THE METROPOLITAN BAKERSFIELD GENERAL PLAN

This is only one viewpoint of the effort, or lack of it, regarding this “metropolitan Bakersfield general plan update” The report maintains status quo. It continues a quiet slide through the soft murmurs of having to do something “only” to comply. The report responds to the State of California legal requirements. In this case the result for our region will be uneventful.

Its proponents who are hoping to avert any “public noise” through the public participation process are backing this regional plan almost in silence. The plan ventures through few new policies to resolve the future built region we are moving, slowly but surely into.

For example consider the good idea of Jenny Gia-Briggs -- simply apply the concept of a Green Belt. Quote “This Belt would define once and for all the City of Bakersfield’s boundaries, allowing development within them, but not past them. The Green Belt reigns in development, creating an area of protected land (yes! protected land!) and allows citizens and decision-makers to focus on their city as a defined entity. Developers could develop, drivers could drive, farmers could burn, leaf blowers could blow, but eventually, because the city’s limits would be described absolutely by the Green Belt and therefore could be scrutinized more thoughtfully, intelligent changes could be made.”

This suggestion would require a better land use definition for agriculture. To implement such maybe the ”Green Belt” should be rather formed much like a quilt. Such a pattern should create patches of “Green Spaces” thus giving rise to interconnected corners. This simple introduction should create a better balance for cleaning our air. At the same time these “green space lungs” which rather penetrate the city than surround it, should provide a continuous yet meandering path linkage throughout our future city. Small farming cooperation in these “green” areas should be required. This should most be productive for urban and rural communities. Imagine a farming and suburban community respectfully sharing such a green resource? Imagine having enough green space downtown to encourage more intensive residential designs?

Consider that shortly in September 2002, the San Diego City Council is scheduled to vote on "City of Villages," the new "strategic framework element" of the city’s general plan. Designed to provide a foundation for revising the city's 1970s general plan, City of Villages makes all the usual politically correct statements about promoting smart-growth ideas. “Smart Growth” according to William Fulton, “may be a good idea. It may even be the only way to accommodate future growth in. California. But it is still a long way from being smoothly implemented — not just because of skeptical NIMBYs or reluctant financiers, but also because it is swimming upstream against 80 years of California planning and development law.

After working with William Pereira on a Master Plan for the Irvine Company in the early 1970’s and having presented a ”Village Concept” which was unanimously approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors, and then accomplishing the same here in a smaller sense with Kern County Board of Supervisors with the Rosedale Villages, it is the seriousness of the implementation problems over a decade or more that needs attention. One cannot underline more our need for better stewardship of our regional community’s future. What must we consider as essential in making decisions about our spaces, over a time period, which will create positive values?

My observation of urban master planning is that we are eager and willing starters but terrible doers and finishers. We cannot stay the course and interpret guidelines suggested in our general plan documents. No amount of EIR’s are going to protect a General Plan that does not have a pragmatic vision of how to reach a better designed urban world. Confronting inexorable change we need a steadfastness of strategies to reach toward better city building. This culture needs to be handed down to the next generation, and should reveal a thread of discernable and continuous series of actions and decisions by those we entrust -- the POLITBURO to balance our man made culture of building with our indigenous deserts natural environment.

Unfortunately for all of us involved with such desires we are unwilling to really examine the core of our problems -- transportation and “infrastructure development.” Although we all very much dislike the thought of eminent domain powers which attempts to resolve old downtown “Blight,“ we forget that these powers are also used to forge new transportation corridors for transportation, We must also realize that our innate need for the current mobility devours 40 percent of our lands. Imagine if we ended our struggle for open space by achieving the same proportionate land use for “Green Spaces”.

Our collective failure in implementing city plans can be laid openly somewhat on a separation of professional disciplines working together. The remarkable effort of the amateurish yet spirited 2020 Vision has trickled into some policy revisions in the proposed Metropolitan Bakersfield General Plan. However our bureaucrats have minimized the effort with a lack of vigor toward these policies. It is much easier for bureaucrats to take a softer more compromising path between the citizens and the politicians for any future plan.

The spoken and written words about “urban planning” will never cease. When will actions of all speak louder in the realization of the building of our cities? It is ultimately up to all the citizens to make the difference. From school children, teenagers, young grads, young singles, young families, and seniors, we have left the thinking to our elected and appointed officials. We can all make real changes in the places where we live. But how can we do this for the “green spaces” in our future?

