Guest Commentary: A Vision for a Sustainable Davis

By Tim Keller

Over the past month and over the course of four articles here in the Vanguard, I have tried to ask some of the big questions around growth for our city and discuss these issues from a long-term strategic perspective.

My observation has been that as a city, we tend to let short-term issues (mostly Measure J projects) dominate our conversation around growth, and as a result, we never step back to look at the big picture:

• • How big do we need to be (and why?)
  • What might be the best place and method to accommodate that growth?

• Who should we be building for?
• What is our city going to look like when we hand it off to our grandchildren?
  (Will they wish we had made better decisions?)

Today I want to review those observations and try to compile an integrated concept for how they might work together.

What we have seen: 

We saw that Davis is under-built by comparison to other cities hosting similarly sized institutions in similar regional contexts.  (article here)

Yes, there are a number of smaller university towns which are our existing size and have healthy housing markets, but those are truly geographically isolated cities. Davis is not.

The closest analog city we studied is Ann Arbor Michigan.The University of Michigan is a powerhouse research university, very similar to UCD, and is situated within commuting range of Detroit, just as we are with Sacramento.  ( article here)

With our proximity to Sacramento, our housing market is in fact regional, not local, and as a result we have “college town commuters” making up a significant part of our population. This makes it perhaps unrealistic to compare our housing to those true college-only towns like Stillwater, and it explains why our housing market is so impacted:

Because we have kept our housing supply artificially small via Measure J/R/D we have created an expensive housing market in which more affluent commuting workers are better able to compete for our limited, expensive housing supply, and thus a significant amount of our middle class households are displaced.  These commuters include a whopping 75% of our local workforce, and 60% of university staff. (article here).

The restrictions on our housing market are creating daily mass migrations that are harming both our local and global environments.

Finally, I analyzed the concept of an urban limit line as proposed recently by former Mayor Robb Davis, and I tried to see if a city like Davis could grow to the size of Ann Arbor without creating sprawling housing developments out to the horizon.

What I found is that if we embrace moderate dense construction forms, averaging 20 units per acre, we are more than capable of providing all the housing needed for 50 years, while not extending beyond the natural boundary encompassed ailed by proposals already on the city’s docket.   (article here)

So today I wanted to complete that thought process with an integrated vision for what development of our city in the future might look like.

First, I think it is worth pointing out that what I’m proposing is consistent with many themes of what people have been saying they value:

• Nobody wants endless sprawl.
• Everyone wants good bike-ability.
• Nobody likes traffic.
• (Most) are concerned with affordability of housing.
• Everyone wants the city to be healthy economically and fiscally.
• Everyone wants healthy amounts of green space.
• Everyone prizes sustainability, which includes:
  • Preserving farmland,
  • Conserving water,
  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
  • Reducing unwanted waste.

These shared values are the reason why everyone seems to agree that infill and densification are our preferred forms of city growth: Infill ticks all of the boxes above.

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough infill: Not enough to meet our RHNA target of 2,075 units let alone being able to start putting a dent in the task of repatriating our ~ 20,000 currently displaced local workers, which means that smart peripheral development unfortunately has to be part of the solution

Does lack of good infill development opportunities mean we need to build BAD peripheral development?

Here is where I really think we need to be paying better attention because the following statement is very true:

It is irresponsible for us to be building more single family homes.

Economically, Socially, and Environmentally: Single Family Housing is unsustainable.  City planners, economics, sociologists and architects have been telling us this for decades now, and its time we accept it.

It might not be easy to accept of course, because single family housing is the entirety of what most of us know in terms of our city and how we build cities.  In fact, many of us have never lived in anything OTHER than a single family home, making it difficult to even imagine anything else.

But If you look at the list of values I enumerated above, you will see that building single family housing goes AGAINST all of those shared values.

I am not the only one saying this, not by a long shot.  Single family suburbs, also known as R1 zoning, have been the dominant way we have built our communities both here in Davis and across North America for the last two generations,   But all of the experts now agree: it was a mistake. ( article HERE,)

Economically:  Single Family Housing costs the city more money in the long term than it brings in in property taxes. This is the “Housing Ponzi-Scheme” of housing that has been documented quite well by organizations such as Strong Towns. There is a great series of Videos HERE and an article discussing this HERE.  (This effect is true nationwide but is actually worse in CA due to prop 13.)

Socially:  As I discussed in my third article in this series, suburbia was designed to be economically exclusive, and the high cost of owning a single family home, (which includes the cost of a car to access it) produces economic exclusion (read “segregation”) by definition. Deed restrictions, even in Davis, explicitly excluded certain classes of individuals, many of whom still reside here only in small proportions.

As I discussed in a previous article, (and mentioned above), our habit of only building expensive single family housing has created an economically segregated society. If we build more housing of this type we will only continue that negative trend.

Single family housing is also socially isolating for the people who live in it as described here.

Building housing is not the same as building a community.

