California is one of the largest states geographically. It’s also the most populous state in the country. So while California has lots of acreage, it also means there’s tons of people living here. As a native Californian, I’ve lived in/traveled to three cities/metro areas in the state: Sacramento, San Francisco, and of course, Los Angeles. I’ve also lived elsewhere, including the Washington, D.C. area, and I’ve seen how these places have changed over time. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen the effects of unchecked growth and rampant sprawl in these urban areas, and it troubles me.

This past Sunday, in the San Francisco Chronicle, an article written by developer Joseph Perkins (a piece which probably should have been clearly marked and stuck in the Op-Ed section) discusses the need for the Bay Area “to rethink rules on land use” and zoning.

Perkins begins with an authoritative tone, and figures and facts intended to lead the reader into thinking that there is an alarming problem:

The Association of Bay Area Governments projects that the nine-county Bay Area region will add nearly 1.5 million residents by 2030.

Yes, it’s true that the population will continue to grow in the San Francisco Bay Area, just as it will here in the Los Angeles metro area, the DC metro area, California’s Central Valley, and in countless urban and metropolitan areas nationwide.

Perkins then posits the question that he will address in the remainder of his piece:

How and where is the Bay Area going to house its additional 1.5 million residents?

This is a good question, and is a question all of us are going to have to consider, regardless of where we live. So far, so good. But Perkins points to a major part of the problem– he feels that anti-housing activists have obstructed growth, and prevented solutions from coming to the fore. As Perkins puts it,

Yet the no-growth, anti-housing environmental alliance continues … arguing that the Bay Area is “built out,” … that Bay Area home builders have paved paradise and put up a subdivision.

This is where Perkins and I begin to disagree. While I agree that “no growth” is an impossible ideal, I do think quite a few areas around the country are “built” out, and that home builders definitely have paved paradise. To be fair, a newspaper article or Op-Ed piece is a very limited place to explore what is a far more complex issue. But it’s also a lot less simplistic than Perkins would like to pretend it is.

Let’s look at the history and geography for a few moments. Historically, people built their towns and villages near resources. These needs included sources of potable water, easy trade routes (whether by land or water), and arable land and pastures. There also needed to be materials for building homes and businesses, whether the construction was done with wood, stone, or other durable components.

As these hamlets grew into towns, and the towns grew into small cities, more and more natural resources were needed; increased amounts of water, more acres of farmland and pastures, more wood and other building materials, and additional staples.

Over time, many natural resources waxed and waned, but as the population grew, these raw materials slowly became more finite. Since the dawn of the Industrial Age over 200 years ago, the consumption rate has skyrocketed along with the population: a planet that held roughly 1 million people in 1800, and was not yet fully “explored” (take a look at the maps back then– Africa’s borders were detailed, but the center was still not filled in– California was, until the near the end of the Spanish Empire, considered an island.) has now expanded to a world that holds over 6 billion people. China and India alone account for one-third of that total (it’s estimated that China alone accounts for about 20% of the world’s current population).

When you consider that the amount of arable land on the planet was limited to begin with, the shrinking acreage should be a concern for all of us. Deforestation has been a huge problem over the centuries; Spain is an interesting example. While the Iberian peninsula was never a lush green paradise to begin with, it was heavily deforested over the centuries, especially during the Roman era and the period afterwards. Today, Spain contains the only real “desert” in Europe; the semi-desert region of Tabernas, in Almeria (this is where Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns were filmed). While this region didn’t develop due to deforestation, large swaths of Spain are arid, sparsely forested acres.

This isn’t a problem just in Spain; portions of Russia are starting to suffer from deforestation and desertification as well. It’s happening elsewhere too– as the Amazon Basin is rapidly clear-cut, the poor soil is overworked by farmers and ranchers, and then abandoned. While nature will eventually reclaim her own, it will take many generations before the land returns to a shadow of what it once was.

Here in the United States, the virgin forest that once covered the eastern third of the nation has been gone for ages now. Urban regions have grown where there once was farmland. Perkins neglects to mention this in his piece. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, the orchards and fields of the Santa Clara Valley are today the office complexes, warehouses, parking lots, factories, and McMansions of Silicon Valley. The rivers and marshes have been drained and built over (with potentially disastrous consequences during earthquakes– such areas are far too unstable and have led to enormous damages– witness San Francisco’s Marina district, for example). The fields, groves, and orchards of communities like Dublin, Walnut Creek, and Livermore exist no more; in their place are massive subdivisions.

