Home > Resource Center > In the News Home > Greenbelt Alliance in the News

Greenbelt Alliance In the News

August 2, 2004

How to protect greenbelt? Build housing

Opinion

The Bay Area's greenbelt is beautiful to look at and great to explore. Not only that, it provides us with clean air, clean water and healthy food. So how should we make sure the greenbelt is kept safe? How should we protect it from development?

By building more homes.

That's right -- we need to build more homes to save our open space. The trick is where we build them, and how.

As we all know, housing in the Bay Area is expensive. In search of an affordable place to live, people are being forced to move farther and farther out of the cities and farther from their jobs. This is a major environmental problem, as new subdivisions gobble up our remaining orchards, hillsides and watersheds. As commutes get longer, our air grows dirtier, and our water is fouled by polluted runoff.

It's no picnic to live in the far-flung sprawling subdivisions, either. As we have to drive farther and farther to get everywhere -- work, home, our kids' schools, the grocery store -- the traffic gets worse. We end up spending hours in our cars each day. That's less time to spend with our families, enjoying life in the Bay Area.

What's the solution? Moving away? To Sacramento? To Boise?

No. We need to build more housing right here, in our existing cities. Not on the outskirts of our region, far from jobs, far from transit, far from schools. We need to build in the places where we've already invested so much. It just makes sense. Why not build where the jobs are? Where we already have schools and hospitals and water lines? Where we can walk to the store? Where we can bike home from work? Where we can take our kids for a walk in the park, and watch sunset light up the hills?

Those of us who care about the environment, about our region, about our quality of life, should care about affordable housing. If we don't care about it, we'll lose the things we do care about, because the growing need for housing will overwhelm our open space.

The Bay Area is growing. The Association of Bay Area Governments predicts that between now and 2020 the Bay Area will grow by a million people. That doesn't have to be a problem, and it doesn't have to be a threat to our open space. We just need to plan well for growth.

We have the tools. Already, cities like East Palo Alto and Novato have adopted "inclusionary" housing policies that help make more homes available for working families. Petaluma and Sebastopol have adopted fees that link jobs with housing, assuring that the housing supply in a city keeps up with the job supply. Walnut Creek is considering allowing taller buildings in its downtown, whose residents would support local shops, movie theaters and restaurants, making the neighborhood vibrant.

All of these actions are protecting the greenbelt and stopping sprawl. They're keeping new developments off open space, so we can all enjoy the natural beauty and the fresh produce that a protected greenbelt provides.

But we need more cities to implement these tools. We need the Bay Area's 100-plus cities and nine counties to put new homes in city centers, not in the greenbelt. By investing in growth in our existing cities and towns, we'll keep the Bay Area a great place to live for generations to come.

Tom Steinbach is executive director of the Greenbelt Alliance (www.greenbelt.org) in San Francisco.

###