Survey shows Bay Area supports smart growth

Greenbelt Alliance * The Newswire
Volume 1, December 2002

Most Bay Area residents support smart growth solutions to traffic congestion, the lack of affordable housing, and other quality of life issues. That’s the finding of a public opinion survey released in November by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

Overall, PPIC found that California residents believe our quality of life is at serious risk due to traffic congestion, lack of affordable housing, population growth and development, air pollution, and lack of economic opportunities. When it comes to solutions to these problems, however, Bay Area residents showed solid support for a range of smart growth measures:

* Compared to the rest of the state, more Bay Area residents favor living in areas where they can walk to shopping and services (55% v. 44%) and have short commutes (56% to 49%).

* The survey found strong support among Bay Area residents (62%) for steering future development into already developed areas in order to protect open space.

* The survey found Bay Area residents favor spending money on public transit (44%) over highways and roads (35%).

The PPIC survey also showed clear support statewide for having voters decide local land use and development decisions at the ballot box. The PPIC survey confirms what Greenbelt Alliance experiences daily as we tackle the tough quality of life issues: Bay Area residents by and large support sustainable development policies for transportation, affordable housing and other quality of life issues. To view the entire PPIC survey, download it here. Note that this is an Adobe Acrobat file and that it will take some time to download.

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