The Loma Prietan
May/June 2004
Sustainable Land Use: Environmentally Friendly Communities We Can Live In
By Shiloh Ballard and Irvin Dawid
How does California accommodate the projected 12 million new people by 2020 while protecting the environment? This was the fundamental question posed by each of the three panelists at the standing-room-only townhall meeting entitled "Environmentalism and Growth", which was held February 5th at Lucy Stern Community Center in Palo Alto. Organized by the Loma Prieta Sustainable Land Use (SLU) Committee with assistance from Greenbelt Alliance, the townhall was the first major attempt by SLU to communicate with the Chapter's membership on urban land use issues, specifically on growth and development.
Dr. John Holtzlaw of the Sierra Club's national Challenge to Sprawl Committee, Tom Steinbach, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance, and Don Weden, former Santa Clara County Planning Director, raised difficult issues for the environmental community on how we should grow. They explained that while the environmental community needs to contribute towards slowing population growth, in the interim, growth will continue. So, we need to figure out how to shape that growth in an environmentally sustainable way.
Sustainable strategies
Several strategies werepresented to grow sustainably. They included:
1. "Infilling" areas within the "urban core" and stopping our conventional land use patterns of sprawl that send new residents to the "exurbs".
2. Promoting compact development, including an increase in density if designed well, which will lead to more livable communities.
3. Promoting mixed-use and transit-oriented designs along transit corridors that will allow new and existing residents to walk and bike to more destinations.
4. Achieving higher densities so that public transit would become more feasible, lessening dependency on the polluting automobile. The increased population also would make small retail and "neighborhood-serving-commercial" businesses more economically feasible.
5. Using "green building" construction methods that would lead to greater energy efficiency and increased use of recycled materials, and send less waste to the land fill.
The keynote speaker was the Honorable Fed Keeley, former State Assembly member from Santa Cruz and current Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League. Mr. Keeley emphasized the need for sustainable development. He also raised a unique and thought-provoking point— the need for the environmental community to understand how it is perceived, especially within lower income communities. In essence, he suggested that measures to restrict growth, especially the development of affordable housing, are seen as discrimination. (For more on this topic, please see Margaret Okuzumi's piece, "Training for Diversity and Awareness".)
Following the presentations, the four entertained questions from the audience. Unfortunately, time was quickly exhausted as attendees had many questions. Everyone was invited to continue the dialog over pizza and salad at the next Sustainable Land Use committee meeting, which was held February 18 in Menlo Park.
Sustainable Land Use Committee moves forward
At the February meeting we heard more from individual members who had attended the townhall. A key issue discussed was the need to promote dialogue as well as education with our membership on growth and development issues that directly affect their communities. Several particular developments and policy issues were discussed in detail. The one that members expressed the most interest in pursuing was Rod Brown's discussion of Cupertino's General Plan update (see box at right).
Based on the input from the townhall and the February meeting, an entirely new committee mission statement was drafted: "The Mission of the Sustainable Land Use (SLU) committee is to have the Loma Prieta Chapter take an active role in contemporary, urban land use issues within the Chapter's 3-county, 37-city territory. The purpose is less to promote an agenda than it is to stimulate the Club's membership to acknowledge that the "environment" includes the cities where we live, work, and play within San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Benito counties. The land uses that accomodate these basic life actions shall be the focus of SLU."
The previous mission statement directed the committee to be, in essence, an advocacy group for smart growth. SLU members recognized that listening to the Chapter membership's concerns about growth and development is just as important as communicating smart growth principles to them. Some members stated that it must be a two-way communication.
At the April committee meeting, held in Cupertino at the Cupertino Community Services building, it was proposed that the committee formally adopt Sierra Club California's Urban Growth Management Policy Guidelines, so that any dialog can reference these principles to determine where Club policy lies on any land use matter that comes before the committee.
These guidelines are a most extensive array of land use and development principles developed by the statewide Livable Communities Committee. The guidelines are available on the web at www.sierraclub.org/ca/scc/growth.asp. A condensed version of these extensive guidelines are available in a simple brochure called "The Guide to Building More Livable Communities". Please contact the Chapter office if you would like to have one mailed to you.