Comments on: Today’s must-read: Richard Florida on the shape of things to come

By: David Howard

David Howard — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:32:00 +0000

all of which, ignores, of course, that Alameda is an island, and the tubes are already at capacity – around 3550 vehicles per hour in the peak a.m. hour, for a capacity of roughly 3800 vph, and SunCal wants to add at least 1,700 vph, plus 12 buses in that commute hour. This will increase auto congestion in the west end, typically Alameda’s low-income minority census tracts.

http://traffic-counts.dot.ca.gov/2007all.htm

The ferry is good to take to work if you live in San Francisco. But if you take BART to work, you probably drive to BART. And if you work in points east or south, you probably drive. Ask your friends and neighbors where they work and how they get there. You’ll be surprised that so few of them fit into SunCal’s framework.

By: Michele Ellson

Michele Ellson — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:33:08 +0000

Thanks for this!

By: DL Morrison

DL Morrison — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:54:56 +0000

Yes, that’s true, ABAG assigns housing goals to every city in the region, and they recently decreased the housing goals for cities farther out from the urban core, and significantly increased the housing goals for cities closer to the urban core, such as Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda. That’s why I’m saying that they’ve increased the demand for high-density housing in certain communities without providing any kind of incentive or making any real demands on all the other Bay Area communities. The State Legislature is applying pressure as well — that is, with regard to cities such as Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda.

See the statistics in this 2006 article from the Berkeley Daily Planet:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2006-12-05/article/25794

“The basis of the quotas is set by ABAG’s Housing Methodology Committee, which Poschman [planning commissioner] said “is totally dominated by the outer rim” of communities outside the region’s urban core.

“ABAG’s stakeholders (in the committeee include) the Green Belt Alliance, which believes that if you build studio apartments in Berkeley, people will not want three-bedroom homes in Antioch,” he said.

ABAG also determined that new housing should be built near rail transit, further increasing the impact on Berkeley, and effectively “railroading” the city, the commissioner agreed.

The net impact is to more than double the demand on the city [of Berkeley] for new housing.

By comparison, the figures have dropped from peripheral jurisdictions like Antioch (4,459 to 2,300), Dublin (5,436 to 3,437), Pleasant Hill (714 to 592), Pleasanton (5,059 to 3,685) and San Rafael (2,090 to 1,490).

Oakland saw the largest increase in actual numbers, (7,733 to 17,088), and San Leandro also more than doubled, from 870 to 1,903.”

By: Michele Ellson

Michele Ellson — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:22:28 +0000

ABAG actually has something called a regional housing needs determination where they do list out the number of homes, at four separate income levels, that they think each city in the Bay Area should be in a position to provide in order to meet anticipated need. (If I’m not mistaken, it’s the same process that takes place through similar regional agencies across the state.) I say “be in a position to provide” because the RHND doesn’t require cities to build housing, just to create the conditions (eg making land available for housing through zoning it as residential, for example) necessary for the housing to get built. That’s part of what motivates these updates to the “housing element” of our general plan – we need to list out the ways we are making it possible for additional housing to exist. If you’re interested in more information on this and the complete rundown of housing need by city, click here:
http://www.abag.ca.gov/planning/pdfs/SFHousingNeedsPlan.pdf

By: DL Morrison

DL Morrison — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:34:07 +0000

Studies have shown that we could all make better use of the space in our homes, and I’ll bet that’s especially true in a city like this one, with all these rather large old houses which probably aren’t getting full use — that is, their index of occupy-ability hasn’t been maximized. Studies have shown that several people sharing a home can make far more efficient use of utilities and resources, and for that matter ABAG and even the state Legislature are now pushing for home-sharing as the next big step in meeting this century’s challenges.

Anyway, in the spirit of “think globally, act locally”, I think I’ll do my part by moving in with you. I don’t know how much space I’ll need, and right now I don’t think it will be too much, but I guess we’d better keep it open-ended. I think bunk beds are the way to go, plus I’ll need space in the kitchen and the bathroom and in the livingroom too, which you’re required to make available because everyone has decided that you should. This is a big problem and you’d better get going because somebody needs to take care of this…

Okay, so we need to “pack in more people” and fill the urban/suburban/whatever cores, because it’s “smart” and all the studies and the academics and the never-ending supply of earnest planners all dedicated to the latest planning orthodoxy are convinced that this is very important. Okay, then why don’t we all share in this burden?? Why don’t ABAG and the State Legislature make this a regional priority with a contribution in some form from every city in the region?? Instead it becomes, “This is very important and we very earnestly believe that you need to fix it”.

Let’s face it, it’s politically easier to coerce a few cities into complying by whatever means than it is to coerce the whole region, but as a matter of fairness, the whole region is responsible for this, and as a matter of reality the great majority of cities in the Bay Area probably aren’t contributing anything to solving this problem. Why shouldn’t they?

By: Jayne Smythe

Jayne Smythe — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:54:53 +0000

Yes, but in the same issue, here is an article about squatters in San Bernadino, which seems a more likely scenario in a financial climate where developers have no money with which to build and more free-standing buildings become vacant as the days pass.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/squatters