Environmentally:   Single family homes are the worst kind of housing we could possibly create from many environmental measures. Urban planners have been telling us for decades now, that the suburban model of development has failed, but for some reason, we are still building this way:

Land Use:  If we prize the conservation of farmland, building single family housing on the edge of town is the second worst use of that land possible.  The absolute worst option is to build NOTHING locally and instead let a different plot of farmland get converted to SFH elsewhere only to have those residents come here by car.   See: North-North Davis.

GHG Emissions:  Single family homes have at least two times the climate impact of denser housing. Part of this is from increased driving, and part is from higher heating and cooling usage.  (The link above actually shows single family housing at roughly 4x the carbon footprint of an urban multi-family dwelling unit)

Water Use:

Single family homes use two and half times more water per capita than denser building forms. Much of this from the type of water guzzling landscape typical of SFH.

Traffic:

From a traffic perspective, Single-Family suburbs are a double whammy:  Not only do they require car ownership to live there, increasing the total number of vehicles in circulation on our streets and highways, but the low-density of single family housing makes transit ineffective.

Think about parking in our downtown.   Now think about what it would be like if we grew to 120,000 people in this town, all in housing which could only be accessed by car.

The contrast of San Francisco, which maintained its transit system from the early 20th century, and Los Angeles which removed its transit lines in the 1950s is instructive here: San Francisco has a usable and effective transit system Los Angeles.. not so much.  The difference is density.

Density on the Periphery?

Now, we have a situation where we need to find a way to satisfy two needs:

1. We want the kind of environmentally benign housing we get with infill projects.  But there are not enough infill projects to meet our growth needs, so peripheral development has to be part of the solution.
2. But at the same time, I’m saying it is irresponsible to build more single family housing…

Does that mean we should be building densely on the periphery? Is that even legal?

I know this somehow feels wrong to some people because we think of cities in a nuclear / radial way:  We think that there is supposed to be a really dense downtown, surrounded by housing of gradually lower density, with the lowest density at the edges.

But there is absolutely no reason we need to build in such a manner.  In fact, there are a number of reasons NOT to.

The 15 Minute City

If you have heard the term “15-minute cities” then you have heard about one response to this problem:  the notion that everyone should have the ability to walk or ride a bike to stores to get most of their daily needs within 15 minutes.  It calls for decentralizing of our cities and creating smaller neighborhood clusters each with their own basic amenities.

You can see this type of community by going to Berkeley or San Luis Obispo where small retail shops and restaurants are distributed about each city.

Davis itself has shopping centers sprinkled throughout – but they are more spaced out and designed to be driven to, not walked or cycled, and they don’t include a full array of the neighborhood services.

When you hear people calling for “medium density mixed use development”  they are talking about this same thing:  A local ecosystem that provides a variety of services locally which do not require a car trip to use.  By contrast, when you build only single family housing, everything requires you getting in your car.

If you read through the LEED-ND rubric which talks about walkability, access to transit, density and green space, it also, is clearly pulling in this development direction as well:  More sustainable cities are denser, mixed use cities, period.

The threshold for this kind of urban density needed to make for a “walkable city” starts at around 10 dwelling units per acre, but in reality, the denser the better.  The more people you can get within walking distance of a corner store, the more people will walk to that corner store, and the more economically viable that store will be… pretty simple.

In my previous article, I calculated the kind of density we might want to look for in our peripheral developments in order to allow a reasonably compact urban limit line to contain all the growth our city might possibly need in the next two generations.   The number that I came up with was 20 dwelling units per acre.   Which means that all of our peripheral projects are capable of being their own self-sustaining neighborhoods, with local stores and support if we build them at that density.

The Streetcar Suburb

Another benefit of building densely is that it enables transit. In fact, the ONLY way to create truly effective transit is to embrace density. Efforts to increase transit ridership significantly outside of already dense urban areas have largely failed for this reason.

The first suburbs created in the United States were not serviced by automobiles:  they were enabled by streetcars.  These were walkable neighborhoods put at the periphery of a larger city. Residents could walk to their streetcar line and be taken into the city center when desired.  (Article on streetcar suburbs here.  And a great video about them here)

People who build new developments in this way have a more modern word for this practice:  The“TOD” or Transit-Oriented-Development.  It is a strategy which allows for lateral city expansion without the predictable increase in cars and traffic that you get with car-dependant suburban development.  (Good video on TOD’s here)

A TOD is basically a 15 minute city on a transit line.   It is sufficiently dense to cater to most daily needs locally, and it is co-developed with a transit line that brings people into the local city center without the need for a car.

Tying these ideas together:

So far, we have seen multiple reasons why we might want to develop our city more densely.  Medium-density construction:

• Helps conserve farmland.
• Is more affordable for working-class families.
• Preferentially provides housing for the local economy and university.
• Can cut our per-capita GHG footprint and water use in half.
• Is economically beneficial for the city long-term, (as opposed to single family which is net-negative economically).

Perhaps most importantly for the people who might be concerned about our city’s growth:  Higher density construction enables efficient TRANSIT, which means that we can grow without making our downtown parking situation worse, or increasing traffic at key intersections.

But can we achieve a good transit solution for peripheral areas of town?  Is a “TOD” in Davis feasible?  I think so.

