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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

June 28, 2006

Bay Area 'smart growth' stunted

Report criticizes region's planning, but applauds East Bay efforts to preserve open space, handle population growth

Cities and counties could be doing a lot more to make sure the region is planning well for its ever-growing population, according to the report released by the Greenbelt Alliance.

The environmental group spent three months evaluating smart growth policies in all nine Bay Area counties and 101 cities. Smart growth is the term given to a set of planning and growth policies that are intended to make neighborhoods more compact and walkable, less dependent on automobile traffic and more affordable for home buyers.

"Especially considering we've got all this growth forecast on the horizon, if we don't start doing a better job relatively soon, we're going to end up with a lot more problems," said David Reid, the group's East Bay representative.

The loss of open space, increase in traffic congestion and worsening of air pollution will accelerate if better policies aren't in place across the entire region, Reid said.

Alameda and Contra Costa counties score well overall, particularly for their open space protection and growth management policies.

"In Contra Costa County as a whole, I think we are ahead of most other regions in the Bay Area on this, and a lot of that is that we've been talking about this issue for a long time," said Contra Costa Supervisor John Gioia.

He noted, however, that for the Bay Area to truly embrace the smart growth strategy, it must work better regionally on land use policies, something that local governments often resist.

The report's authors found that, on average, Bay Area cities are doing about a third of what they could be and the counties are doing about half of what's possible to adopt better rules. The report, "Bay Area Smart Growth Scorecard," grades local governments on several policy areas, such as housing density, growth control, open space protection and "mixed-use" development.

It does not grade jurisdictions on the implementation of those policies, just on whether a city or county has adopted them.

The report's overall assessment of smart growth in the region rings true to Janet McBride, planning director at the Association of Bay Area Governments, a regional planning organization.

"I think it's important to note that we have seen some pretty significant changes in terms of local acceptance of smart growth development and we have seen changes in adopted policy as well as promising changes on the ground and we're working on some of that," McBride said.

In 2002, ABAG organized an effort among local governments to discuss how the region could better accommodate growth by promoting in-fill and development near transit. Now the agency is working to build a regional consensus about where to concentrate growth and preserve open space and agricultural land.

Reach Kiley Russell at 925-952-5027 or krussell@cctimes.com.

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