Two new infill-focused reports are out, with analysis and recommendations to improve deployment of transit-oriented buildings in both Los Angeles and Sonoma County, in the wake of the devastating wildfires there last year.
First, UCLA Lewis Center and LAPlus offer a report on how to encourage more transit-oriented development along rail transit lines in Los Angeles, while minimizing displacement of low-income renters. The report conducts seven case studies in rail neighborhoods around Los Angeles and assesses how various land use policy changes affect development going forward in these locations.
Second, the Council of Infill Builders offers recommendations on how Santa Rosa and Sonoma County can rebuild in a sustainable, downtown-oriented manner, in the wake of the wildfires there that destroyed 5% of the housing stock in Santa Rosa alone. The report discusses the need for greater local support from businesses and cities to promote downtown-oriented living.
While both reports have tailored recommendations for their target geographies, they make similar points. Among them: more zoning for mixed use and denser housing in rail-adjacent areas, with reduced on-site parking requirements.
Some big wins for California (and therefore national) climate policy last night:
- Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom is elected governor, which means the state will continue its climate leadership on various policy fronts
- Prop. 6 loses, which would have repealed the gas tax increase and meant less funding for transit going forward
- Prop. 1 wins, which could provide more money for affordable housing in infill areas, reducing driving miles as a result
- The Democrats win the U.S. House of Representatives, which has a host of implications:
- Oversight of the U.S. Departments of Energy, Interior, and Transportation, plus E.P.A., which have all issued various regulations that hurt climate goals in the state
- Potentially more funding in future budget bills for crucial transit infrastructure, including high speed rail
- Potentially more funding and fiscal support for clean tech, like renewables, energy storage and electric vehicles, depending on how budget negotiations proceed
- Oregon Governor Kate Brown wins re-election, which means that state is well-positioned to adopt cap-and-trade next year, making it the first U.S. state to link to California’s program and potentially creating a multi-state building block for an eventual national carbon trading program
And on the housing front, Governor-elect Newsom has set ambitious goals for building more homes in the state, which if done in infill areas could bring crucial climate and air pollution benefits from reduced driving per capita. Pro-housing “YIMBY” candidates also bolstered their ranks in state government, with the election of former Obama campaign staffer Buffy Wicks to the Berkeley Assembly district.
Setbacks nationally (beyond continued Republican gains in the U.S. Senate) included the defeat of some state ballot initiatives, including a carbon tax in Washington, an anti-fracking measure in Colorado, and a renewable portfolio initiative in Arizona — though Nevada voters did embrace a 50% renewable target by 2030 at their polls.
All in all, a positive night for climate policy in California and beyond.
As the midterm election nears next Tuesday, California’s restrictive housing policies in its urban job centers could play a central role. As residents in these major job-producing cities on the coast close their communities to new housing construction, they have forced Democratic-leaning middle- and low-income residents into “super commutes” in far-flung, inland areas. Middle class Californians are also fleeing the state altogether to lower-cost states, like Nevada or Texas.
And now we see that these lower-cost regions are becoming battlegrounds for control of the United States House of Representatives and possibly the United States Senate, with the influx of these new Democratic-leaning voters. For example, the Modesto district of Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham is now a competitive race with challenger Josh Harder. But that district is mainly competitive because it’s had an influx of Bay Area super-commuters seeking lower-cost housing in some of those new sprawl communities.
Or take competitive Senate races in Nevada (Democrat Jacky Rosen challenging Republican Dean Heller) and Texas (Democrat Beto O’Rourke challenging Republican Ted Cruz). The influx of priced-out Californians who tend to vote Democrat could be a difference maker.
Of course, it’s not economically, environmentally or morally healthy for California’s job-producing cities that this exodus is happening. But the effect is already reverberating across the country in this coming election, as exclusive coastal housing policies re-distribute Democrats across national political battlegrounds.
Legendary urban planner Peter Calthorpe has a spooky Halloween warning for Silicon Valley types eager to disrupt transportation with autonomous driving technology:
When it is easier to travel in a city in self-driving cars, Mr. Calthorpe said, everyone will want to do so. And when self-driving vehicles are more affordable — which could take years to happen — people who currently rely on public transit while running their errands will instead send their cars to pick up the groceries and the dry cleaning, adding significantly to what [co-researcher] Mr. Walters and other urban planners call “total vehicle miles.”
The resulting traffic congestion could greatly imperil quality of life and our climate goals. The warning is even more urgent as Waymo recently received approval in California to operate without a driver in the vehicle.
So what’s the upside — the treat for this otherwise scary scenario? Calthorpe advocates for Autonomous Rapid Transit (ART), which would basically involve driverless buses operating in dedicated rights-of-way in urban areas. It would save labor costs, thereby allowing quick deployment and cheap operation, while fostering the density we need to meet climate goals.
ART is probably the most promising response to harnessing autonomous technology for a climate-constrained, urban world. It could turn the trick of AVs into a treat for urban dwellers.
