California On Verge of Re-Writing the Book on Land-Use--Links Growth Goals and Climate Issues

A bill sponsored by Sacramento's State Senator Darrell Steinberg would change the way California does land-use--fusing the issues of urban growth and global warming. The state would use roughly $12 billion per year in transportation funds as an incentive to steer communities toward land-use policies that contain sprawl.

But it is even more sweeping than that. As the California Progress Report cites broad negotiations between a variety of stakeholders.

"The triumph of this bill reflects months of intense negotiations between major environmental groups, the building industry, affordable housing advocates, and state and local governments. Senator Steinberg has been lauded for bringing these groups, often at war with each other in the past, together for this bill. SB 375 marks the first time major environmental organizations, local governments, major homebuilders and affordable housing advocates have agreed on a plan to account for California’s population growth and achieve AB 32 greenhouse gas emission reduction goals at the same time. In return for a quicker process to approve housing under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), new development will have to consider transportation in planning."

Senator Steinberg said:

"If California is to fully implement AB 32, we must address how our communities grow. SB 375 will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks and improve Californians’ quality of life through smart, coordinated regional planning. I urge the Governor to sign SB 375.”

The Governor now has to sign the bill, he has not taken a position on it, but has championed some of its goals.

According to one analysis the bill would work like this:

"Under the measure, the state Air Resources Board would establish targets for 17 regions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a broader campaign to curb global warming. It then would be up to local planning agencies, such as [SACOG] – to help cities and counties implement land-use policies that would meet those goals.

Regional agencies are expected to encourage more compact development, linking residents to transit, jobs and shopping."

The key to this bill though was Steinberg able to forge broad coalitions together.

"The legislation offers builders density concessions, relief from time-consuming and costly environmental reviews, stronger safeguards against litigation aimed at stopping projects, and assurances that proposals complying with general plans will not be arbitrarily derailed."

The California Progress Report quotes the heads of California League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council--both of whom sponsored the bill--along with the Chair of the California Building Industry Association with strong words of support.

One of the key provisions of the bill is taking RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) and adjusting it to become aligned with the land use plan in that region's Sustainable Communities Strategy which will account for greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The California Progress Report quotes Tom Adams, who is President of the CLVC. He put the bill into historical perspective. The key to this bill is that it puts housing into areas that will decrease drive times. It will create more compact and denser development rather than the continuation of sprawl.

“In my view, SB 375 is the most important land use bill in California since enactment of the Coast Act. It has taken 32 years since that bill was enacted to bring a coalition together who could make major land use change in California. Senator Steinberg has accomplished that in this bill and it is an amazing achievement on his part and we are tremendously grateful for his leadership.

“This is the equation for solving the problems that we face in terms of housing, getting shorter commute times for people. When you have shorter commutes, you reduce vehicle miles traveled. It’s also important to recognize that you reduce traffic congestion.

“What this bill will do is say that regional housing needs assessment and the strategies that will be adopted under the regional transportation planning process will be aligned. The housing distribution throughout the region will be put in locations that will help California achieve its strategic environmental goals of climate policy, air quality, and energy conservation.

“Finally, the bill amends the California Environmental Quality Act, the environmental quality act that is California’s premiere statute for protecting the environment….So that the procedures for environmental review of projects rewards projects that are consistent with strategies that achieve our climate goals, air quality and energy conservation and helps us promote the kinds of transit priority projects that are needed for the future of California.

“Each of these issue areas—land use, the regional housing needs allocation program, and the California Environmental Quality Act are regarded by many people as sacred cows. They certainly are, at a minimum, a minefield for anyone who want to amend them.

“I think to say that we would have just done land use would have been incredible. Or just to have done the housing program or just to have done CEQA. This bill is a trifecta of the impossible. Senator Steinberg has managed to pull together a bill that brings some of the most important and most difficult statutes in the state of California into alignment so that we can achieve housing that is needed, environmental quality, climate policy, air quality, reduced congestion, increased housing choices, and have a better transportation policy for California.”

What does this all mean?

It is difficult to assess what it means for communities like Davis. But I think overall it has several worthwhile goals.

First, we have to start looking toward the development of public and alternative transportation. One of the key hurdles to a good and unified public transportation system in California is our land-use policies that has continued to build out rather than up or create more density. The result is that public transportation is inefficient, it takes too long in many cases to take public transit from the suburbs into the cities. As that changes, we can begin to develop infrastructure that takes us out of our cars.

Second, by building more compactly, by placing precedence on locations that are closer to jobs, we begin to reduce drive times. Frankly, I think most of us would like to eliminate the need for commuting, and this is a good first step.

