 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
Greenbelt Alliance In the News
August 11, 2002 Cities Should Focus Growth in Urban Areas
From A Mercury News Special Report on the Housing Crunch By Tom SteinbachEveryone agrees the Bay Area has a housing shortage, but there is a notable lack of consensus on how to address this problem. For decades, communities have followed a development path that pushed housing farther away from our urban centers, onto productive farmland and into open spaces, clogging our roads with traffic and paving over scenic landscapes. It is now in our financial interest – and the interest of future generations of Bay Area residents – to focus new growth in our existing cities and towns. The strength of our economy is directly linked to the presence of a large, skilled labor force attracted to the region’s natural beauty and vibrant communities. Focusing growth in already developed areas will safeguard and improve
these resources. Maintaining our competitive advantage by building new
homes and offices near our downtowns and preserving the region's open
space is critical to attracting businesses and enhancing property values. It's also in our interest to ensure that firefighters, teachers and child care workers live within our communities. Without a concerted effort to build more housing in our cities and towns, including increasing the number of affordable housing units, many of these workers will continue to be priced out of the market and either move away or live long distances from the communities they serve. Several forward-looking communities are already taking steps in the
right direction. Large cities such as San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco,
as well as smaller places like Redwood City, Mountain View, and San Rafael,
have all successfully completed new developments near downtowns that include
affordable housing and commercial space. These first steps are making
it easier for residents to live and work in the same community while avoiding
a nightmare commute and the smog that comes with it. Other communities, however, continue to view the path of unrestrained construction on productive farmland and open space as the solution. Many developers find it cheaper and easier to build on open space, leaving us looking more and more like Los Angeles. The choice is ours to make. We can stay with the status quo and slowly erode the very things that make our economy, communities, and environment healthy. Or we can actively encourage our elected leaders to do what it takes to create the housing, commercial and open space infrastructure that make this region great. The path of smart growth requires us to make changes to laws and attitudes that impede innovative solutions to the housing crisis, but the long-term benefits of creating livable communities and protecting open space will ensure the Bay Area thrives for generations to come. ### |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
