal is a way of life." No resident would ever say such a thing about the place where they live. It's an outsider's view. It's a sentiment that might capture something about living in Fort Collins, but it mostly represents the outsider's projection onto the city.

Furthermore, Fort Collins already has a tag-line, one that's so ingrained into the city's culture that people use it and don't worry about what it means: "Choice City." Why did the North Star experts in community branding reject Fort Collins' own expression of itself?

Fort Collins' identify – and the choices available here – revolve around the intimate tie between the built and natural environments. In a commentary published in Monday's Coloradoan, Glen Colton expressed a similar view this way: "Fort Collins recognizes that our natural environment, historic Old Town, cultural arts and Colorado State University are key to our unique identity and economic vitality." Colton's commentary is reproduced below (with highlighting and bolding mine).

Colton emphasizes that Fort Collins' identify depends on the city being a destination on the landscape and separated from neighboring towns and cities by agricultural land and prairie – by open space. Open space is crucial to maintaining Fort Collins' unique character – the character that draws people and businesses here. Yet, open space is currently under threat from unrestrained development, especially along Interstate 25. As Colton explains, the problem with unrestrained development isn't just the elimination of open space but the erosion of Fort Collins' separate identity from that of its neighbors.

Which brings us back to North Star's proposed new logo for Fort Collins. North Star has a history of working with Colorado cities. In fact, just last year, North Star created a new logo for Greeley, which is 30 miles to the southeast of Fort Collins. Disturbingly, North Star's logo for Greeley shares an awful lot of similarities with North Star's logo for Fort Collins:

• brown color
• blue color
• city name in blue
• two swooshes

The evidence is damning: The Fort Collins logo is derivative of Greeley's.

North Star betrays its ignorance of Fort Collins by creating a logo that blurs the city's identity with that of its neighbor – the very thing that's recognized as being most damaging to those attributes of Fort Collins that set the city apart.

Community Separators are Critical to our Cities
In our part of Northern Colorado, retaining scenic view sheds and physical open space separators between neighboring communities has long been an important regional goal.

People have recognized that it is important both economically and psychologically to maintain separate identities and keep a part of the western heritage that makes this area special.

Public support for separators in surveys exceeds 75 percent, and having open space and natural areas is one of the main reasons we can attract top companies and employees.

Unfortunately, the long-planned-for community separators for Fort Collins, Timnath and Windsor on both sides of Interstate 25 south of Harmony Road will be lost if current plans reach fruition.

To the east in Timnath, instead of agricultural lands and open views to the Poudre River, we would see an almost continuous strip development along I-25 in Timnath's growth area.

Further compounding the situation, both Windsor and Loveland have plans for continuous development all the way to the Big Thompson River, for a total of about nine miles of uninterrupted ugly development reminiscent of areas like north Denver.

In Fort Collins, scenic mountain views would be blocked and the natural feel of the area completely eliminated if a proposed large, high-density, high-rise project on the southwest corner of I-25 and Harmony is approved.

The primary gateway to our town would no longer symbolize the importance of the natural environment to our heritage, our economy and our future. Instead, we would have a development that would look more like the Denver Tech Center. This is a complete contradiction to our community's vision and planning, which helped us be named "the best place in the country to live."

Fort Collins recognizes that our natural environment, historic Old Town, cultural arts and Colorado State University are key to our unique identity and economic vitality. The city's comprehensive plan states, "Community separators will preserve the rural and natural landscape between our communities, maintaining separation between cities and towns."

The 2007 Timnath comprehensive plan talks about the importance of community separators but then violates its intent by designating high-intensity land use along I-25.

Three plans for community separators in Northern Colorado have been prepared in the past 10 years. The 1995 plan for the area between Fort Collins and Loveland has been successfully implemented because of cooperation between the communities. In 2003, a jointly developed plan preserving the rural character of the area between Fort Collins, Timnath and Windsor was completed. This plan has not been recognized as valid by Timnath's current town board.

None of this potential development has yet occurred. Now is the perfect time to show true comprehensive regional cooperation among the three communities in protecting our economic, environmental and aesthetic health.

Cooperation must involve good land-use planning, sales-tax revenue sharing, open lands and community separator preservation, and regional transportation.

We have a choice – to look like the worst parts of Denver sprawl or be someplace special. What will our legacy be?

Glen Colton is working toward making Fort Collins a sustainable community. He has 23 years of financial experience in high-tech companies.