"Hot Topic" Luncheon Roundtables
- What Do You Think Sprawl Is?
- No new resolutions achieved!
- Where and Why is Sprawl a Problem in California?
- Marin: no sprawl problem but problems with traffic and affordable housing.
- San Diego: sprawl problem in county, not in city; traffic and housing affordability pose problems.
- Riverside County: lack of community core.
- Orange County: no sprawl problem; traffic problem due to Riverside residents.
- LA: no sprawl, but dispersed trip destinations.
- Contra Costa: growth as destiny.
- Sonoma: bad planning in rural residential areas.
- Sprawl Hits the Wall: Responses to the Report and the Challenge of Engagement
- Educate community to provide political power
- Challenge: Leaders might have their own agenda
- There are three very different perspectives:
- Convene multidisciplinary approach
- Regional
- Social service/public safety
- Ensure success by identifying "real" leaders
- How do you "shave the Wealth"?
- Public Engagement and Growth: Visioning the Future with the Public
- Engagement is about:
- People - involving them
- Process - let voices be heard
- Turf - establish issues of interest and create comfort zones to foster dialogue
- Public engagement can:
- Be a vehicle for overcoming the traditional disconnect between the public and its government
- Lead to awareness of the interdependence of communities across boundaries
- Remind the everyday person that change is inevitable and can help to make it a conscious process
- Toward a Green Metropolis: Utopian Vision or Necessary Reality?
- Current open space criteria are not suitable for the existing urban fabric.
- Consider green building coordinated with green infrastructure.
- Comprehensively plan for parks, open space, and green infrastructure.
- Develop an expanded, perhaps locally varied definition of green space/open space.
- Rework local site plans to make more green.
- Need to involve communities more in public facilities planning.
- Consider economic values of green space (trees reduce stormwater pollution, etc.).
- Incorporate multi-pronged approach to address local and regional green space desires.
- Redevelop (sub)urban grayfields to provide more open space.
- Smart Growth and Sprawl
- Government is an important element of planning and development
- Equity remains a shadowy part of smart growth, particularly regarding implementation: How to articulate and pursue growth and planning that increases opportunities to low income households?
- Engagement with stakeholders is a major element of "smart growth": it provides a mechanism for negotiating planning and plans in a more transparent setting - but it should be an early part of the process.
- Good Planning should be better marketed with regard to its personal benefits
- Transportation and Sprawl
- Need for multimodal, intelligent, guideway system
- Guideway provides power
- Transition from today to tomorrow by carrying vehicles on pal lots temporarily
- High speed rail and faster travel times will enlarge regions.
- Health and Sprawl: What is the Connection?
- We encourage better communication and cooperation between planners and public health officials and policy makers to develop healthier communities.
- There is a need to more fully understand the relationship between health and built environment/ development patterns.
- Encourage data collection that is more detailed and descriptive.
- Longer time commutes are not necessarily a bad thing. Mode matters.
- Which Non-Sprawl Pattern Most Helps the Poor?
- Not enough low-income housing stock in L.A. At USC a student housing developer is pushing out low-rent residents to build luxury student housing. Is this good for the poor?
- Work to remedy environmental justice issues, which have to do with sprawl and land use, would improve the situation of the poor.
- Economic revitalization of downtown areas has caused people to move back. This can regentrify and push poor people out to the suburbs.
- Mixed-use development increases access to employment.
- Higher-density housing with open space addresses need for green space, freedom from pollution.
- Gentrification can result in mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-oriented development.
- Housing Affordability Issues
- Creative solutions are needed to serve the needs of the coming 15 million people who will require affordable housing.
- Do you need to have sprawl to have affordable housing? Not necessarily, but alternatives can be difficult to implement.
- We have finite land supply, high housing demand. To keep housing affordable, we need to increase housing supply, not necessarily on the fringes.
- Alternatives to sprawl:
- Infill development is stalled in upper- and middle-class neighborhoods due to NIMBYism, financial feasibility; in lower-income neighborhoods thwarted by low levels of infrastructure and increased burden on overburdened areas.
- Mixed-used development is difficult to achieve due to zoning restrictions and the higher financial risks.
- Regionalism from a Northeast Perspective
- How do you begin to promote regionalism?
- Regionalism is a civic responsibility
- Inform how regionalism can be beneficial to relevant actors (e.g. business leaders, community members, local officials.)
- How is a regionalism different in northeast than in west?
- The focus of regionalism in northeast has been on public transportation due to the history of development and infrastructure. The west has had a different history and development pattern.
- How Density Can be Sold to the Neighbors
- Consider why people zealously guard their property against future development (restrict change once moved in).
- Salesmanship for new projects is key: let neighbors know ASAP about new development plans.
- Organize community workshops on neighbor's turf. Show how higher densities can be more attractive than lower-density projects.
- Demonstrate that higher density, state-of-the-art projects can actually increase property values.
- Empty-nesters who want to stay in the neighborhood may see benefit of moving to newer, higher-density housing with less upkeep.
- Start early with education process for the neighborhood. Don't wait until the public hearing stage.
- Rent driveway from property owner. Hire caterer, invite neighbors, show plans/renderings early on in process.
- Address traffic and crime issues.
- Underlying societal education is needed to allow communities to provide for necessary expansion.
- Customize solutions for specific areas (duplexes may be acceptable where higher densities are not).
- Work closely with planning staffs. They tend to be conservative. Provide them with options.
- Work with environmental groups to demonstrate that higher densities allow more raw land and open space to be conserved.
- Explain what is meant by "higher density." It doesn't necessarily mean high-rise development.
- Check HCD website for ideas.
- Use visuals and good designs as key selling points.
- How Sprawl Can be Addressed in the General Plan in California
- No new resolutions achieved!
- Using Census 2000 to Monitor Growth and Sprawl
- Census 2000 is focused on residential population. Hence data and density do not fully reflect sprawl - miss commercial and industrial land uses.
- Census 2000 sample data are due out in late Spring (for places and counties) and August 2002 (for block groups), allowing more detailed analysis of 1990 to 2000 growth.
- Fiscal Reform and Sprawl: What is Needed?
- Predictable, stable revenue for local jurisdictions.
- Fair system for allocating infrastructure costs.
- Consider redistribution of sales tax on a per capita or population basis (and protect the "losers"), or on a per job basis.
- Link regional housing needs and fiscal reform
- Revenue targeted back into urban areas to improve quality of life (parks, amenities, schools).
- Private forms of redevelopment to allow private property owners to group together with their own project.
- Federal income tax-policy changes to encourage rental housing; tort reform of Calderon Act (construction defect legislation).
- Legislature needs to establish high priority for systematic fiscal reforms.
- Better and more orderly distribution of fiscal data.