Under Senate Bill 743 (Steinberg, 2013), California will soon require developers of new projects, like apartment buildings, offices, and roads, to analyze and mitigate the amount of additional driving miles their projects generate. To facilitate compliance with SB 743, some local and regional leaders are considering creating “banks” or “exchanges” to allow developers to fund off-site projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), such as new bike lanes, transit, and busways.
CLEE’s recent report, Implementing SB 743, provides a comprehensive review of key legal and policy considerations for local and regional agencies tasked with crafting these innovative VMT mitigation mechanisms, including:
- Legal requirements under CEQA and Constitutional case law;
- Criteria for mitigation project selection and prioritization;
- Methods to verify VMT mitigation and “additionality”; and
- Measures to ensure equitable distribution of projects.
CLEE will hold a free webinar tomorrow, Tuesday, October 30th from 10-11am to discuss the report findings and answer questions about SB 743 and VMT mitigation strategies. Speakers will include:
- Chris Ganson, Governor’s Office of Planning & Research
- Jeannie Lee, Governor’s Office of Planning & Research
My colleague Ted Lamm and I will also join. You can register for the webinar (hosted on Zoom) and download Implementing SB 743.
People who don’t like infill development cite electric vehicles as an excuse to continue to sprawl. People who don’t like cars like to point out the environmental limitations of electric vehicles.
And so we have a simmering tension, recently manifested in Alissa Walker’s otherwise engaging Curbed piece “When Electric Isn’t Good Enough” on the need to reduce vehicle miles traveled and reliance on single-occupancy vehicles — even if they’re electrically powered.
Reducing driving and building more walkable, bikeable and transit-friendly neighborhoods are obviously imperatives. Environmentally, we need the reduced emissions and more compact buildings that use less energy and water. Health-wise we need the exercise and social interaction. And economically, we need the savings on housing, transportation and utility bills. Walker’s piece helps makes that case.
But electric vehicles are still a crucial technology. Driving will continue regardless of development patterns, and we must decarbonize it. We should think of it as a “loading order” (to borrow an energy phrase for prioritizing efficiency over new electricity generation): first we try to reduce driving miles, then we decarbonize all remaining driving. Walker’s article is helpful in emphasizing the need for action on the first priority.
But missing from the article is mention of the crucial co-benefits of vehicle electrification. The battery revolution propelled by EV purchases means cheap energy storage to balance intermittent renewables like solar and wind power on our grid, which helps to decarbonize our electricity sector. Cheap batteries also mean we can now have battery-powered transit buses, not to mention e-bikes and e-scooters — some of the emission-reducing technologies hailed in Walker’s piece.
Overall, the article is a helpful reminder that we need to build better neighborhoods and encourage efficient modes of transportation. But we shouldn’t downplay the significance of electric vehicles as a crucial clean technology. In short, EVs are a necessary — but not sufficient — climate-fighting technology.
California law now requires developers of new projects, like apartment buildings, offices, and roads, to reduce the amount of overall driving miles the projects generate. Senate Bill 743 (Steinberg, 2013) authorized this change in the method of analyzing transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), from auto delay to vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
In response to SB 743, some state and local leaders are seeking to create special “banks” or “exchanges” to allow developers to fund off-site projects that reduce VMT, such as new bike lanes, transit, and busways. These options could be useful when the developers lack sufficient on-site mitigation options.
A new report from Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE), Implementing SB 743, provides a comprehensive review of key legal and policy considerations for local and regional agencies tasked with crafting these innovative mechanisms, including:
- Legal requirements under CEQA and Constitutional case law;
- Criteria for mitigation project selection and prioritization;
- Methods to verify VMT mitigation and “additionality”; and
- Measures to ensure equitable distribution of projects.
The report recommends that decision makers launching new VMT banks and exchanges consider including:
- Measures to verify the legitimacy of claimed VMT reductions, as well as their “additionality”;
- Prioritization of individual mitigation projects, in order to ensure that reductions are achieved as quickly and efficiently;
- Rigorous backstops to ensure that disadvantaged communities are not negatively impacted by—and ideally can benefit from—the ability of developers to move mitigation off-site; and
- Demonstration of both a reasonable substantive relationship and financial proportionality between the proposed development and the fee or condition placed on it.
Ultimately, SB 743 implementation will require a range of approaches from jurisdictions of varying sizes, densities, and development patterns throughout California. Local, regional, or even statewide mechanisms may evolve as mitigation programs mature and potential efficiencies are identified. Implementing SB 743 offers a guidebook to agencies and developers navigating the law’s new approach.
For more information, join CLEE’s webinar on Tuesday, October 30th from 10-11am with Governor’s Office of Planning and Research senior planner Chris Ganson and report co-author Ted Lamm and me. You can register for the free webinar today.
California’s legislature may have whiffed this year on SB 827, a comprehensive measure to boost housing near major transit stops this year. But state leaders ended up passing a significant and pioneering bill (now law, with Governor Brown’s signature on Sunday) that forces development on land owned by BART around its rail stations. It could be a precursor to future state efforts to limit local restrictions on development near transit.