Consider this map:

Here I have laid out density zones roughly according to the math I did in my previous article:

• 30% single family housing, (Translucent green)
• 60% Townhomes and cluster homes (Medium Green)
• 10% 4-5 story Apartments and condos. (Bright Green)

I have also inserted some salmon colored zones which I think would shine as mixed-use commercial development with housing above.  The blue zone is commercial / R&D / Lab space.  (Yes, I still think this is the best place for it.  For a balanced city, economic development has to be part of the overall plan as well.)

And what is important to point out is this:  This map alone gets us all of the housing we need for 30 to 50 years.

As you have likely noticed, there is a blue line connecting all of these neighborhoods, and that line is offset in the middle of these developments.  What I am proposing there is a dedicated transitway:  A path that is only open to transit, bikes and pedestrians.

At first, this would likely be a dedicated bus-only route, but as these properties get built out over the next 30 years and density increases, there is a good chance that the bus could be replaced by a streetcar, because as I have read, the minimum density for light rail starts at 10 du / acre.  At 20 du / acre, the chances that a streetcar might pencil are actually pretty good.

If we densify our arterial areas as well, including the F street corridor, as shown above then we in fact, have a setup for a very effective transit line which goes from campus, through downtown, up F Street, and over around the Mace Curve, linking to the long-envisioned innovation center site as well.

This transitway would have bike paths in parallel. The bike ride from the middle of the Mace Curve into downtown is only 4 miles.  With the advent of e-bikes and personal electric vehicles (PEV’s) getting to any place downtown or on campus will be faster and easier on a bike than by car, especially when you consider the time it takes to park and then walk to your destination.  (As someone who has used an electric skateboard instead of a car for the past 2 years, I know this to be true)

Finally, parking provided to this development would be capped at 1 spot per unit, or perhaps 1 spot for every 2 bedrooms.   The easy access to local transit, and the under-provision of parking means that this housing, by design, will be less attractive to commuters, and more useful to local workers.

Given that the average annual cost of owning a car in California is over $10,000 per year, this transit-oriented development approach will make this housing even more affordable to local workers who by living here can easily get away with only owning one car per family.

The Alternative

Now, this is just one potential solution for how we might develop our city in the long term.

I fully expect (and hope) that someone who is actually a qualified urban planner might have a better ideas than this.   Im only putting out my design to make one simple point:  How EASY it is to design a vision for this city that is better than what we are going to get via the status quo.

My layout doesn’t isn’t specific, it hasn’t planned for parks or open space, or other city amenities, but it is already significantly better than what is being planned for us by the developers!

Here I have pasted the currently proposed peripheral projects onto a map of the same area, along with a solid color for the one remaining parcel that does not (yet) have a proposal for it.

Let’s think through this map and compare it with mine.  These are single family homes, less than 8 du / acre.   The only “plan” for transit here is assuming the existing Unitrans bus line along the bottom edge won’t stop service, and there is no indication that one could bike in between these, let alone have a robust connection to downtown and campus.

If we develop our city THIS way, then every resident of these properties will come and go by car, which also means that commuters will also likely be able to out-compete local workforce for these houses as well, just as has happened already across our existing city.

Not only is that a significant additional amount of cars on Mace, but we would in fact be enhancing greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging a population which treats Davis as a bedroom community while pushing our workers out of town.

There is also no retail proposed for ANY of the properties around the mace curve; no local cafes, restaurants, barbershops, or grocers within walking or biking distance. For EVERY single thing those residents need to do, they will need to get into their cars and drive to one of the existing commercial centers.   So much for a “walkable” city

These are developments, not neighborhoods.  There is no community, just a bunch of people parking themselves in their tidy and expensive houses between car trips elsewhere.

We can do better.

I have presented the equivalent of a “cocktail napkin sketch” of a city plan.   It isn’t a perfect plan, it isn’t even a fully developed plan… but already it is vastly superior to what we know we are going to get if we continue along with Measure J.

We have many urban planners in this town, both professional and amateur.. I would LOVE to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Conclusion

My intent with these series of articles was not to arrive at some perfect grand plan, but to start a conversation, and get people thinking about the larger picture. It is SO easy for us to just accept the status quo and forget that we actually do have agency over making decisions in a better way.

Measure J has been successful at preventing the kind of runaway urban sprawl that we have seen in some neighboring communities, but it has also become a double edged sword:  While it does slow down growth, it has also unintentionally paralyzed our city’s planning process, making more deliberate, long-term plans for sustainable forms of housing all but impossible.   At the same time, the negative  socioeconomic effects of Measure J are something nobody involved with its creation ever intended.

My feeling is that the replacement of Measure J with an urban limit line that has specific transit, connectivity and density standards is the way to split that difference:  Preventing a construction free-for-all while enabling a robust master planning process, and making sure we get the kind of housing we need most.

We don’t have to accept a broken process anymore.   We don’t have to be a hostage to developers construction preferences, and we don’t have to accept the lack of a master plan.

It’s time we started planning this city for ourselves.   I’m extremely interested to hear your thoughts.