Sprawled out on the floor
The Alameda Point discussion is about to become interesting again. Rumors have been flying for the last couple of months that SunCal was going to ask for an extension to its schedule for preparing an Alameda Point Master Plan. And sure enough, they sent it last week, asking for an additional six months and saying that the existing Preliminary Development Concept was unworkable because they can’t even build the 1800 housing units proposed in it.
And so the chants are becoming louder
“Com-mer-cial! Com-mer-cial! Com-mer-cial! Com-mer-cial!”
As if re-building Emeryville or Fremont is some magic bullet. Just remove the housing, and this baby is ready to fly! Perhaps we can change the city’s motto from “City of
Why are so many people enthralled with sprawl? I don’t personally get it. But before that, what is sprawl?
In “The Costs of Sprawl Revisited: The Evidence of Sprawl’s Negatvie and Positive Impacts”, considered by many to have defined the definitive definition on Sprawl, researcher Rober Burchell and the Rutgers-based Center for Urban Policy Research, in Conjunction with Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution, as well as researchers from Parsons Brinkerhoff Quade and Douglas (A leading national planning and engineering firm) and ECONorthwest an economic consulting firm (that’s ECON as in Economy, as well as ECO as in Ecology, clever, eh?)
Sprawl entails:
- Low Density – this is relative to it’s surroundings. Sprawl is development that “given a regional framework…is at a low relative density, and one that may be too costly to maintain.”
- Expands in an unlimited and non-contiguous way outward
- Consumes exurban agricultural and other frail lands
- Has almost total reliance upon the automobile
- Often involves small developers
- Lacks integrated land-use planning
Now before you jump down my throat, I’m not suggesting that Alameda Point meets all of these criteria. But what we do there will directly result in what happens in other parts of the bay area. But that’s a discussion for another day.
Don’t forget to vote! It’s super-duper primary Tuesday.
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