The same is true here in Los Angeles. During the 1920s, the San Fernando Valley had ranches, citrus and olive groves, and dairy farms. The orange groves and strawberry fields in Orange County were plentiful as late as the 1950s. But gradually over the decades, as the metropolis expanded, annexing numerous communities along the way, these agricultural and rural areas vanished. Today there are still patches and plots here and there, but they are largely ghostly remnants of a past that cannot return. “Paving paradise” doesn’t necessarily have to be about destroying parks and green hills; it can also be about destroying arable land– land that contains topsoil that can never be regained.

This is part of the problem that the San Francisco Bay Area faces, along with other such regions nationwide. Water is another part of the equation. There’s only so much water, and there hasn’t been “new” water since the Earth formed. When you add in measures such as flood control, you end up with problems such as soil erosion, the risks of living in historical flood plains, and the loss of nutrients that flooding can bring to the soil (ancient Egypt flourished thanks to the annual flooding of the Nile, and so did the regions along the Ganges, the Tigris and Euprhates, and China’s Yellow River). Areas that are overdeveloped beyond their carrying capacity (such as Las Vegas and practically all of Arizona) will face severe problems as the amount of potable water becomes scarce.

We are all going to have to explore alternative solutions. Desalination, relaxation of flood control, recycling treated wastewater are possible solutions for our water woes. Building more apartments, developing cities with grid patterns again, constructing and encouraging mass transit, and building smaller and taller homes are ideas we should be exploring to reduce sprawl and maximize land use.

But I digress (slightly!)… Back to Perkins. He reveals a “secret”: “Only 16 percent of the region’s land area has been developed.”

Yep, and the remainder are places like Golden Gate Park, the Marin headlands, the Coast Ranges, and other places of beauty, natural reserves, and often, impractical places to build (see yesterday’s post on the foolhardiness of building in areas such as canyons, ridgetops, and other fun places prone to wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes– the Oakland Hills are a perfect example). Not practical, not realistic, and not going to happen, Mr. Perkins.

But again, we reach a point where I sort of agree with Perkins. He notes that environmental groups

…suggest that most of 1.5 million additional residents expected in the Bay Area over the next quarter century can be accommodated by smaller-scale, infill housing development.

No, that can’t happen either. This is a problem everywhere. Everyone thinks of solutions and lot of people jump and say, “Infill!” The problem with infill is that the infrastructure is already present, and often operating at capacity. Sure, you can build a bunch of apartments (or more likely, overpriced condos) on a parcel of land in an already developed area, but you can’t widen the streets or add roads. You likely already have a limited amount of water for that area, and an electrical grid that is most likely already operating above and beyond its specifications. Infill is a lovely idea, but it’s also a potential recipe for disaster. It also removes potential parks, gardens, and other public areas from the table– spaces that can add to the regional quality of life.

Perkins closes his article by stating that the environmentalists’ desire to “add an additional 1 million acres of land to the inventory of permanent space over the next three decades,” a decision that will “damp[en] housing production in this region… further escalating Bay Area home prices, and … making the dream of home ownership that much more unattainable for the next generation of Bay Area residents.”

Just as I don’t buy infill as a solution, I also don’t buy this argument. Sure, the Bay Area, among many other places, has exorbitant housing prices. But the outlying regions are being overrun with new houses that are also over-appreciating rapidly as well. Developments that started in the “low 200,000’s” several years back ramped up to values nearly twice as much just a handful of years later. Regardless of where you live in California (and in many other places: the Boston-New York-Washington megalopolis, the L.A. area, or any number of other highly desirable urban areas nationwide), the number of people that can realistically afford to buy a house has dropped sharply over the years.

