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.

Well, whether the media wants to acknowledge it or not (and so far they aren’t willing to admit it– just put on our blinders and pretend everything’s dandy!), the recent election in Iraq doesn’t mean everything’s suddenly beautiful over there. As it is, the country’s heading towards civil war, if it’s not there already. The Kurds in the north were pretty much sold out during the U.S.’s march to war, but they aren’t staying quiet and accepting it. On the contrary, their continued agitation for autonomy/independence keeps Turkey nervous. The Sunnis barely bothered to vote in the election last month, and the violence and tensions in the so-called “Sunni Triangle” just touches the surface of what are serious divisions between the Shiites and the Sunnis.

Is this all “our” fault? Not necessarily. It’s rather ironic that our major “partner” in this senseless war is Britain; the British contributed to the problem that exists now. Much of the Middle East was once part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, the British intended to weaken the Ottoman Empire (which was already a shadow compared with its glory days) by inciting various nationalistic, tribal, and social groups within. One of the top British agents was T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence, better known to history (and filmdom!) as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence was a rather odd duck, so to speak; he actually sympathized with the various Arab tribes and was not too pleased about what happened at the end of the war. Lawrence assisted in attacks on Ottoman strongholds and aided in stirring Arab nationalism. The end result was that when the war ended, the League of Nations rearranged the map, so to speak. In the Middle East, this meant creating new nations out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was assigned a mandatory over Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Ostensibly, this meant the British were to aid these nations in achieving self-government/democracy. France also was supposed to do the same thing in Syria and Lebanon. Unfortunately, what seemed nice, neat, and tidy on paper didn’t work well in reality, especially in nations that suddenly were found to have tons of oil.

Just as the European powers had done in Africa a century earlier, new national boundaries were drawn rather arbitrarily, playing havoc with the fact that established ethnicities already had their own tribal/territorial boundaries set over centuries. All of this so far is a rather simplified summary, I know. But while reading coverage of Iraq the last couple of years, I’ve been wondering why Iraqis haven’t been showering the British with as much animosity as they do the United States. After all, the League of Nations’ lumping of the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis together, coupled with the British “mandatory” right afterwards contributed as much to the tensions in Iraq today as does the United States’ incursion into internal Iraqi affairs based on the non-existence of WMDs.

Of course, the matter is much more complicated than that. But today, I read a somewhat satirical, somewhat thoughtful article on a possible division of Iraq. For those of you without the time or patience to read it, the author suggests that Iraq be divided into three different nations, then suggests the United States could well do the same.

This isn’t an entirely new idea. Even as the British colonies rebelled against and seceded from the (first) British Empire, some regions maintained their independence. Vermont, for example, was an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, and some Vermonters are pushing for a second republic. Disgruntled North Carolinians seceded from that state and became the short-lived state of Franklin, before becoming absorbed into what would soon become Tennessee. Plenty of schoolchildren (and adults), especially in the Lone Star State, know all about how Texas was once an independent nation, from 1836 to 1845. Fewer people know, however, that when Texas was finally admitted to the Union, there was an escape clause available: the newly admitted state retained the option to divide itself into up to five states.

I’ve always found that interesting, and I think the idea has merit. If you look at Texas today, the state actually is three different states, at minimum. If you draw a line along the northern boundary at the Red River, then go directly southward, roughly on or paralleling 35 and 77, stopping at the Corpus Christi region, that’s one state right there: East Texas. This land of piney woods is really an extension of the Old South, and its first settlers were indeed Southerners: the founding fathers of Texas and their compatriots. The Bowies came from Louisiana; Davy Crockett and Sam Houston from Tennessee.The politics, values, mores, and even the geography of this region fits in more with Ole Dixie.

Now you go back north, to San Antonio. From the western border of the line I’ve just drawn, follow roughly the path of I-10, raising it just slightly above the beltway surrounding San Antone. Go all the way to the New Mexico border, and there’s your second state. This area is essentially the Rio Grande Valley; geographically it’s got quite a bit in common with the northern states of Mexico that share the border. The ethnic diversity, politics, and needs of this area differ vastly from that of East Texas.

The final region is what’s left over: all the area west of Dallas (which is an East Texas city to my mind) and north of San Antonio. This includes the Llano Estacado, and the cattle and oil regions: San Angelo, Midland, Abilene, Witchita Falls, and to some extent, Fort Worth, which has always been more of a cattle town than Dallas. I see this area as essentially the southernmost points of the Great Plains, and culturally and geographically, it fits in more with the Midwestern states than it does with the rest of Texas.

Of course, this division will never take place, but next time you’re in Texas, keep your mouth shut, your eyes peeled, and pay attention. You’ll see as you traverse the state the kind of changes, the differences that I mentioned.

Continuing with the interesting story of the patchwork that became this nation, you have that band of religious diehards known as the Latter-Day Saints, or more popularly the Mormons. After they fled to what is now Utah, they asserted hegemony over present-day Utah, and portions of the states surrounding it: much of Nevada, northern Arizona, parts of Southern California (Las Vegas, Nevada and San Bernardino were originally Mormon outposts to begin with), western Wyoming, and southeastern Idaho. They called it the state of Deseret, and actually had philosophical and physical conflicts with the United States for quite some time. James Buchanan actually sent the army westward to deal with Brigham Young and the Mormons. Mormon antipathy towards outsiders reached a peak in the famed Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. It took quite some time before Mormon leaders found the idea of joining the Union appealing, and even longer to finally join, in 1896. Even today, Utah can seem like a world apart, especially once you’re outside of Salt Lake City. I lived in Utah for two years, and while it is a beautiful place, and the people generally friendly, it is definitely a different mindset there.