BY Graham Kaye-Eddie – Master Urban Designer.

Makabusi Inc. – Bakersfield – California

Email – makabusi@pacbell.net

Measuring Downtown's Future

The first step toward developing the World Trade Center site, no matter how cautious, will call for a long-range view of what Lower Manhattan can and should be.

A Second Chance for Downtown

New York has a unique opportunity to use the WTC rebuilding effort to spark the revival of an aging Downtown. Aug 11 -- National Real Estate Investor

Smog heads for the hills

Bad air smothers ideas of a mountain escape as park gets more ozone than Fresno County. Smog heads for the hills

Beyond Merger:A Competitive Vision for the Regional City of Louisville

In early 2003, the City of Louisville, KY and Jefferson County will officially merge to form the 16th largest city in the country. It will be the first major city-county consolidation since 1970. This report examines the key trends facing the new Regional City of Louisville and finds that the city faces two major challenges that are eroding its strengths. First, it has a workforce that is limited in size and skills that will hamper the city's ability to mature its low-wage, service economy to a higher-wage one. Second, the region is growing in a decentralized and divided way that will ultimately harm the area's quality of life and hinder low-income households' access to opportunities. The report mounts a call to action to Louisville's strong civic, community, and political community to use the moment of merger to think boldly and pursue a competitive agenda that will help the city emerge as a truly top-tier American city.

Remember the congratulatory pat's on the back when the Board of Supervisors and the City Council met in joint session to suggest to the citizens that they should seriously act together for their constituents on regional matters of importance? What do you find in the Metropolitan Bakersfield General Plan that positive change will come into being?

La Dolce Vita, Internet Style

Colletta di Castelbianco is a 13th-century Italian village that was on the verge of extinction -- until an architect gave it a new design and Internet connectivity gave it a new lease on life. The story of how it became a haven for mobile professionals.

BUILDING HOMES ON SHAKY GROUND

When one geologist says not to build, developers find another geologist that says everything is fine. Aug 12 -- Los Angeles Times

One hears whispers every now and again. One wishes that ear plugs were near by when a trusted colleague suggests a fatal flaw in the land planning design. A much respected geologist suggested that the Tejon Ranch was moving ahead with a large residential development on their property located in Los Angles County overlooking a lake, without recognizing the adjacency of a major earthquale fault line. OH, well, like the above development story who will notice until it's too late!

Uneasy riders of Baltimore

Scooters: They were outlawed from the streets two years ago, but commuters are riding them anyway, and a city councilman wants to end the ban.

Study finds sprawling Calif. cities have most pedestrian deaths

A HREF="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20020813-1925-ca-pedestriandeathsstudy.html">"Topping the list of the most dangerous locales are the counties of Solano, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Contra Costa and San Joaquin. The rankings were based on the number of injuries and deaths per capita and the levels of pedestrian activity within those counties. A key similarity among the most dangerous cities with populations of at least 100,000, is a hastily advancing sprawl of homes and businesses which has been built without making pedestrian safety a priority, said James Corless, California director of the transportation group."

Further Designs Are Sought in Rebuilding of Downtown

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will conduct a competition to hire as many as five licensed architecture or planning firms to offer new ideas for the World Trade Center site.

San Diego Finds The Easy Route Does Not Lead To ‘Smart Growth’

In September, the San Diego City Council is scheduled to vote on "City of Villages," the new "strategic framework element" of the city’s general plan. Designed to provide a foundation for revising the city's 1970s general plan, City of Villages makes all the usual politically correct statements about promoting smart-growth ideas.

Like most vision-style planning efforts, this one contains a lot of platitudes about environmental protection, affordable housing, equity and prosperity, and public transit. The document acknowledges that San Diego is mostly built out — only 12% of its 331 square miles remains undeveloped — and proposes that most new growth be teased out of existing neighborhoods by turning them into "villages" with higher density housing and a greater variety of public facilities. Also, not surprisingly, San Diego's planners are trumpeting the effort as a triumph of public participation — a process that used workshops and focus groups to bring residents around to the conclusion that growth is inevitable, so it's a question of how rather than if.

But the most impressive — and challenging — part of the City of Villages effort is the way the city is attempting to face the implementation question head-on. On the one hand, the city is arguing that a New Urbanist-style vision is probably the only way to accommodate an estimated population increase of 200,000 people between now and 2020. On the other hand, the city has recognized that this approach will not be successful without some big changes in the way development and public investment occurs in San Diego. Changing those longstanding practices will not be easy.

