Round The Gyre

In the early 1970s Davis was a happening place environmentally. The city was a pioneer in designing transportation infrastructure for bicycles. And over in west Davis, architect and developer Mike Corbett built Village Homes, an ecologically sensitive development with lots of interior green space, solar design, community gardens, edible landscaping, and natural drainages. The 70s came and went. The flourishing of environmental ideas at that time gave way to the growth of the 80s (Reagan removing the solar panels Carter had put up on the White House perhaps being a good symbol of this). Village Homes was much admired but never really emulated.

We spent the day at a Green Summit meeting held up in Woodland, about 10 miles north of here. A number of local environmental groups helped put this event on, including our own favorite, the Yolo Audubon Society (in her capacity as YAS president, Pica got drawn into being on the event steering committee). Despite the weather being spectacular today, the event drew over 230 people. The event was organized as a symposium with about four different concurrent sessions. Topics included habitat issues, water issues, land use and urban design, and outreach.

I settled into going to the urban design sessions, followed by one in the afternoon on youth and the outdoors. The first speaker led off with a bit of Dickens (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”) to set off the theme of sprawl versus infill for the Sacramento region and beyond. I agree very much with the premise of these urban planners that infill and compact growth are the key to preserving habitat by keeping development out of the wilder places of our landscape.

Sprawl and infill are not new issues for urban planners. But have we perhaps circled back around to the insights of the 1970s? (Though adapted to the 2010s — Mike Corbett today in response to a question about the non-adoption of the Village Homes model, said that what he would take from that model would be the elements, but not the design itself: we need far higher densities now.) I was heartened by the presentation of Mike McKeever, executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) who talked a lot about their blueprint planning process which through a massive effort to elicit citizen input came up with a compact growth plan for the region. Happily to date, people may be acting on this plan — e.g. vehicle miles traveled are down in the region.

Here are the key factors now in this region. 1) The population in the Sacramento area is expected to grow substantially, probably by well over a million by the year 2050. 2) The region is being hit hard now by the housing crash, and the worst-off areas are the newest, most sprawling developments. 3) Responding to global warming is becoming much more of a political imperative, especially in California where the state has taken a lead on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 4) People are starting to recognize that cheap energy isn’t always to be counted on. For instance, solar housing design is now a good selling point.

So having looped around this way before in the 1970s, are we now about to set off down the track towards sustainable design for real? We hope so.