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California’s growth will lead to more development conflicts, says editorial

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 6, 2008 at 8:42 am

From Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee:

California’s housing meltdown is wreaking economic and personal havoc, but it won’t last forever.

The state’s ever-growing population will soak up the now-vacant housing units in a year or two, and home building will resume, driven by the inexorable demand. Generally speaking, California needs about 200,000 units of new housing – single-family homes, apartments, condos or mobile homes – each year.

During the development lull, however, there’s a great debate under way in a variety of venues, from the Capitol to local city councils to academic conferences, over what kind of housing it should be.

Will it be a resumption of the horizontal development that California has traditionally embraced, with new single-family subdivisions creeping outward from core cities and reached by automobile? Or will it be higher-density vertical development like that of Eastern cities (and San Francisco), served by mass transit?

The debate is not new but has gained volume because the advocates of vertical development – what Attorney General Jerry Brown describes as “elegant density” – have a new political lever in global warming.

The state’s growing population and how best to house it is the subject of much debate. At the root of it:

The conflict lies at the heart of debates over how transportation funds should be allocated, including whether California should build a high-speed “bullet train,” and whether the state should develop new water supplies or rely on conservation. Simply put, should we supply more water to irrigate more suburban lawns?

Read the rest of this column from Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.

April 6, 2008 · Filed Under Water & Development