Jennifer Gennari

What's at Risk: Stopping Sprawl by Mapping Land

2012-06-06T15:48:32-04:00

Traveling Route 4 west through Eastern Contra Costa is a lesson in abundance -- you pass U-pick cherry groves and citrus orchards and fields of seedlings. And then the two-lane rural road sprouts a sound wall. The freeway's lanes multiply and sandwich-slice houses crowd the fields of corn. The best agricultural land is at risk of becoming bedroom communities 50 miles away from any jobs.

Fortunately, the Bay Area is not L.A.

Plenty of people and groups have worked to limit where new malls and housing occurs. In Brentwood in Contra Costa County, a majority of the people didn't want to lose the surrounding orchards to more houses. With a little help, they realized farmland is vital for their economy and the region. Two years ago, they voted down an attempt to expand the urban limit line, a simple rule passed by residents that determines where development should or shouldn't happen. As in, let's build within our city limits and not where we grow the food we need to eat.

Land is protected from sprawl in two ways: first, (as most people know) conservation groups can preserve land by either buying it outright or buying the rights to develop it. Of the Bay Area's 4.5 million acres, 1.1 million are permanently preserved this way. This method takes a lot of money, however, which lately has been is short supply.

But twice that amount of Bay Area land -- 2.2 million acres -- is protected in a second way that just takes our willpower. Growth management measures, such as urban growth boundaries and hillside protection ordinances that limit where building happens, are rules passed by elected officials and voters. In the last six years, key growth management measures were adopted or renewed throughout Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Contra Costa counties, which saves land for future generations.

Unfortunately, those rules require vigilance so that they aren't broken. More than 322,000 acres are at risk of sprawl development in the next thirty years -- including more than 47,000 acres of Contra Costa County. The Tassajara Valley near San Ramon faces continual development pressure; currently, a developer is proposing a 187-unit subdivision called "New Farm," which is anything but.

Those lands at risk -- over twelve times the size of San Francisco -- deserve protection, and all of the region's open spaces need stewardship and investment to thrive. You can check out where the hot spots are on the Greenbelt Mapper, a new resource that shows where land is zoned for development, where growth management measures are in place, and the many benefits of open space.

Pressure to develop in the wrong places remains. Without investment and defense against development threats, the Bay Area's landscapes will be diminished. And no one wants to see sound walls threading through our corn fields as far as the eye can see.

Let's Talk: Democracy Depends on Civility

2012-02-01T13:06:45-05:00

Since the beginning days of our democracy, the traditional town hall meeting has been the place where people sat in uncomfortable chairs raising hands, waiting their turn to speak their mind. It's crowdsourcing face to face, problem-solving together. Or, as Thomas Jefferson said, "the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government."

These days, self-government is under assault. Unfortunately, a minority faction is overtaking these cornerstone-of-democracy forums around the nation and suppressing any discussion at all.

In the San Francisco Bay Area the problem is particularly acute. Planning meetings, usually dull affairs, have been swarmed by sign-wielding people. As a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission said in the Contra Costa Times, "Sometimes we're lucky to get five or six people to come to meetings. Now we're doing the best we can to accommodate the crowds."

Now, if everyone was engaging in healthy debate about the issues, we'd be delighted to have capacity attendance at planning meetings. Instead, the intent is disruption, not democracy. Participants have been shouting over facilitators, interrupting, and making it impossible to discuss what's at stake. And in the Bay Area, what's up for discussion is a regional plan for where the next generation of residents will live and work, and how we'll spend our transportation dollars -- and how in the heck we're going to stop heating up the planet.

A year into the process of gathering input from elected officials and residents and crunching job and population projections, regional leaders are hard at work at a draft plan for how the region should grow. Called Plan Bay Area, it's a blueprint for the next generation of growth, guiding where best to build homes, office spaces, and shops for current and future residents.

The main idea is to put new homes closer to jobs and transportation hubs so that fewer people will be forced to drive to work. It's a solution that makes sense and one that fits the needs of young professionals and seniors who want to live in a more urban setting.

This critique of participants' behavior isn't about being from one side of the political aisle or the other. The violence of a few in the Occupy Oakland movement is detrimental to democracy, too. Destruction and suppression are from the same playbook: destroying things doesn't advance an agenda. Shouting and interrupting doesn't allow debate.