AB 2923 (Chiu) requires the BART board to adopt new development standards for height, density, parking, and floor area ratios on land the agency owns within one-half mile of each of its stations. Local governments then have two years to conform their zoning with these standards — or else the standards become de facto land use policy.
The agency standards are limited to some extent, as height can only go as high as a certain percentage of surrounding buildings, and any net loss of parking for commuters has to be addressed through improved access. Furthermore, the parcels have to be owned by BART as of July 1, 2018, so BART can’t go on a buying spree to develop more land down the road.
So why was this law successful where the statewide SB 827 approach failed? Three reasons:
- AB 2923 covers a relatively tiny geographical area, just within the San Francisco Bay Area, thus minimizing potential opposition with a smaller scope (although suburban BART communities certainly freaked out to no avail); see map above;
- It includes mandatory affordable housing requirements for any new housing built under these standards, plus union workforce requirements, bringing two crucial constituencies on board to support it; and
- It only affects BART-owned land of primarily non-residential parking lots, which means there is no risk of displacing existing residents and raising the ire of groups dedicated to protecting low-income renters.
So what’s next? First, opponents are likely to sue to overturn the law, although I don’t think they’ll have a strong legal case given that other state-charted agencies have similar land use authority.
But more importantly, this legislation could encourage other California transit agencies in cities like Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego to request similar land use authority, broadening the scope of its application significantly. Furthermore, it could encourage the state to get more involved in limiting local regulation of land use near transit in general.
So while the legislature did not manage a comprehensive housing fix this term, it may have laid the conceptual foundation with AB 2923 for a new statewide approach to boosting housing near transit.
High housing costs are driven by two factors: increasing demand from a booming economy and lack of new supply to keep up. Now we have data that show how the rising costs are affecting low-income people of color the most in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project and the California Housing Partnership document how rising housing costs between 2000 and 2015 have displaced these populations into new concentrations of poverty and racial segregation in the cheaper outskirts of the region, while prompting many to move out of the area altogether.
As an example from the study:
Between 2000 and 2015, as housing prices rose, the City of Richmond, the Bayview in San Francisco and flatlands areas of Oakland and Berkeley lost thousands of low-income black households. Meanwhile, increases in low-income black households during the same period were concentrated in cities and neighborhoods with lower housing prices—such as Antioch and Pittsburg in eastern Contra Costa County, as well parts of Hayward and the unincorporated communities of Ashland and Cherryland.
What can we do about these trends? Well, there’s little to do on the demand side, in terms of slowing the economy (which will happen during a business cycle downturn at some point anyway). Perhaps there are demand-suppressing options such as taxing vacant property or second homes at higher rates in the meantime. But there are no simple solutions.
So that leaves addressing the supply side, which means building more homes close to jobs (subsidies for affordable housing could help, too, but wouldn’t come close to meeting demand unless in the hundreds of billions dollars). And ironically the solution of building more infill homes is anathema to many advocates against displacement, who worry — sometimes rightly — that infill projects will displace existing low-income renters.
But by wholesale blocking solutions to more infill housing generally, such as SB 827 earlier this year, these same advocates are worsening the problem they care about, as the new data show. Unless we get a handle on high housing costs, the problem will only intensify.
It’s a conundrum that has to be addressed, if the state is ever to fix this economic, moral and environmental crisis brought on by the housing shortage.
As our political divide worsens into tribal camps, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue in a New York Times op-ed that our isolated and over-supervised upbringing is to blame:
But during the 1980s and 1990s, children became ever more supervised, and lost opportunities to learn to deal with risk and with one another. You can see the transformation by walking through almost any residential neighborhood. Gone is the “intricate sidewalk ballet” that the urbanist Jane Jacobs described in 1961 as she navigated around children playing in her Greenwich Village neighborhood. One of us lives in that same neighborhood today. His son, at the age of 9, was reluctant to go across the street to the supermarket on his own. “People look at me funny,” he said. “There are no other kids out there without a parent.”
The result of this isolation is in inability to get along with and respect others of different viewpoints. And it’s no accident that this time period in this research coincides with the rise of suburban sprawl — and the tremendous isolation it brings to children raised in that environment.
A suburban home with an enclosed backyard maximizes convenience for parents. They can supervise their kids outside without fear of strangers intruding or the kids running off, as they’re all safely penned in the backyard. A nice single-family home also provides a quiet respite for the working adult who commutes by car and can therefore the home leave whenever he or she wants for errands, socializing, and the like.
But for children, these backyards stifle the kind of random social interactions and independence that Haidt and Lukianoff cite as necessary for emotional development. And the car-dependent environment means the children lack self-sufficiency and mobility until they get their license and access to an automobile. They’re otherwise completely dependent on caregivers to ferry them around.
It’s yet another argument against the suburban sprawl model — beyond its unsustainable environmental impacts.