Now that the bottom is falling out of the housing market, quite a few homes are now languishing on the market. Building new houses on additional acreage is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would be far wiser to first let the market correct itself, and re-fill these homes at prices that are far more sane. That of course is another problem, one that Perkins touches on briefly (but fails to go into too much depth about): overpricing and a free-for-all sponsored by banks and lenders. Greed has spiraled, leading landlords to push for condo conversions, and developers to push for more McMansions and cookie-cutter developments in suburban tracts. Greed has spiraled, leading lenders to push ridiculous mortgage loans into the hands of people who financially were better off not buying at all. Now the foreclosures and defaults occurring are depressing the market, which in turn is depressing the economy. Greed has spiraled, allowing investors and so-called flippers to overreach; these folks are now suffering the backlash. We haven’t seen the end yet; excess inventory in some markets (witness the glut of condos in Florida) means developers are going to be stuck with quite a few empty houses and condos for some time yet.

I could continue; there’s a lot to say on this subject. But I’m going to wrap things up by stating that I think things aren’t black and white, and they can’t be. I’m as much an environmentalist as any of the environmentalists out there. But I’m also a wee bit more realistic than some. Until the world can get a grip on its population woes, there’s going to have to be some creativity on the part of all interested parties. That means those of us that want to preserve the land are going to have to give a little and get a little. “No growth” is not a realistic goal. “Slow” or “controlled” growth is far more realistic and pragmatic.

Developers will have to give as well. There can’t be rampant over-development of huge parcels of land, and there certainly can’t be more cul-de-sacs and other hallmarks of suburbia. In a 21st century world, we need to move beyond the fantasy of 20th-century life, and declare suburbia dead. There needs to be a stronger balance between the environmental and physical needs of the population, and that means developers need to actually plan, not just throw up a bunch of houses made out of ticky-tacky. This means working with cities and regions on a large-scale smart growth plan.

Cities and local governments are also going to have to stop the political infighting, the bickering, the jostling over revenues, taxes, and other “benefits” of development. The hard choices surrounding development that developers and officials face revolve around infrastructure. Going back to the Bay Area as an example, when BART was first proposed, each county had to vote on whether to participate in the development and support of mass transit. Santa Clara and San Mateo counties chose not to participate; thus BART was never extended past Fremont or Daly City for years. San Jose finally “woke up” and has a light rail system in place, and BART was recently extended to the San Francisco airport, but the fallout remains.

Here in L.A., the bus system isn’t bad, but we blew it by not planning our infrastructure as well as we could. Greed prevailed, allowing the automobile and oil industries to collaborate to destroy the famed “Red Car” system and instead push for the expansion and development of the freeways. Now we’re in the midst of trying to decide how and when to extend the so-called “Subway to the Sea.” But smart planning obviously wasn’t happening at City Hall or in other divisions. During the recent renovation of Santa Monica Boulevard, the remaining Red Car tracks were torn out, which means that should the trolley system ever be reconsidered, the city will have to start all over again, which will add to the headache and expense. I also don’t understand why they didn’t secure funding to install a subway tunnel under Santa Monica as well: should a “subway to the sea” ever become a reality, it would make a lot of sense for the preferred Wilshire Boulevard path to deviate from Wilshire at its intersection with Santa Monica, head down Santa Monica past Century City (which could really use a stop), and travel down to Westwood, where it could then turn right and head back up to Wilshire, with a UCLA/Westwood Village stop. But that’s short-term, short-sighted planning born of greed, indecision, and paralysis for you…

We homeowners, both potential and actual, aren’t off the hook either. We need to stop salivating over houses of 3,000 or 4,000 square feet and start reducing our overall “footprint” on the planet. How many people really need a four or five-bedroom, three bath home anyway? Nowadays Billy and Sally require their own rooms, and Mommy and Daddy really need the library, the office, and the den, in addition to the three-car garage. That’s bunk. Back in the 1940s, the average house was 1200 square feet. Children often shared rooms, even those of different sexes (at least up to a certain age). People didn’t have the outlandish number of material goods they do today. Do we really need all those extra gadgets and toys? Do we really need the lawn (that requires so much water to maintain), or the garden full of non-native plants (that also require more water than we should be sparing)?

Perkins has a vested interest in writing his article; he’s a developer, and he and his pals want to expand their income by buying up land and building homes, the consequences be damned. A lot of us are enabling that, by living beyond our means and trying to keep up with the Joneses. But the era of suburbia is past; we are all going to have to come together and plan smartly for the future.