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 n recent years California has been faced with challenges
in education and in health care. We have responded with class
size reduction, a major statewide school bond, expansion of the
healthy families program and HMO reform. The next crisis we will
face will be growth. By 2020 there will be between 15 million
and 20 million more Californians, and by 2040 our population
is expected to nearly double. When this happens, will our cities
be livable? Will our open space be transformed into tract housing?
How can we accommodate growth without degrading the quality of
life?
 Based
on experience, the answers to those questions are not encouraging.
A lack of affordable housing in our major cities causes working
people to travel long distances from their homes to their jobs.
Many face traffic congestion resulting in loss of time with family
or other activities. Eighty percent of the state's population
is exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution resulting primarily
from the high-pollution volume of vehicle commuting. We have
learned we cannot build our way out of congestion.
From
1970 to 1990, the income of Californians increased 285 percent.
But in that same time, rents increased 392 percent and home prices
rose 746 percent. Is it any wonder California has one of the
lowest rates of home ownership in the country, and a deficit
of 650,000 affordable homes in our seven largest cities?
Meanwhile,
as people move further and further out, housing developments
devour open space and farmland. With longer distances between
home and work, the cost of extending infrastructure becomes overwhelming.
That is because capital costs for streets, utilities and schools
for low density noncontiguous development is double the cost
per dwelling unit of developments located close to central facilities
and employment centers.
Further
exacerbating the dispersal of population is that between five
and ten percent of cities, some 250,000 to 500,000 acres, consists
of empty lots and abandoned buildings, many of which suffer from
contamination. The failure to deal with these sites, usually
referred to as brownfields, means these city lands are not available
for business or housing. Instead, development is pushed into
the "greenfields" of agricultural lands and open space.
At the
heart of this problem is the balkanized way we plan growth. Each
city reaches land-use decisions as though operating in a vacuum.
Cities have the ability to capture the economic benefits of development
decisions while sloughing off the costs to nearby areas, which
are forced to bear more traffic, noise, and housing demands.
Local government financing methods make the situation worse.
Cities decline to accommodate affordable housing because the
property tax it generates is inadequate to cover the cost of
services the residents demand. Instead, cities pursue the sales
tax cash register of retail businesses.
Industry,
unlike local government, has a regional orientation. High tech
companies are in Silicon Valley -- a region, not a city. Agriculture
is in the Central Valley -- a region, not a city. These industries
don't affect just a single town. Why, then, does government act
as though decisions made by individual cities affect just those
cities?
No one
is suggesting that land-use decisions should be transferred to
the state government. Land use is inherently a local decision.
Nevertheless, California should provide guidelines on how to
plan growth. To make these guidelines meaningful, state government
should provide incentives to regions that intelligently plan
their growth by focusing development into existing communities.
Cities which do not do so should be told not to count on the
state to finance public investments.
Maryland
provides an example. The state passed a Rural Legacy bond to
make open space and farmland preservation money available to
smart growth counties. Its governor, Parris Glendening, has articulated
the message: "For development outside [planned growth] areas,
we are saying 'Sorry, the state will not help out. If you build
out there then you pay for roads, water and sewage, schools,
parks and other developments. If you invest in existing communities
you will have access to tax credits, grants, low-interest loans
and other incentives.'"
State Senator
Steve Peace has proposed a mechanism for coordinating regional
transportation, because the existing diffusion of transportation
authority simply does not work. His Regional Infrastructure Transportation
Agency would merge functions of five governmental bodies with
authority over transportation into one entity responsible to
the San Diego County area. Driving on the interstates during
commuting hours is an example of how ineffectual current transportation
planning has been. I support Senator Peace's Regional Infrastructure
Transportation Agency concept.
Growth
is going to happen. California is at a fork in the road as to
how it will deal with growth. It can continue along its present
path and face the deterioration of central cities and older suburbs
or it can begin to think about infrastructure in terms of how
we want California to look. The choice is ours. 
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