Regional Smart Growth Workshops

THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE. THE WORKSHOPS TOOK PLACE IN 2002. READ BELOW FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE PREFERRED ALTERNATIVES

Why the workshops mattered

The workshops were intended, in large part, to gauge public support for Smart Growth. The high levels of participation at the workshops sent an important message to the region’s elected officials.

More importantly, there were significant differences between the three Smart Growth alternatives under consideration:

Alternatives 1 and 2 would lead to more transit, pedestrian and bicycle oriented development, more compact infill development, large reductions in driving and air pollution, and revitalization of older urban cores.
TALC supports these Alternatives.

Alternative 3 would continue to focus development in the suburbs and would lead to no reduction in driving or air pollution, and no urban revitalization.
TALC DOES NOT support this Alternative.

Your participation at the workshops helped determine which Alternatives were selected and forwarded to ABAG for adoption.

TALC endorses Alternative 2 :

a.	It would expand the regional transit network far more than either of the other Alternatives or the Base Case.
b.	It goes further to meet the housing needs of low and very low-income residents than the other Alternatives or the Base Case.
c.	It is more politically feasible than Alternative 1.

Background: The Three Smart Growth Alternatives

The workshops held in September and October 2001 produced 105 alternative growth scenarios. These 105 scenarios were analyzed for common themes and then “distilled” into three thematically distinct regional alternatives.

All three themes would provide enough new housing to accommodate the one million new residents plus the 265,000 in-commuters the region expects in the next 20 years. This is one of the primary ways the alternatives would begin to reduce driving and air pollution.

The three Smart Growth alternatives are:

1.	Central Cities Locates most new growth in each county’s largest city or cities and emphasizes development in the region’s central cities (San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose). Also locates growth in nodes around existing public transit stations.
2.	Network of Neighborhoods Locates most growth in the same locations as Alternative 1, but at lower densities. Spreads growth to additional transit-rich and walkable communities and corridors along an expanded public transit network.
3.	Smarter Suburbs Locates growth in same locations as Alternatives 1 and 2, but at still lower densities. Spreads job and housing growth to edge communities, at higher densities than currently exists or is planned. Locates new housing in employment centers and new employment in residential areas on the region’s fringes. Achieves best jobs-housing balance of the three alternatives

What’s the Difference?

There is a significant difference between the Alternatives in terms of the amount of affordable housing they would create, the accessibility of jobs and housing by transit, air pollution, and urban revitalization.

* Click here for detailed information about these differences for each county.

How the Workshops Will Affect Policy

1. Assembling the Preferred Regional Alternative

After the workshops, the Smart Growth Project partners will assemble the nine visions created at each county’s workshop, to create a map and detailed analysis of the Preferred Regional Alternative. They will also determine what legislative and regulatory changes would be needed to allow local governments to implement that Smart Growth vision in their county.

2. Adoption by ABAG

In early 2003, the Preferred Alternative will be forwarded to the ABAG Executive Board for adoption.

It is important that the Regional Preferred Alternative be both publicly supported and feasible, so that ABAG’s Executive Board does not kill the process at this point. It is also important the Alternative not be so timid as to make little difference in the Bay Area’s development patterns.

ACTION: Let your elected representatives on ABAG’s Executive Board know that you support the Regional Smart Growth Strategy process and that you want them to adopt a bold Smart Growth Vision. Send a letter now!

3. 2004 Regional Transportation Plan

If adopted by the Executive Board, the Preferred Regional Alternative will be used as a guide in the 2004 Regional Transportation Plan, which will specify how some $82 billion of federal, state and local transportation funds will be spent in the nine-county Bay Area during the next 25 years. This funding could help to leverage additional federal, state and local funds for Smart Growth development. Otherwise, the 2004 will be based on the Base Case current trends projection, and transportation dollars will continue to encourage and subsidize auto-dependent sprawl on the region’s fringes.

4. New Rewards and Incentives

Moving toward Smart Growth will require big changes in local zoning, state and regional funding, and private development decisions. To encourage this, the Project Partners will take the Regional Preferred Alternative to Sacramento to ask the State Legislature for new rewards and incentives to encourage and enable local jurisdictions to improve their land use planning.

These could include a variety of mechanisms such as:

	providing funds to encourage development of walkable communities,
	prioritizing transportation funding to encourage development around transit nodes,
	creating limited exemptions to CEQA for Smart Growth projects,
	providing construction defect litigation relief, and
	returning the property tax to local governments.

For more information on incentives and regulatory changes to support Smart Growth, please see:

Speaker’s Commission on Regionalism – www.regionalism.org

Recently released report identifies state policy changes needed to allow regions to address challenges posed by growth and development.

The Urban Land Institute – www.smartgrowthcalifornia.uli.org

Recommendations scheduled to be released this summer address actions that the state should take to promote Smart Growth.

5. Smart Growth Zones

TALC is proposing a demonstration program to create rewards and incentives for Bay Area cities to follow Smart Growth criteria in their development plans. The proposal is similar in approach to the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Zones currently funded by the federal government.

Smart Growth Zones would use funds already available through the regional agencies, to provide tax incentives, grants, loans, and technical assistance to Bay Area cities to help them:

1. build on vacant and underutilized sites within currently developed areas,

2. increase residential and employment density,

3. create a mix of housing, office and retail within downtowns and along major transit routes,

4. create bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, shopping areas and employment centers, and,

5. develop housing that accommodates a mix of incomes, family sizes and ages.

* Click here for more information on TALC’s Smart Growth Zones proposal.

Update: 10/23/02