And now a business alliance is playing a big role in five counties¹ efforts to protect the panoramic backdrop provided by Colorado¹s Front Range, which is threatened by runaway growth spurred by the Mile High region's fast growth. Said a board member of the business coalition: "We need to decide what we want to do with the mountain backdrop. I don¹t think we want to put towers on it." What's going on here? Are these gestures the latest round of too little, too-late NIMBY*ism as more American regions continue to fail at squaring economic growth with environmental sustainability?

A few years ago I would have agreed with that view. Too many state, federal and local leaders from Maine to California were flouting every tenet of sustainability in the service of growth at all costs. Today, though, I have a different hunch. What's happening in towns like Boise and Scottsdale is more than aberrational, better than just backlash, and more durable than the current economic downturn.

Very simply, the businesses and political leaders who run more and more communities in the United States are finally realizing that conservation sells--not just to the environmentalists, not just to local voters, but to the high-tech companies and footloose professionals who more and more determine which communities prosper in today¹s knowledge-based economy. To put it crassly, a "race to be green" has broken out in which region after region is trying to prove itself worthy to win the next Novartis or Microsoft research site, or to attract the highly educated professionals who more and more make local economies go. In short, the most exciting new trend in environmental protection in America is the quickening evaporation of the old opposition between economic development and ecological prudence.

Think how the rise of the 'new economy' has altered the way cities, regions and nations establish their economic advantage. In the past, conservation commitments like Boise's or Scottsdale's were the opposite of economic development. They were, instead, an economic sacrifice.

That's because the key to success for American regions has always been simple--cheap natural resources. Once a resource colony of England, later the world's most successful developing country, American even 30 years ago remained preoccupied with industrial production, which dictated until very recently that localities, industries and executives remained focused above all else on driving down the cost of critical industrial inputs such as water, energy, metal and transportation.

Cheap exploitation of federal land was deemed a prerogative of the old timber and ore economies. Vast, ecologically destructive hydroelectric projects were promoted to produce cheap electricity. The interstate highway system ensured fast distribution even as it enabled suburban sprawl. More recently, cheap private land for subdivisions mattered most.

And so the economic development game has centered always on making available plenty of low-cost land to local and national business interests. No wonder America's town fathers and federal land managers resisted land conservation. To them, every set aside of open space and every environmental rule seemed to reduce the local supply of cheap resources--and drive up the cost of doing business.

But that was then. With the rise of the knowledge-driven high tech economy, things have begun to look different. No longer do the leaders of the smartest city governments view the environment as merely a source of dirt for the homebuilders, or wood for the woodcutters. Rather, environmental quality has soared in importance all over the United States, not just as a preference of local residents but as a settled strategy of business leaders, mayors and governors and economic development professionals.

Why has this happened? Why are business leaders taking the lead in environmental preservation? It's happened because regions¹ economic success turns less and less on cheap natural resources and more and more on human resources--local supplies of smart people, as economic development experts as diverse as Paul Romer, Michael Porter, Richard Florida, Doug Henton, Thomas Power and Terry Nichols Clark have been explaining.

Companies flourish today only if they have lots of highly educated creative types to dream up the innovative processes, write the code and execute the business plans that prevail. Meanwhile, such people--who can live where they want--know what they want. These so-called "knowledge workers" are choosing to live in "cool" places with "thick" labor markets, great schools, walkable downtowns and a strong "green" tint. They want the status of living in a region with a rich sense of place and an active lifestyle. And, yes, they gravitate to places with superb natural spaces. They want forests nearby, protected lakes, mountain-bike trails or a place to sail on pure water.

Nor is this all subjectivity. Consider the importance of environmental quality and quality-of-life issues reflected in the findings of a telephone survey for Money Magazine's 1998 "Best Places to Live" report, cited by Richard Florida of Carnegie Mellon University in his important study, "Competing in the Age of Talent: Quality of Place and the New Economy." The Money survey was conducted by Roper/Starch Worldwide in 512 households across the United States. It asked people to rank 37 quality-of-life factors on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important, so it provided a snapshot of what most matters to Americans in choosing a place to live. Here's what it found:

Employers, moreover, know all this: Surveys and other studies of high-paying companies have found that environmental quality and natural amenities rank among the most important factors in their choice of locations. Florida, for example, reports research that documents the especially high importance high-technology concerns place on environmental quality as a location factor: