Fight Global Warming By Stopping Sprawl, Group Says: ClimatePlan Urges Cities to Cut Greenhouse Gases By Planning Housing Closer to Stores

By Erik N. Nelson, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Sep. 21–OAKLAND — California can boost its fight against global warming while cutting time, fuel and money wasted in traffic congestion if its local governments revamp sprawl-promoting planning policies, a newly formed coalition of environmental and “smart” planning groups declared Thursday.

For a quarter century, local governments have promoted and subsidized vast islands of tract houses in one place, office parks and shopping malls in another and miles of expensive roadways and other infrastructure linking them, notes the first report by ClimatePlan, a group of nine primarily environmental groups that includes the Oakland-based Transportation and Land Use Coalition, the National Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club.

“This trend of poorly planned growth — sprawl — forces Californians to spend more time behind the steering wheel each year,” the report says.

Although this problem of sprawl-created congestion and environmental degradation has seemed intractable for decades, the groups hope that the “political climate change” behind reducing greenhouse gases could spur real changes in the way Californians build and redevelop their communities.

“There should be so much new money available if they want to do it right,” said Stuart Cohen, executive director of TALC.

Even a small portion of the $20 billion or so in transportation funds doled out by the legislature and the California Transportation Commission each year could reward such local jurisdictions, he said.

The new group — which also helped present a national growth-altering strategy in the nation’s capital Thursday — seeks statewide policy to encourage development patterns that minimize vehicle trips made by residents of new developments.

The idea is similar to the way San Bernardino County altered its development policy after settling a global warming lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in April.

While that sort of enforcement action helps, “you can’t get there if you do this on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis,” said Tom Adams of the California League of Conservation Voters.

San Bernardino officials lamented after the settlement that they only control about 15 percent of buildable land use, and municipalities within the county control the rest.

The connection between planning and greenhouse gas emissions is simple, say members of the ClimatePlan.

Residents of communities designed with services, work opportunities and convenient public transit drive one-third as much as their counterparts in traditional sprawl development, the group stated.

While there is a lot of traditional support for sprawling, distinct housing developments, demographic trends are moving people toward different housing choices, Cohen said.

“Only 27 percent of families are the standard, children-at-home-with-two-parents,” he said, adding that young couples and a burgeoning number of baby boom empty-nesters are gravitating toward smaller, easier-to-maintain housing that is close to transit and shops.

The state’s landmark AB32 law setting targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions might have the power to foster increases in the use of more fuel efficient cars, which emit less of the heat-trapping gases, but it is virtually powerless to control residential and commercial growth patterns.

“California land use is under the exclusive jurisdiction of local government,” Adams said. “We need to encourage local government to use their land use to further our climate objectives.”

Local governments subsidize an average of $20,000 of infrastructure costs needed for every new home built in sprawling suburban subdivisions, said Amanda Eaken, a policy expert with the NRDC.

The state of Maryland, considered the birthplace of anti-sprawl “smart” growth, has passed laws to reward more compact, mixed-use development where people can walk to shops, school and work, she said, “and suddenly, the developers are not seeing sprawl development pencil out anymore.”

One of the first steps toward coaxing local governments to foster more compact growth will be the passage of SB75, which requires the smog-regulating California Air Resources Board to set regional emissions targets.

But that bill’s rocky history — it barely survived this year’s legislative calendar — may be an indicator of just how difficult changing land-use policies will be.

“Local government is going to respond — and has responded — pretty negatively to the state getting involved in land use policies,” said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which supports the bill.

“Part of that is just theological,” Rentschler said. “It doesn’t matter what the issue is, it doesn’t matter if the state is on the right side or the wrong side, local government doesn’t want the state involved in how to zone their land.”

Reach Erik Nelson of the Oakland Tribune at 510-208-6410 or enelson@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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