Modesto Bee, The (CA)
CAN CALIFORNIA BREAK SPRAWLING HABIT?
Published September 4, 2007Section: LOCAL NEWS
Edition(s): ALL
Page: B7
By: DAN WALTERS, THE SACRAMENTO BEE
The issue that stalled approval of a state budget for so many weeks -- whether local governments and private firms can be sued for failing to take global warming into account in development plans -- is the most recent manifestation of a larger conflict over how the state should accommodate tens of millions of new residents over the next half century. While the conflict predates the recent angst over global warming by several decades, it has grown more intense with the state's much-heralded legislation aimed at reducing the state's emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 1990 levels. Simply put -- although specifics are anything but simple -- it's a conflict over California's long-standing pattern of low-density single-family development pushing outward from core urban areas.
Environmental activists have decried that model for decades, saying it gobbles up irreplaceable farmland and makes Californians too dependent on automobiles. They see the concern over global warming as a new weapon to promote denser urban development and mass transit. That philosophy, however, not only runs afoul of developers' preferences but also Californians' historic bias for single-family homes -- property they can call their own -- over the vertical urban housing common in the eastern United States and Europe. There is, too, a tinge of class and perhaps race in the issue.
Economically and politically dominant white Californians, including most politicians and high-density enviros, already live in single-family homes. The budget was eventually resolved without dealing with the issue, but the larger conflict continues in several arenas, including legislation that would link financing for transportation projects to a community's adoption of higher-density, transit-friendly policies.
Senate Bill 375 is aimed at pushing communities toward what is called a "preferred-growth scenario." It is similar in thrust to the "preferred-blueprint scenario" that has been adopted, at least in principle, by local governments in the Sacramento region and modeled on the controlled-growth, transit-heavy policies that have been in place in Portland, Ore., for a number of years. The connection is not surprising, given that the author of SB 375 is Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.
The conflict was framed when Steinberg won Senate approval of his bill earlier in the year, but only after Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, accused him, in a series of questions beginning with "who the hell are you," of wanting to dictate how Californians lead their lives. Given its history and cultural tendencies, would it, indeed, be possible to push California toward the high-density housing patterns that environmentalists crave, at least for others?
The Los Angeles Times recently conducted an in-depth review of whether the billions of dollars spent on mass transit and transit-centered housing had borne fruit and found that in the main, residents of the new housing were shunning transit and still using their cars. Sacramento's "blueprint," meanwhile, is more paper vision than day-to-day decision-making. But what about Portland? Doesn't it work there? Not according to the libertarian Cato Institute, which published a massive study concluding that the area has actually seen more sprawl and traffic as Portlanders sought single- family housing outside the growth-control boundaries. Before California embraces Portland-for- everyone, perhaps the Legislature should examine how well the concept has worked, rather than make policy on ideology and blind faith that changing law changes human nature.
Walters' e-mail address is dwalters@sacbee.com.
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