Third, some may raise eyebrows here, but I think it makes sense, in order to get the other side on board, they attempted to streamline the process of getting approval for projects through CEQA and the environmental review of projects. What this does is say that if projects are consistent with the goals of his project, approval is streamlined and hastened. The goals of the environmental review process are now aligned with achieving reduction of carbon emissions and energy conservations.

This is such a sweeping bill however, that the full consequences of its enactment may not be known for some time. Again, it is unclear how it will impact a place such as Davis. However, even in Davis, the move has been away from sprawl and towards higher density and more infill projects as a means not only to preserve farmland but also to reduce drive times.

One thing that is certainly true, we could not continue with our prior land-use polices of unmitigated sprawl development in the broader sense in California. Encroachment onto farmland not only puts farming at risk, but endangers the environment and increases our dependency on oil. This is a broad step that shows the political skill of Senator Steinberg.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Densification Does Not Mean Ignoring Neighbors

It was an interesting experience on Thursday going to the last portion of the Housing Element Steering Committee meeting and listening to Chair Keven Wolf railing about the need for densification and demanding that the HESC include in its report language that instructs the council to ignore the pleas of neighbors for less densification and preserving neighborhood character.

Then I went home and read Bob Dunning who was whipping the neighbors of the Horse Ranch development proposal who live on Caravaggio, at least I think that's what we was doing, because suddenly almost in midstream he turned the whip on the City Council for packing the development like sardines.

Do we ignore the pleas of neighbors as shear NIMBYISM? Do we drive for denser and denser because that means we will be more compact and less sprawled? Or is there some middle ground here?

I understand and even appreciate some of the logic behind Kevin Wolf's densification drive. The idea here is that we protect the periphery of Davis, preserve the farmlands, and yet we still need to grow, at least in Kevin Wolf's world (which I don't mean derisively, just to say it's his world view, as opposed to say my own. On the other hand, I am about to use Mr. Wolf as a convenient foil here.).

The problem with Mr. Wolf's vision is that it is flawed and contradictory. He was a leading proponent of Covell Village. Covell Village was perhaps the antithesis of this vision. Whether or not we need to grow, and whether or not we need densification, Covell Village encroaches onto farm land, builds a large number of big homes, which means less density, and oh yeah, creates traffic problems at the corner of Poleline and Covell that leads to more, not less, emissions. In short, if carbon neutral is what you are going for, Covell is not the way to go.

But back to the densification issue at this point. I understand both Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dunning's concerns about density. I also understand their concern that the neighbors out of NIMBYISM are often going to oppose all new development on their own borders, adjacent to their neighborhood. That they will attempt to get the smallest and least dense project they can get for a variety of reasons.

At the same time, why the hell should they not? It is not like most of these people are wealthy people developing lots haphazardly. Most people who live in Davis have put their life's savings into buying their home, living in a nice community with a good quality of life. Why should they not fight to protect them?

And maybe we do not grant them veto power over projects, but the idea that they get no say, as Kevin Wolf suggests, that we instruct the City Council to ignore the pleas of neighbors, is shear arrogance on our part. They have the right to weigh in and be heard. The city council has the duty to take their views seriously as they are just as much a part of this city as anyone.

If we are concerned about the character of this city, don't they have the right to be concerned about the character of their neighborhood?

I do not see this as a Manichean struggle for good and evil. I do not think this needs to be a zero-sum game where someone wins and someone loses.

As someone else pointed out on Thursday, look we can have a dense project in a high rise but as long as we surround it with open space it is not going to be a problem.

That gets me to the next point. We need to talk about densification. We need to listen to the neighbors. But at the end of the day, there is no reason why we cannot build highly dense developments that maintain the nature and character of the adjacent neighborhood. At the end of the day, the neighborhood should fit like a zig saw puzzle, interlocking into the existing landscape, while at the same time looking to maximize both density, open space, greenbelts, etc.

And those are not antithetical views. They are not in contradiction to each other. The problem is that we have allowed our planning to become complacent and lazy. And we also need to understand that we do not fix densification issues by jamming people together into the new developments. That doesn't fix the issues of sprawl. If we do this, we will be looking like little Manhattan.

Finally the biggest question we need to answer is not how dense we are to become, it is not how dense we should make it, but rather how much we ought to grow and how fast. Everyone talks about fair share growth. A city of Davis' size should not be forced to become a city of 100,000 or 120,000 people. That's not fair share of growth, that's allowing certain interests to turn this city into something it is not. There many other cities with the infrastructure and the drive to take on more growth than we do.