"Everyone has a right to share his or her perspective," says Jeremy Madsen, Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director. "Let's have the dialogue about what we should spend transportation funding on, and where houses should be built. Just don't prevent other people from having their say." Madsen will be talking this weekend at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Los Angeles about how to be respectful of critics and allow everyone to participate.

At your next town hall meeting, bring your opinions. But if your intent is to shut down dialogue, you're not helping your community become a better place. Don't disrupt the process; have the conversation instead. It's democracy in action, folks.

Let California Show the World How

2011-12-14T15:22:41-05:00

Climate talks are moving more slowly than glaciers now, leading to a collective media yawn over last week's United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa. But at the end of a New York Times article, the California Air Resources Board earned a nod for doing "more to reduce carbon pollution in the United States than any other body."

The time for waiting for the "grand bargain" to be decided among the globe's leaders is over, said chairwoman Mary Nichols. Instead, "progress is going to come from the bottom up, not the top down."

She's right. Rather than wait, elected officials and local advocates have taken matters into their own hands. California took the first step by passing the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. In the San Francisco Bay Area, leaders are pitching creative ideas from funding carrots for cities that plan for clustering jobs and homes together to improved bike lanes.

And the newest innovator on the block is the City of Mountain View.

In a Bay Area first, Mountain View studied adding more homes rather than less, and it found that planning for more homes is the "environmentally superior alternative" to business as usual. The report was undertaken as part of the city's environmental review process for the update to its general plan, Mountain View's plan for growth over the next 20 years.

One reason Mountain View should add more homes is because it has lots of jobs but not enough housing, forcing people to commute long distances. The report concluded that adding more homes would create real village centers with a mix of homes and shops so that people wouldn't need to drive as much for daily needs.

But this isn't just about Mountain View. Smart growth advocates have been saying for a while that homes in the right places -- near jobs and transit services -- will mean less driving. Now that Mountain View has proved it, every city should make it routine to study the effect of even more housing than originally planned. The answer may surprise them and may go a long way to solving our climate crisis.

And maybe the local economic crisis, too. In fact, planning to not meet our housing need is a good way to kill jobs. Bay Area CEOs identified "high housing costs for employees" as the number one business challenge each year for the past seven years. By building more homes in desirable places to live, we reduce housing costs for workers. It's simple supply and demand.

There are intangible benefits from driving less--ones that most people desire: more time with family and friends, improved health by walking and biking more, reduced car maintenance costs, less stress from sitting in traffic. Imagine if we didn't plan our schedules around when the freeway home backs up.

Given a choice, more and more people (especially the next generation and seniors) want to live within a short walk, bike ride, or transportation stop or two from home, work, and cafés. And what a choice. Living locally turns out to be a benefit for the planet, too.

So let's hope the world's leaders come to an agreement soon about how to avert a climate disaster. But we don't have to wait for them--California can show them how it's done.

People Places: What If We Used Parking Spaces for Something Else?

2011-09-14T15:34:45-04:00

Earth, unfortunately for humans, is only about 29 percent land, and not all of that is inhabitable.
Given the scarcity of livable space, you'd think we'd be more careful how we use it. Why, then,
do we devote so much land to parking?

Recall a favorite destination -- perhaps Napa Square, Lake Merritt, or downtown Mountain View.
Wherever you live, you're probably envisioning a beautiful place, and not a strip mall parking lot
or a six-lane thoroughfare lined with parked cars. Asphalt isn't something to applaud. Instead of
endless pavement for cars, our limited land could be used for something else.

Imagine! Public art, benches and trees, café tables. Places people want to go.

Re-imagining the average 6-foot by 17-foot parking space has gone global. On Friday,
September 16, people everywhere will celebrate PARK(ing) Day by temporarily transforming
metered parking spots into instant parks. Founded in 2005 by Rebar, a San Francisco-based art
and design studio, the annual event challenges people to rethink the way streets are used.

We think cities should plan with people in mind.

In this country of abundance, we haven't perceived of land as a scarce resource, but maybe we
should. Other nations have clearly defined countrysides and cities -- sometimes enforced by
literal walls or moats. By drawing a mental circle around a city -- leaving greenbelts alone --
every square foot becomes land that is used wisely. That's when you have to question why we
prioritize land for parking.

Instead, let's use our limited urban land to create economically thriving neighborhoods
where people want to walk, bike, and gather in attractive shared space. What if we had
pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and trees instead of so many parking spots? Cities can transform
neighborhoods -- just look at Old Pasadena in Southern California, Columbia Heights in
Washington, D.C., or Redwood City in the Bay Area.