San Diego has been at the forefront of growth management since the 1970s, when Mayor Pete Wilson -- then regarded as a national leader in the field -- promoted a set of policies seeking to re-direct growth from rural areas to existing urban areas. He also called for a set of strategies to permit conventional suburban development in certain areas, especially in the 12,000-acre North County Future Urbanizing Area. He also insisted that development bear the full cost of infrastructure there. This strategy, embodied in the 1979 "Progress Guide and General Plan," worked in some ways and backfired in others.

First, the whole strategy drove more growth than expected into existing areas, which put a burden on existing infrastructure and cut into support for the idea of redeveloping existing neighborhoods. Second, as development proposals came through the pipeline, densities in the North County Future Urbanizing Area dropped below expected levels — down to 2 to 3 units per acre.

On top of that, other considerations reduced the amount of housing to less than the levels specified by the 1979 General Plan. The environmental impact report on City of Villages does not provide a specific estimate of units lost due to downzoning, but suggests that the number is in the thousands. Implementation of the Multi-Species Conservation Plan (required by the Endangered Species Act) converted 3,700 acres from urban to open space use in the plans, resulting in a loss of more than 6,500 units from the plan. In addition, new school construction appears likely to cost between 600 and 1,000 additional units, either by removing existing units or by using up land that would otherwise go for housing.

The end result is that San Diego's planners estimate that, if the 1979 General Plan is built out, it will fall 17,000 units short of the total number required to accommodate growth in the city by 2020. City of Villages is designed to figure out how to make up that gap, and do so in the context of improving neighborhoods. The plan also piggybacks on an already good public transit system that is likely to get better.

City of Villages calls for a strengthening of neighborhoods, especially those that accommodate higher-density housing, by creatively deploying public infrastructure. For example, the plan encourages joint use of public facilities by schools, libraries, and other public institutions in order to consume less land. At the same time, however, the document bluntly acknowledges that this strategy will require an investment of no less than $2.5 billion in new public facilities, and an institutional rearrangement that stretches California’s current planning and governance system to the limit.

City officials are already talking about a "quality of life" bond to finance the needed infrastructure upgrades. But not right away. The first item on the list is to move forward on a series of pilot projects designed to prove that the City of Villages idea can work in neighborhoods outside of downtown. These pilot villages will get a whole variety of development incentives. Furthermore, City of Villages calls for another pilot effort to create a "Model Urban School," that takes advantage of joint use to conserve land and work a school into the urban fabric of the transitional, but well-organized, City Heights neighborhood. The proposal calls for the demolition of 245 hours and then the construction of a school, a park, and 350 units of replacement housing.

This might sound good to the smart growth crowd, but implementation will be difficult. To move the Model Urban School program forward, the city and other government agencies in San Diego are asking the Legislature for a bill allowing them to create a new kind of joint powers authority. In so doing, these entities are running up against well-established rules of governance in California, and they are not likely to change those rules without a fight.

To support the Model Urban School idea, Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has introduced AB 2867. The bill would create a special joint powers authority in City Heights that would include the city, the school district, the redevelopment agency, the housing authority, and the housing commission. The bill passed the Assembly and made it out of the Senate Local Government Committee on August 7. But virtually all the things San Diego asked for ran into criticism from the legislative staff because they conflict with existing laws and practices.

For example, the bill called for the new entity to inherit the eminent domain powers of the redevelopment agency, which are more expansive than the eminent domain powers of the other agencies. Typically, JPAs can hold only that authority that all of its members hold. In this case, the legislative staff's conclusion was that this would give the school district more eminent domain power.

Similarly, the bill would have relieved the JPA of the typical redevelopment agency obligations for low and moderate income housing set-aside and replacement. Apparently, the idea is that the entity should have greater flexibility to introduce a variety of housing types into the City Heights neighborhood, which is mostly poor. Again, this ran into concern on the part of the legislative staff. The bill was also amended after it passed the Assembly to exempt the JPA from state school siting rules, raising process concerns on the part of the legislative counsel.

Kehoe accepted the most recent amendments the legislative staff recommended. But it is difficult to say whether the Model Urban School project — or, indeed, City of Villages generally — can advance quickly without a major effort to change or evade most existing rules regarding planning and governance in California.

Therein lies the rub: Smart growth may be a good idea. It may even be the only way to accommodate future growth in coastal California. But it is still a long way from being smoothly implemented — not just because of skeptical NIMBYs or reluctant financiers, but also because it is swimming upstream against 80 years of California planning and development law.

By William Fulton

© 2002 - California Planning & Development Report

Water

This in-depth cover story reports on several disturbing, simultaneous water trends taking place across the country. The first is that long-neglected mains and pipes, many more than a century old, are reaching the end of their life span. Also, providing water free of disease and toxins has become more difficult, as old methods prove inadequate and new hazards emerge. Shortages have become common in many regions, as record drought and population sprawl sap rivers and aquifers. Finally, there's the threat of terrorism, and it is draining water resources.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020812/biztech/12water.htm

TEA-21

The U.S. Department of Transportation has launched a website to solicit input from people as part of reauthorizing the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). U.S. DOT is now working with Congress, state and local officials, and other stakeholders to develop its proposals to take to the Office of Management and Budget after Labor Day. Visit http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reauthorization/ and submit your comments by August 30.

Transportation California

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced the launch of a new prepaid pass that planners hope will usher in more efficient travel on buses and trains countywide. The MTA's Regional EZPass will go on sale Aug. 25, available at MTA transit centers, officials at the agency said. ("MTA Launches Prepaid Monthly Ride Passes, 8/14, LA Times) http://www.latimes.com

Open Space California

Citing statistics that Los Angeles ranks last among major cities in per capita open space, a coalition of private and public organizations announced plans to form a nonprofit urban land trust to develop and manage neighborhood parks. Much of the land trust's focus will be on the city's poorest areas. ("Land Trust Formed to Build and Run Parks;" 8/14, LA Times) http://www.latimes.com

New Design Ideas Sought to Rebuild Trade Center Site

Memorial: Unhappy with initial plans, N.Y. officials seek inspiration from around the globe.

Consumers Turn to Trial Lawyers

Financial host Daria Dolan asked her guests on WOR in New York: "What is the most sued company in the U.S.?" Both guests replied immediately: "Ford." But they were wrong. The right answer? Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest employer.

"The evolution of the trial lawyers into a quasi-governmental agency is an important story that has gone virtually unnoticed by the national media...........Plaintiff's lawyers tell Insight that a secretive "committee" of senior trial lawyers guides personal-injury and class-action lawsuits such as those pending against Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone..............In the face of this official indifference, it may be that the current system of state law and class-action litigation may be the only solution available to consumers. ..........Robert Rabin, a Stanford law professor and liability expert, says Ford and Firestone are likely to continue settling rollover cases to avoid huge and highly publicized jury awards that could trigger more lawsuits..........

First Maglev Transportation System in the Country Moves Closer to Reality

".. to straighten and level the track – a process that will make the ride smoother and quieter ... Construction on three stations across campus, each with an elevator and staircase, is underway. .."

For all the politburo's in California --- especially Ron Brummet of KCOG --- get a ticket to Norfolk, Vigina, and take a ride!

Beyond Cinerama Dome

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW The ArcLight center is refreshingly comfortable, if not groundbreaking By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Are concerts killing music?

Violinist David Lasserson says it's time to rethink the traditional classical performance

TINKERERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

3000 exhibitors at the National Hardware Show, which runs in the McCormickPlace Exhibition Center

Zimbabwe whispers

"Even the stooges" who oppose his hard-line rule will share in the food that Zimbabwe is importing to cope with its growing shortages, President Robert Mugabe said in his annual Heroes Day address. His regime has been accused of denying food to people who voted against him in last March's disputed election. Without specifying their fate, Mugabe also vowed that 2,900 white farmers who defied his order to surrender their properties to landless blacks by last Thursday would be off the land "by the time the rains come" - usually meaning November.

The Northeast spends most to finance public education

Washington, D.C., isn't a state, but "the district" is tops in the nation when it comes to spending per pupil, new Census Bureau figures show. Utah spent least: $4,331 per student in the 1999-2000 school year. The 10 states (plus Washington) with the largest education budgets, according to the 2000 Census:

1. Washington, D.C. $10,836

2. New Jersey 10,283

3. New York 10,039

4. Connecticut 8,800

5. Alaska 8,743

6. Massachusetts 8,444

7. Rhode Island 8,242

8. Delaware 8,030

9. Vermont 7,938

10. Pennsylvania 7,824

California's latest 'car' trend: golf carts for the road

The idea isn't to get rid of cars, just to provide an alternative for short, local trips. By Eric C. Evarts