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There is a new economy out there that adds to the acceleration in the speed of change. It will also affect the types of jobs, where they will be clustered, and how they will network within communities. The time of Fortune 500 companies and long commutes to get to disparate workplaces is coming to an end. Certainly, if we add our seniors' retirement, newlyweds' and graduates' searches for places to live, births over deaths in the present population (60 percent of future growth), teachers, police, firemen and computer programmers, we begin to personalize that million or so "nameless" people who will be added to the population. The preoccupation with numbers, rather than who they are, dulls our ethics.
Time marches on, but the questions remain. Don't we ever get tired of asking the same ones over again?
With the million or so additional people coming into this region, can traffic get any better?
Are you kidding? Traffic is connected to people in cars going to distant workplaces, all at the same time, like a post-holiday sale, only every weekday. Yet when the Olympics came to Los Angeles, how come traffic went down, amazing everyone? Because there was planning and ride-sharing and people were allowed to come to work at different times. There was no technological breakthrough, only the presence of uncommon common sense. But there will be breakthroughs like high-speed, mag-lev trains, electric cars, and adaptive roads and highways. We must study them, understand their possibilities, figure out how to pay for them and then get them going.
People need face-to-face interchange rather than non-place cyber villages. The new economy ensures that change is a must rather than an option. Hundreds of small companies (with fewer than 50 workers) will dominate the landscape, filled with neighbors living close by. Their success will depend on agility, innovation, flexibility, intelligence, comprehension of high-techs, trust and openness to change.
Will we continue leaping over the urban places and keep inventing new suburbs like Temecula?
History teaches us that new land isn’t being created since the Lord decided to spend more time on Venus. More builders will tell you that they would love to work the in-fill areas since so much of the virgin land has been used. Many in-fill areas already have the infrastructure to support growth. This requires that we comprehend and welcome high density, how well it has served other great cities, such as Toronto (the greatest), Seattle and San Francisco, and where it belongs. This means not being afraid or railing against "high density," but understanding that it is legitimate and not another phrase for tenement. It is not. It is time to comprehend the need and the possibilities and to create educational tools that will teach the voters, politicians and media how density can be designed and how it can supply part of more than 400,000 new dwellings the new population will need. We don’t have the land to waste any more.
Will work centers still be located where only a car can take you?
Yes, if you insist upon driving a car instead of voting for new kinds of public transportation. Yes, if zoners do not allow mixed-use zoning, which clusters the workplace near where you live and shop and which works so well in other parts of the world. It can look pretty terrific too.
County and city officials are studying whether people will allow any growth in their communities. Most community planning groups are protectors of status quo that operate behind a smoke screen of fear rather than enlightenment. They preach against Frankenstein Los Angeles rather than allowing any innovation that could supply housing for real people. Will they allow more growth in their communities (including room for their parents, newlyweds, graduates and the rest), and will they be open-minded to understanding the ingenuity and efficiency of using greater density? These are the keys.
This education is vital for the county, city and the San Diego Association of Governments to implement, and they are trying. They are cooperating with each other because of the leadership in each of our planning departments. I see hope and possibility where there has been complete absence of leadership for so long.
Our problem is not a crisis of affordable housing. Rather it has been an absence of leadership. Leadership must be accessible for it is the nucleus around which we build successful businesses and communities. This region is so far ahead in high-technology, the biosciences, scientific entrepreneurs and their backers, and university programs that create brilliance, such as UCSD's Connect, SDSU's community economic development curriculum, USD's new real estate and executive training strategies, and the Newschool of Architecture.
How can we be so good in science and so dumb when it comes to educating each other about the positives that could overcome our housing shortage, our traffic woes, our fears of becoming another L.A., our constant uncivil battles, our overleaping of nearby land, our feelings that Downtown San Diego is irrelevant? It is not irrelevant.
Why can’t we teach that the solution is not everyone living in a separate single-family home at one per 2.5 acres or even five per acre; that some of the most charming residential communities have very high densities that tourists love to visit because they are so charming?
Why does each city stubbornly cling to its turf, which becomes their version of battlements "shielding" them from the invaders?
Imagine that cars had the same impediments that housing, zoning and building permits have. Each geography would have its own rules and once you crossed that arbitrary line your car would have another jurisdiction and set of rules; you'd go from Chula Vista which wanted three wheels on a car, to Poway which insisted on two wheels, and Del Mar which would force you to have two steering wheels. Get it? This is no exaggeration and it certainly is no solution.
The solutions are leaders who have the courage to educate their constituents, media that would not act as mischief makers when there are zoning solutions, professionals working for cities and counties who are problem solvers and guides rather than bureaucrats fighting innovative solutions, the same kind of innovation and audacity we find in the evolving scientific community so that we improve our workplaces and residential communities. These are all possible. Are they probable? Do you care or are you manning the battlements?
Sanford R. Goodkin is managing partner of Goodkin Considine Strategies LLC, located at
www.millennianet.com
or by e-mail at realgood@mil.net.
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