Most people think abundant parking brings business success. Yet, as many Shoupistas know,
the high cost of free parking is hurting cities. Controlling the price and amount of parking is the
solution, according to parking prophet and UCLA Professor Donald Shoup. When priced right
and managed, some parking can bring revenue to a city and attract more strolling customers to
shops. Old Pasadena invested meter revenue directly back to the streets, with tangible results--
now the downtown is thriving.

Don't misunderstand -- we don't think we should remove all parking. Cars are handy for moving large objects, small children, wheelchairs, and groceries. Yet, when parking is too plentiful, driving becomes the default choice. We become complacent about driving everywhere; we forget there are other ways to get around. And what's more, we forget there is land under that pavement, land that could be used differently.

A playground? A garden? A concert venue? [watch this video to imagine!] All these
transformations and more will be near you this Friday, September 16. Visit San Fernando Street
in San Jose, Fifth Street in Santa Rosa, Grand Avenue in Oakland, Locust Street in Walnut Creek
or find one near you.

Let's plan for people first. Everyone loves wide, tree-lined sidewalks and outdoor café tables.
Adding bike lanes and easily accessible transit stops will draw people to the neighborhood.

And let's face it, too much pavement smothers paradise.

The New Neighborhood Is in the City

2011-07-25T17:11:09-04:00

Say the word neighborhood and for some it evokes a colorized version of the 1950s -- a house with a lush lawn on a cul-de-sac, Dad throwing the ball to his Little Leaguer, Mom waxing kitchen floors. That seems to be what Nicholas Lemann prefers in his much-dissected anti-city essay in the New Yorker last month. Lemann bashes the new celebration of cities, and romanticizes suburban living with its "streets and sidewalks jammed with children playing."

We beg to differ. Lemann joins a long line of folks revering an idyllic past that never existed. The truth is the kids are inside, playing Wii and messaging on Facebook; the parents are too afraid to let them play outside unsupervised. What's more, the suburbs can be more isolating than the cities, with six-foot fences, gaping garage doors instead of porches, and commuting adults gone all day. And there's nothing to celebrate about strip malls and freeways.

Ironically, the neighborhood Lemann recalls so fondly is thriving -- in cities. Suburbs are so twentieth century -- this is the metropolitan century in which large urban areas are flourishing economically and socially. Living in a far-flung suburb may once have meant an easier lifestyle -- but in the Bay Area it can mean a two-hour deadening commute for the breadwinner, a taxi service sentence for the parent, and plummeting home values. What's hot is living near great restaurants, parks and museums, and sidewalk cafés.

Cities provide a place for people to network, to exchange ideas. Even if the next app isn't designed on a napkin at a café, Lemann is wrong to suggest that high-tech companies in Silicon Valley don't require "serendipitous pedestrian culture." Those car-centric office parks are passé, and Google knows it; right now, Mountain View is planning for more homes near downtown so Silicon Valley employees don't have to commute for hours to get to work.

The other thing so troubling about Lemann's nostalgia for the burbs is his middle class bias. We can agree that everyone wants a neighborhood -- a village of people to watch over pets and plants, to lend us milk when we've run out. But this neighborhood vision shouldn't cater only to the middle class and it certainly doesn't happen only in a subdivision. In fact, thriving diverse neighborhoods can be found from downtown Oakland to townhomes near the San Mateo Caltrain station to San Francisco's Mission District. The disabled, the elderly, the childless -- many of them prefer urban life where bus stops, parks, and farmers' markets are plentiful. And guess what -- they can still water each other's plants and borrow a cup of sugar.

It's time we planned for our changing demographics -- the Baby Boomers are headed into their golden years and many will lose their driving privileges. Edward Glaeser is right -- cities are greener. City life makes it easier for people to walk and bike more, reducing the risk for obesity and the stress around commuting.

That's another important reason to live closer to where we work: it's the sustainable thing to do. Sprawl is not here to stay, as Lemann suggests -- and if it is, we're in trouble. We need farms, not subdivisions, on the greenbelt to provide food for the region. Fortunately, here in the Bay Area, cities may be rewarded for planning sustainable futures. There's money in placing homes closer to transportation choices and jobs.

Which brings us to the final point: urban living is healthier for people and the planet. It's startling that Lemann makes only a glancing mention of the most vital reason to live locally: the less we drive, the more we reduce greenhouse gases.

That suburban existence we see through rose-colored glasses? If you haven't realized it yet, climate change may soon fog your view.