News summary April 20

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Fix 50 (This is only a fraction of the Fix 50 articles on SacBee and other media)

News summary April 13

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Posting a day early because I’m off to the Internet-free wilds of southern Utah for the week.

Transportation

Development

following Stockton City Limits

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Courtesy of making the Streetsblog “front page” today for the article “Stockton less sprawling than Portland or Washington DC? Not so fast,” I became aware of the blog Stockton City Limits. It’s a great site that I recommend you look at, and I’ll be delving into the site more in the coming days. The topics are similar to this Getting Around Sacramento blog, including community, development, transportation, and smart growth. Stockton is similar in many ways to Sacramento, not just because it is on a river, but it is another classic Central Valley sprawl city which has a livable core but is surrounded by unsustainable suburbs with dismal walk scores and declining economies.

News summary April 6

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Other

Development

News summary March 30

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Carnage

Other

Development

News summary March 23

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sprawl hurts

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Two articles from the Sacramento Bee this Sunday illustrate how sprawl hurts us all.

How much water a community gulps varies across the Sacramento region (SacBee 2014-03-09)

The article highlights the remarkable variation in the amount of water used per capita by different areas in the region, with Granite Bay being the poster child for extensive lawns and landscaping. These exurban areas suck up the water that could be used for more productive domestic or agricultural purposes. This is not a lifestyle choice, this is extravagant misuse of our common resources. Where does this happen? Almost always in the exurbs. But many of these people still work in the urban core, their commutes eased by the freeways and arterials built with the money taken from the rest of us taxpayers. They have us coming and going. Literally.

Sacramento ‘ruralpolitans’ feed the animals, then don suits for city jobs (SacBee 2014-03-09)

The article highlights people who live in rural areas close to the urban core and commute to regular jobs. Another seeming lifestyle choice, made possible by the freeways and arterials that make it easy for people to live in a seeming rural paradise but work where the jobs are higher paying. They pay low property taxes, but benefit from the transportation network and other services that all of us pay for. If these people were actually serving some agricultural purpose, I’d be a lot more willing to provide some subsidy to their lifestyle, but they are only playing at agriculture, contributing nothing to the rest of us.

 

Arena for revitalization and transit?

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Richard Layman, author of the Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space blog, posted yesterday on “An arena subsidy project I’d probably favor: Sacramento.”

After an extensive review of the benefits and pitfalls of arenas and stadiums, and subsidies of them, he goes on to look at the Sacramento subsidy for the Kings arena (the Entertainment and Sports Complex). He gives it a tentative up vote, based on the effects of moving investment from the suburbs to the center city, and utilizing the existing transit system.

Take a read and see what you think.