However, that point aside, at the end of the day we cannot simply ignore the cries of neighbors. They have bought into a promise of this city. They invested in the fact that we have safe streets. They invested in the fact that we have good schools. They invested in the character and the quality of life in Davis. In fact, they overpaid -most likely- for those features. So if we are about to pull the rug out from under them and change the landscape of their investment, do we not at least owe it to them to hear them out?

When I hear it said that we ought to direct the council to ignore complaints of neighbors it makes me very nervous, because as soon as we become arrogant enough to ignore one group of people, we begin to ignore all. And then, we cease to be a democracy.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Is Davis Ready for Taller and More Box-like Downtown Buildings?

While the county continues its assault on the borders of the city of Davis from the outside, Davis' own city council continues its assault on the core character of the city from the inside. Last month, the city approved the destruction of a number of older bungalows in the 3rd and B Street project in favor of three and four story condominiums.

Meanwhile, the council will be deciding on a 4 story, 65 foot building on 403 G Street that contains no setbacks and no stepbacks from the street. The ground floor will contain retail and restaurants and the upper floor offices and condominiums.

The specifics of this project include a giant box shaped building that will rise immediately off the street. It is designed to be a 21,910 four-story building. The project would either demolish or relocate the existing 2500 square-foot single-family residence.

However one feels about the project proposal itself, my own preference would be for a development that is more fitting with the character of downtown, that would include more setbacks and stepbacks from the sidewalk in addition to less of a box-like shape that will really destroy the character of downtown itself, there are actually much bigger consequences in the form of two zoning changes to all of downtown.

City staff has delayed any action taken on this item until a future date. The city council will hold an initial policy discussion on Tuesday and take any public comment. However, they will not vote on any proposal.

The following information is from the planning commission that met on June 27, 2007 to approve this project.

That staff report argues that the relative small size of this particular property, 6,030 square feet, creates a constraint on potential development of the site. Several nearby properties that have been redeveloped are two or three times larger than this property. Thus, in order to develop this site, the applicant is proposing a building that would exceed the allowable floor area ration (FAR) of 3.0. This projected would have a FAR of 3.6.

Instead of simply amending the FAR for this site, the city staff is looking much broader.

"In recognizing the potential development constraints on downtown lots that may prevent effective redevelopment consistent with City policies and objectives, the project also includes an amendment to the zoning ordinance for the C-C (Central Commerical) district."

The amendment to the zoning ordinance would allow for projects to reach a FAR of 4.0 "based on a project's ability to achieve additional downtown objectives."

The amendment would change the FAR which currently reads "the total floor area of a building shall not exceed three times the lot area" and will add:

"except that through Design Review approved by the Planning Commission the allowable floor area ration may be increased up to a maximum of four times the lot area on sites within the Core Expansion North Subarea..."

There would be three "bonuses" one for incorporating design and layout for ground floor retail and restaurant use, one for public plazas and spaces, provision of underground parking, or proximity to a parking structure, and one for saving trees.

This current space would not have a public plaza, so the maximum FAR would 3.75.

In addition to changing the FAR, it also changes the two-story Conditional Use permit (CUP) requirement. This would eliminate a CUP requirement for all structures over two stories. And it would enable the erection of buildings of up to five or six stories without a CUP.

The staff is arguing that the Design Review process,

"which is required for all new buildings or new additions provides an adequate and more appropriate mechanism for reviewing new projects and addressing any issues related to height or design."

So this proposal in essence does three things, first it building a huge box-like building at 403 G Street, second it enables future buildings to have an FAR of up to 4.0, and third, it will enable the building of much taller building without a CUP.

As with all of these changes, the key question is what do we want our downtown to look like. Drive to the corner of 5th and G, look at the new Chuck Roe Building that is being constructed there and decide whether that is the vision that you have for downtown. Perhaps it is and these kind of projects are fine.

Personally, I have seen some more innovative designs that can utilize more density and mixed uses of retail, office, and residential space in the Downtown Core Area. I think taller buildings that can incorporate plazas, open space, setbacks, and other devices will create a much better visual ambiance that fits with our existing Downtown Core Area. I have concerns about the vertical nature of this project that comes forth immediately from the sidewalk, that will act to close off and inhibit foot and bicycle traffic.

I simply do not believe that we are being creative enough in our usages with this project and am alarmed that the city is making changes that will seemingly make this sort of project more commonplace. Davis needs a discussion about what the future of the Downtown should look like. Densification is a good goal for saving land. But it should be done in a way that enhances rather than detracts from the visual and aesthetic nature of downtown and I simply believe based on the construction of the Roe Building, that this will not serve that sort of purpose.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting