> >Berkeley Residents Refuse to Do Their Part to Stop Sprawl
> >
> >After a public hearing dominated by negative testimony, the Berkeley
> >Planning Commission has rejected a proposed smart-growth land-use
> >plan for the California city. The plan called for greatly increasing
> >residential densities in order to accommodate 13,000 new people.
> >
> >Planners say that the plan is needed to maintain a walkable community
> >and to "encourage sufficient new construction to meet Berkeley's fair
> >share of regional housing needs." Local residents maintain that the
> >plan will "destroy" Berkeley "by bulldozing neighborhoods and
> >over-building in the name of progress."
> >
> >Among other things, residents objected to the tall buildings allowed
> >by the plan--up to 12 to 14 stories in many places. Height limits
> >were tripled or quadrupled in many neighborhoods. "People would be
> >mystified to wake up and walk down College Avenue"--a busy, narrow
> >thoroughfare surrounded by one- and two-story structures--"and find
> >four-story buildings," commented Nancy Carleton, the chair of
> >Berkeley's zoning board.
> >
> >Much of Berkeley was only recently rezoned. When the planning
> >commission authorized city planners to prepare a new draft plan, they
> >specified that the staff should not "re-invent the wheel." Yet
> >planners emphasized the latest in smart-growth planning:
> >high-density, mixed-use developments.
> >
> >The plan increases densities in much of the city. Residents
> >particularly objected to density increases in popular shopping areas
> >such as Solano Street and Elmwood. These are streets of older store
> >fronts filled with restaurants, boutiques, and other businesses, and
> >are already heavily congested.
> >
> >Local activist Becky O'Malley blames developers for the plan.
> >"Speculators hiding behind the smart-growth banner have started
> >drawing their bullseyes on attractive viable cities like San
> >Francisco and Berkeley," she says.
> >
> >O'Malley admits that the smart-growth goals and strategies identified
> >in the plan are "laudable." But she says that, "What it should say,
> >however, is that 'we're proposing a massive increase in population
> >and density for much of Berkeley, and we want to build some really
> >tall buildings all over town to make it possible.'" That, of course,
> >is what smart growth is all about.
> >
> >The plan to provide for 13,000 new residents flies in the face of
> >Berkeley's downward population trends. The city declined from more
> >than 114,000 residents in 1970 to 102,000 in 1990. But planners say
> >that inner-city neighborhoods need to accept their fair share of
> >newcomers to minimize urban sprawl.
> >
> >"In Berkeley we've done our 'fair share' decades ago," says O'Malley.
> >"We're the third densest city in the Bay Area, right behind San
> >Francisco and Emeryville."
> >
> >The pressure to increase densities comes from the booming Silicon
> >Valley combined with numerous legal restrictions placed on growth by
> >other cities in the Bay Area. These restrictions have slowed
> >suburbanization, so new residents are willing to accept higher
> >densitis. But existing residents don't like it.
> >
> >Berkeley residents have a long history of opposing further density
> >increases. In the 1970s, the city council passed the Neighborhood
> >Preservation Ordinance, which prevented developers from building
> >multi-family housing in single-family neighborhoods. Although four
> >BART stations have been located in Berkeley for decades, UC city
> >planning professor Robert Cervero notes that these BART stations have
> >seen little transit-oriented development. This is mainly, Cervero
> >laments, due to opposition from NIMBYs.
> >
> >The problem facing residents of Berkeley is similar to that faced by
> >people in Portland and other citie that adopted zoning codes decades
> >ago. Originally conceived as a way to preserve neighborhoods from
> >unwanted intrusions by businesses or high-density residential,
> >residents have come to accept existing zones as their right. In areas
> >that don't have zoning, such as Houston and many Sun Belt
> >communities, people rely on protective covenants to achieve the same
> >result.
> >
> >Planners now want to rezone neighborhoods to explicitly allow or even
> >force business and density intrusions. Strict libertarians argue that
> >zoning is an unnecessary government intrustion. But if zoning had not
> >existed, many neighborhoods would have used covenants or other tools
> >to protect themselves. Simply eliminating or loosening zoning today
> >represents a betrayal of neighborhood values and expectations.
> >
> >Based on objections raised at a September 8 hearing, the Berkeley
> >Planning Commission voted to order planners to start over. The
> >Berkeley plan shows once again that smart growth plans can create a
> >sense of community--by bringing together people to oppose them. The
> >only positive thing said about the plan at the hearing was that it
> >"was a fabulous organizing tool."
> >
> >The draft Berkeley plan is available online at
>http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/advplan/genplan/draftgp3.html.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again."
--J.M. Keynes -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley; Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives. Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones (510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes http://econ161.berkeley.edu/ <delong at econ.berkeley.edu>