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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

April 29, 2001

Forget the McMansions

Putting luxury homes in the hills of South Almaden will not solve housing problems but will add to traffic congestion

This seemed to make sense in the early 1980s, when the urban reserves in South Almaden and the Central Coyote Valley became part of the city's general plan. It may make sense again someday. But today, as housing advocates look to South Almaden to help remedy Silicon Valley's housing shortage, we have to agree with the Greenbelt Alliance: forget it. Fast-tracking 2,000 luxury homes in those hills will do nothing to solve housing problems and will only worsen traffic in the Almaden Valley, which already is terribly congested.

Last week the Greenbelt Alliance made a public plea to stave off development in South Almaden -- perhaps permanently -- in light of the hills' great beauty and the ugliness of the McMansion developments that afflict other hillsides in the Bay Area. The Alliance was reacting to a task-force report to Mayor Ron Gonzales that recommended speedier development of South Almaden as one of many ways to increase housing production. We're not sure the mayor and city council are inclined to take that recommendation; all the suggestions are under study.

But the future of both urban reserves, Almaden and Central Coyote, deserves a fresh look in any case. A quick housing fix may be the immediate need. But what's more important is building new neighborhoods that become good places to live and assets to the city over the long haul. With a slowdown in the economy, this is the perfect opportunity to stand back and reconsider South Almaden and the Coyote Valley. We've learned a lot about community planning in the past two decades, as Barbara Vroman explains in her column Rethinking Coyote. It's time to apply those lessons to the urban reserves.

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