Earlier this summer, while driving over the I-90 pass on my way to Idaho (another soccer tournament, natch), I was reminded again of our region’s natural beauty.

As I drove past North Bend, through the foothills and up into the Cascades, I enjoyed the scenery as lush wet-side conifer forests gave way to mountain slopes and then dry pine forests on the eastern side.

Naturally, the scene of this green forested beauty inspired me to think of urban Puget Sound and growth management. Hey, you get your inspiration where you can. I’ll get mine.

My inspiration in this case is due to the trade-offs inherent in the Growth Management Act — that 1990 Washington State legislation designed to save us from ending up with California-like sprawl consuming our rural farms and forests. If the theory underpinning the law works, those green acres out beyond Issaquah will remain forested, while urban cities like Federal Way grow more houses and condos. Farms in the Skagit and Nisqually valleys will remain agricultural while more high-rise residential units rise in Seattle and Bellevue.

Driving through the Cascade Foothills, it was easy to see the importance of the Growth Management Act. Those green conifer forests on the edge of Pugetopolis define an essential part of the Northwest’s character. I’d wager that a fair number of Puget Sound residents probably agree.

The problem for the GMA, however, is when it gets to the part about Puget Sound cities accepting more people. Most people are pretty happy with their neighborhoods as they are. And even if they’re not, they’re usually more scared of what added density will do — and resist change.

Puget Sounders resist density as reflexively and predictably as Tim Eyman introduces initiatives. Earlier this year, it was Federal Wayers up in arms about a city study to assess greater densities near Illahee Middle School. Just about every Puget Sound suburb has had at least one dust-up over density.

Even in Seattle, our state’s most urban and liberal environment, density is causing all sorts of consternation. Residents of the South Lake Union and Southeast Seattle neighborhoods split off from the established neighborhood councils in frustration over the city’s plans for denser development. Seattle’s plans to develop Fort Lawton have raised opposition over the amount of houses (and some might say, the type). It’s not just suburbanites who are circling the wagons around the single family house neighborhoods.

Not that I necessarily disagree with the NIMBY-ists. As much as I love the forests and rural areas of Puget Sound, I’m not sure I’d be doing backflips over a proposal to double density in my own neighborhood.

That’s the problem with increased density: It seems like a good idea, as long as it’s in someone else’s neighborhood.

This conflict between rural land preservation and increased density couldn’t be more serious. The region’s population has doubled in my lifetime, from 2 million to 4 million, and we’re on our way to 5 million. If we can’t find ways to steer that growth into the urban areas, it will inevitably spill into the forest and farmlands. Somehow, the idea of L.A.-like development from Vancouver, Wash., to Vancouver, B.C., doesn’t thrill me.

It’s not enough to draw a line around the urban cities, tell urban neighborhoods that density is all for the greater good and walk away. The answer is figuring out what people want and giving it to them.

And no, I don’t mean giving in to our purely NIMBY instincts. Everyone has visions for what they value in their neighborhood, what they’d like to change and what they’d like to preserve. Advocates of smart growth need to learn what those values are and figure out ways that density can serve neighborhood needs.

Can it be done? I think so. And in a future column I’ll introduce a group working on the problem.

Chris Carrel is a lifelong Federal Way resident and executive director of the Friends of the Hylebos, a nonprofit conservation organization. Contact: chinook@hylebos.org