Like so many East Coast refugees who have wandered into Boulder, Fenno Hoffman fell in love with the place, with the people and with the mountain views. After going to graduate school at the University of Colorado and living in Italy, he came back to work as an architect and consultant and to raise his children here. But the sprawl that has grown up around Boulder has taken some of the sheen off the mountain views, Hoffman said.

He's running for the Boulder City Council because he wants the city to take responsibility for the impact its growth restrictions have had on the region. He wants the city to adopt policies -- including increased density -- that allow Boulder residents to spend less time in their cars and more people who work in Boulder to live here, too.

"Boulder is exporting the impact of its mountain views and easy motoring into our neighboring communities' backyards," he said.

Hoffman said his views on urban planning have evolved, influenced both by the growth of the surrounding region since he moved to Boulder in 1983 ("There was no Erie -- it was a tiny town with dirt roads") and by his trips to Europe and China ("Whenever I left the United States, I hardly ever drove anywhere").

He wants the city to take a hard look at its land-use planning to allow more people to live here and encourage businesses to stay. He called the city's Climate Action Plan "lipstick on a pig" that will not reduce the city's carbon footprint as long as thousands of people are forced to commute long distances every day.

"We need every neighborhood to be walkable, and we need every neighborhood to have a variety of housing types," he said. "I want to put a price on mountain views. What are they costing us in terms of sustainability and affordability?"

The first step is to come up with a vision, then "reverse-engineer" the policies that will produce the desired result, he said. After years of working 12- and 14-hour days, Hoffman has scaled back his work at his architecture firm and on local boards. He said he decided to run because he thinks he can fill a void on a council whose members sometimes spend too much time on the trees and miss the forest.

Mollie Fager, who worked with Hoffman when she was executive director of the Dairy Center for the Arts and he was a board member, said she is "delighted" he's running for the council. She said his ability to step back was evident when the board worked on strategic planning for the arts center.

"He was so good at defining what the vision is and then asking how we get there," she said. "It's so easy to dive into the details and the minutia before you know where you really want to go."  Whether Hoffman's vision for Boulder matches that of voters remains to be seen.

When proposals for higher-density projects come up, neighbors often object. PLAN-Boulder County, an environmental group that wants Boulder County to remain rural and scenic, declined to endorse Hoffman. Pat Shank, one of the group's co-chairs, said there was concern that Hoffman's views on planning were too pro-growth, though he stressed that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the board.

"He uses the term 'repair sprawl' quite a bit," Shank said. "To an extent, we agree with him that Boulder will continue to grow. But many, many people in Boulder have said, over and over again, they don't want Boulder to get much bigger. Adding density has its advantages, but Boulder already is the third-densest city in Colorado."

Despite his passion on the issue, Hoffman said he'll be pragmatic and listen to all sides. "It's not about bringing an agenda to the council," he said. "It's about daylighting the choices we have."