Ventura County residents sometimes take for granted the unusual geography and regional policies that protect us from the worst excesses of suburban sprawl. In fact, you often hear gripes in our communities about why we can't live in nirvana where the cost of living and traffic aren't like they were ten, twenty or even fifty years ago.But as a State, we have paid a huge price not so much for how much we've grown in recent decades as how we've grown. We've paved over farmland, sensitive habitat and valuable open space. We've created huge obligations to build and maintain infrastructure to serve a chaotic and auto-dependent landscape. We've watched the erosion of a sense of place and its replacement by a numbing sameness. And the traffic, pollution and economic cost of this kind of development has far outpaced the actual rise in population.
Amazingly, it has taken a global, not a local, threat, to spark action in Sacramento. Recognizing that we cannot meet the aggressive goals for reducing greenhouse gases required by the State's landmark "Climate Solutions Act," legislation is headed for the Governor's desk to finally address the State's abysmal record on controlling sprawl.
Called AB 375, it has generated national attention, including this story in today's New York Times:
The bill itself is the product of major reworking to gain acceptance by a wide and diverse coalition of environmentalists, builders and local government. The heart of it directs long overdue coordination between the State's existing transportation and housing planning requirements and the new mandates being developed to fight global warming. This will happen, not at the State level, but at the regional level. That's where it belongs, but most regions in California are ill-prepared to take on this new responsibility.
How effective the new legislation will be really depends on local communities beginning to think (and act) regionally. Will the new legislation foster that goal?
Ventura County has the opportunity to be an important test case. In the months ahead, we'll see how much attention (and traction) this opportunity receives.
A positive indication, however, was last year's unanimous resolution of the "Regional Housing Needs Allocation" process in our County. Faced with a non-negotiable share of the total regional need to make room for more housing for low and moderate income families, the ten cities and the county could have battled each other over what share each community would shoulder. That's what happened in the other five counties of our region. But Ventura County unanimously agreed on a formula that no one liked, but everyone could live with.
Building on that success, we can now aim higher. We can rethink our parochial approaches to regional transportation and the damaging competition over sales tax dollars. We can work together to protect the environment, while bringing new investment back to older communities with a "one for all, all for one" approach. While that may seem idealistic, it's our best chance to safeguard the quality of life and prosperity that we too often take for granted.
7 comments:
It is unfortunate that we must come to the brink of significant devastation before there is enough collective motivation to act. Even now, there is hesitation to look at the reality of our condition and admit that we need to do things very differently.
Many Venturans want to simply push the pause button - keep things as they are, not understanding that change is not an option. The choices have to do with how we will change, not 'if'.
Anti-sprawl measures are long overdue. Without vehicle mile traveled (VMT) reductions, we cannot achieve greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. It just simply will not happen as transportation accounts for 40% of the GHG inventory. So now we have to start re-writing the rules and planning guidelines that lead us to this sprawl. This will not be popular in some quarters. We need to scale back the requirements for road carrying capacity and parking allocations, require higher density (built up square feet per acre of land), and push infill over outward sprawl, etc. We will hear the howls as people see their car-oriented lifestyle start to be impacted. The current system is untenable anyway so we may as well get started moving to this direction.
And what about safe skateparks for the kids?
There are countless individual decisions that impact sprawl. For example, my church wanted to re-locate in an unused building and the application was rejected because there was inadequate parking in the building lot. Since the church only has a service on Sunday at 10 am when other offices were empty, the parking could easily be accomodated in the area but the planner who rejected the application insisted the parking be dedicated. These kinds of individual decisions drive us paving of vast areas of land unnecessarily.
All have made the point that sprawl arises from a variety of factors and sources -- and no single State law will curb it. But SB 375 -- if the Governor signs it -- will strongly prod relatively passive regional agencies to more active leadership. It's worked in the Sacramento region -- and could work here.
Deitch is an architect: one who goes broke unless there is something new to build. Anonymous #1 is spouting planner/environmentalistspeak. No reasonable thinking adult believes his VMT/GHG gibberish: there is not one iota of evidence to support this stuff. Anonymous #3 should have gone over the head of the planner they were dealing with - there is in fact a method to achieve their church's desired parking result. That planner should have been far more creative and helpful. Rookie's Sports Bar downtown has 300 seats and has NO PARKING REQUIREMENT. And finally, Rick Cole, whose only business in life has been to run a pennysaver newspaper, never mentions the COST OF THINGS - he never has to be accountable. I'm still wondering what the spreadsheet for the WAV looks like - where is it ? It's $57million dollars of somebody's money - who, Rick, is paying the subsidized rent for your "artists"?
This bill has apparently been signed. The bureaucracy of proposed regional planning is something only a bureaucrat could love - and of course all of the planners and architects who will get to micro-design to all of the new regional codes which will of course become mandated by unelected officials not at the local level.
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