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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

April 29, 2001

Rethinking Coyote

Subheading

Opinion

The challenge is to design a community that works, with jobs, housing, parks and transit -- and now there is time to do it right. It looks so neat on the map. Here, a big block of land for industry. There and there, on either side, other big clumps of land for housing. Ta-DAH! We've got a plan.

In this case, we've got San Jose's general plan for the Coyote and South Almaden valleys. For the last half of the 20th century, this is how cities and counties did planning. But guess what. It hasn't really worked out. If putting a big swath of industry next to big areas of housing meant easy commuting, then North San Jose's industry next to Milpitas and Berryessa neighborhoods would have created perfect symmetry. Instead it created the nightmare on Montague Expressway.

San Jose realized that mistake a decade ago and carved out some residential areas within North San Jose, such as River Oaks along Montague. These condo and apartment complexes allow thousands of people to live nearer to jobs, but they're clearly an afterthought. If you don't work nearby, it's hard to imagine wanting to live there.

How much better it would've been from the start to weave residential areas through the industrial zone between downtown San Jose and Alviso, planning parks and schools along the way, and designing the corporate campuses themselves to make it easier for people to walk or bike to work from home or from a light rail stop. This is the opportunity San Jose has with the Coyote Valley: Plan it all together, industry and housing and shopping, as one sensibly designed community. Do it right from the start. And figure out where the South Almaden Urban Reserve fits in -- if it fits at all in the near future. Planned for some 2,000 homes, it now seems an unlikely location for development.

The window of opportunity for re-planning all this is narrow. Cisco Systems has approval to build a campus with 20,000 jobs in North Coyote, and other companies have secured property. But the slowing economy has taken development off the fast track, so we have some time. The Greenbelt Alliance wanted Cisco to plan housing right on its campus. But this shouldn't be a decision for individual companies. People change jobs too often. And while one spouse in a Cisco apartment might work there, the other may work in Redwood City or Gilroy. The city should take responsibility for the planning, as it has smaller neighborhood planning projects.

The challenge is to plan a community that works. If you live there and have a job nearby, you can walk or bike to work. If not, you can easily get to light rail or Caltrain. Your kids can walk to school or to the park -- no need to drive them everywhere. You'll still use the car when you stock up on groceries, but to pick up some milk or a birthday card on Saturday, there should be a place to walk.

In neighborhoods where mass transit is convenient, people tend to use it. In Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood, around a BART station, people make far fewer car trips per household than average neighborhoods.

Coyote could be such a place. It will take more than building high-density housing; San Jose's plan already calls for that. It also means designing streets so that they're safe and inviting to walk. It's no help to put a corporate campus near condos if they're separated by a six-lane road you have to risk your life to cross.

Re-planning Coyote this way would involve some fundamental changes in thinking. For instance, in the current plan, the industrial campuses still have to be pretty low density, with lots of open space. Why not allow taller buildings and, instead of leaving so much open space on each campus, pool some of it to create public parks that workers and residents could use? There are so many possibilities for Coyote.

But Almaden's future is murkier. It's at the edge of the city. No light-rail line will go there, so thousands more cars will join the rush hour flow. Some will take McKean Road to Coyote, but many will flood the already jammed Almaden Expressway. Even if homes were clustered to save open space, they'd still be among the most expensive in the city. Re-planning the Coyote Valley might result in earlier building of homes there, helping San Jose meet its goal to increase housing production. But the same exercise probably would push back the prospect of housing in South Almaden. The test should be what benefits the city as a whole. It's easy to see how a balanced Coyote Valley community could become an asset. Until the same is clear for South Almaden, the land should remain in reserve.

Barbara Vroman is associate editor of the Opinion Pages.

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