I don’t want to write a novel, so I’ll keep mention of the Civil War fairly short. You should have studied this in high school/college, anyway. But it really is interesting to note that there was divided opinion in the North at the outset. Not everyone wanted to keep the country together, and many were happy to let the South go in peace. I sometimes wonder if maybe that was the better answer. Even today, the Southern states are quite different from the rest of the country, and it’s one of the last areas of the United States were regional dialect, culture, and folkways still take hold. While homogenity is comfortable, distinctions are unique and should be preserved when possible.

Since the west was picked up as territory or spoils of war, there hasn’t been as much dissension or threats to split, secede, or otherwise distinguish themselves. Here in California though, is the exception. Since the state was admitted in 1850 (and even slightly before that), there’s been proposals (ranging from fantastical to deadly serious) of splitting the state. Usually it’s to divide California into a north and south, but there was once a proposal to create three states. The traditional animosity between NorCal and SoCal is finally fading, but fading in favor of a different split: coastal areas versus the Central Valley. Even today, the very northern reaches rattle their sabers about jumping ship. One area where I think this might be a good idea is in Alpine County. During the winter, it’s easier to do everything in Nevada when you’re in the eastern part of the county than to try to go to western Alpine County, much less the rest of the state. Whoever drew the California boundaries back in 1850 obviously didn’t consult a map or visit this area (which is very isolated and mountainous), and put the eastern border in the meadowlands, rather than along the summit of the Sierra Nevada.

While there are still rumblings here in California, the latest sounds of independence are coming from Vermont, as previously mentioned, and from Washington state. The recent bitterness over the exceedingly close gubernatorial race this past fall has prompted discussion of dividing that state into two. While I can see the idea has some merit, if they’re really serious, they might want to talk to Oregon. Both states have east-west divides, and eastern Oregon has more in common with eastern Washington than it does with the rest of Oregon. For that matter, western Oregon and western Washington would fit together well.

This all doesn’t even begin to touch on all the permutations and possibilities and threats over the 200+ years of American history. Hawaii has a legitimate beef with how the U.S. acquired it. Puerto Ricans are divided over whether to be a state, a member of a commonwealth with the U.S., or just leave things the way they are. There are little bits and pieces in Washington State, Minnesota, Michigan, and other border states where you have to go through Canada to get to the rest of the United States, or where being part of Canada would be a better fit.

We have our own struggles, divisions, strange splits, and geographical patchwork quilts. Who’s to say what will or won’t work for Iraq? It’ll be interesting (at the very least!) to see what happens next.

Today was kind of nice– overcast at times, but the sun really broke through the clouds for the most part. It was a welcome respite. By now, if you’re not in Southern California (or the “Southland” as the local newscasters inexplicably like to call it), you’ve been hearing and reading in the news about our deluge. No mudslides near me, no road closures (although I understand the Hollywood Freeway had to be shut down due to extensive flooding), no flooding of any kind. Just tons and tons of water running down the edges of the streets, in the gutters, and pooling up at sewer entrances and street corners. There’s supposed to be more nasty weather coming up eventually, but I think for the time being we’ve got a break. Of course, we can’t complain– there are places in this country that haven’t seen above-freezing temperatures for a while, and places like Boston have seen more snow than they care to see in a normal season. Often when I talk to friends about where to live, we eventually reach a consensus that there really is no one “safe” place to be. If you’re in the Southeast, Florida, or along the Gulf Coast, you’ve got hurricanes and flooding; if you’re in the Northeast, you have some risk of hurricanes (1938 is a good example), definite risk of super snowstorms (think Boston, Buffalo, and even New York)– Mid-Atlantic can get the brunt from either of the previous two regions. For example, my mother-in-law’s basement flooded during the recent hurricane season, and my wife’s cousin’s car was carried away in the flooding in downtown Richmond, Virginia.

In the Old Northwest region, you’ve got flooding, tornadoes, and severe winter weather– I remember a classmate in New York who was from Kentucky, and he told me about how his family’s house had been flooded when he was younger, and they had lost all kinds of things. the central Southern Plains has the same danger of tornadoes, especially in the famed “Tornado Alley.” The Northern Plains has some of the coldest weather in the nation, and all along the river valleys and deltas you’ve got the risk of flooding. Anyone recall Fargo and other places along the Mississippi a few years back?

In the Southwest you’ve got droughts and flooding during the monsoon season. In the Pacific Northwest, you’ve got the risks of tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic activity (Mt. St. Helens, anyone?). Here in California, we’ve got earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and along the coast, the risk of tsunamis as well (Crescent City in 1964). There you have it– that’s all just the U.S. of A., you know. I’m not even ready to begin with the rest of the world.

My solution is to just find where I’m happy, and that’s that. For now, that’s California. I could see myself back in the D.C. area, and there’s other places as well that I would be okay with, but I prefer California or D.C. Regardless of where I end up, I’ll adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at me. Take the appropriate precautions, and that’s that.

I guess this is the kind of conversational material you talk about when you have nothing else to discuss. For me, that’s not entirely true, but at some point, every conversation eventually gets around to the weather. So I guess for this blog, that time is now.