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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

May 25, 2006

A red flag against sprawl

BAY AREA

The report was immediately criticized as alarmist by the Home Builders Association of Northern California, which said most of the region remains undeveloped, and policies that limit growth have made the region's housing prices unaffordable for too many.

Both sides agree that the Bay Area's population is expected to grow dramatically, by as much as 1.7 million people by 2030.

How to accommodate those new people is in dispute, with groups such as the Greenbelt Alliance hoping to steer growth as much as possible to urban areas and developers saying the available land supply is not nearly adequate.

Tom Steinbach, the Greenbelt Alliance's executive director, said the good news is that anti-sprawl policies adopted by local jurisdictions helped to reduce the amount of "threatened'' land by 13 percent, or 62,000 acres, since the group's last survey in 2000.

Also on the positive side, the report says, is that 1,007,200 acres of open space are now permanently protected from development, a 27 percent increase since 2000. Such land is protected by land trusts and state parks, and the sale of development rights for conservation purposes.

"The region is doing better than it was in 2000, but 400,000 acres is still an enormous amount of land at risk,'' Steinbach said.

There is a total of nearly 4.5 million acres in the Bay Area, of which 761,400 acres are urbanized, according to the report. The Alliance surveyed San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Continued sprawl will worsen traffic, consume open space and make housing more unaffordable, the Greenbelt Alliance contends.

Areas were defined as urban using maps from the state's Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Project if they had a density of at least one residential unit per 1.5 acres, or the equivalent density of commercial or industrial development, said Greenbelt Alliance spokeswoman Elizabeth Stampe.

The report said that 125,200 acres of open space is at "high risk" of development in the next 10 years and 276,200 more acres is at "medium risk" of development in the next 10 and 30 years.

The Alliance defined "high risk" as land close to urban areas and transportation designated for development. Land at medium risk has the same factors but is generally farther from urban areas.

About 2.29 million acres are not likely to be developed in the next 30 years because of long-term policies or because the land is not conducive to development.

Greenbelt Alliance applauded conservation policies such as the urban limit lines adopted by Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and the cities of Benicia, Fairfield, Rohnert Park, Sonoma and San Jose. Some Bay Area communities confront sprawl by imposing boundaries on growth with the idea of halting growth at the edge of a community and turning it inward.

"If the Bay Area is to accommodate growth sustainably, the region's cities and counties must work together to focus development in existing urbanized areas and to improve transit access and housing affordability,'' the report states.

Joseph Perkins, president of the Homebuilders Association of Northern California, expressed exasperation when told of the Greenbelt Alliance report.

"I have a fundamental problem with urban limit lines. They artificially restrict land use, which makes it more difficult to build affordable housing,'' Perkins said.

Developing 125,200 acres over the next 10 years -- as Greenbelt Alliance fears will probably happen -- would be perfectly acceptable, he said.

"That's really not a horrible thing given what kind of growth we can expect,'' Perkins said.

Perkins cited a 2005 study by John Landis, chair of the city planning department at UC Berkeley, that found that urban infill alone can accommodate only a quarter of the growth anticipated in the state, with fewer opportunities in the Bay Area than in Southern California.

"The fact is we are going to continue to build in suburbia to meet the demands of the region's growing population and growing employment base," he said.

The alliance's survey showed that the greatest pressure to develop open space has shifted for the first time to Solano County, followed by Sonoma County, Contra Costa County and Santa Clara County.

Coincidentally, the Santa Clara County registrar of voters announced Wednesday that backers of an open space protection initiative appeared to have collected enough valid signatures to put their measure on the November ballot.

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BAY AREA LANDS AT RISK

High risk: 125,200 acres likely to be developed in the next 10 years. Buildable terrain, close to urban areas and transportation, designated for development in a city or county general plan or the subject of development speculation.

Medium risk: 276,200 acres likely to be developed in the next 10 to 30 years. Same factors, but to a lesser degree. Generally farther from urban areas.

Low risk: 2.29 million acres not likely to be developed in the next 30 years. Either protected by long term policies or physically not conducive to development.

Urban: Areas were defined as urban if they had a density of at least one residential unit per 1.5 acres, or the equivalent density of commercial or industrial development.

Source: Greenbelt Alliance

E-mail Patrick Hoge at phoge@sfchronicle.com.

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