Dan Walters has an interesting column in today’s SacBee on SB 375 and the shift away from sprawl. His argument is that it may be the landmark moment in a shift away from locally-controlled land use policies favoring sprawl toward state-controlled policies favoring density – but that this could cause a political backlash.

He’s not entirely wrong about this, but neither is he entirely right. Before we assess land use policy and its utterly central role in California politics we need to understand just what it is we’re talking about – otherwise our political actions may wind up changing little.

Walters writes:

Although critics frequently denounced the model as wasteful and inefficient “sprawl” that encouraged cultural and racial segregation, it appealed to newcomers because it offered opportunity to acquire real estate they could call their own.

Cultural and racial segregation were important factors in the production of sprawl. Many who moved there already owned property in the urban cores. It’s not that they needed property of their own – but that they wanted a community of “their own” – as in white and middle class. If segregation wasn’t so central to the suburban project then why were so many suburban developments off-limits to people of color? Why did Californians reject Prop 14 in 1964, which would have outlawed the continued segregation of the suburbs?

The derisive term “sprawl” was really just “a decentralized community” in the words of Mark Pisano, who headed the Southern California Association of Governments, a regional planning agency, for three decades – or so he said in the mid-1980s. “This is the way people want their community,” Pisano was quoted in a 1986 book about California development patterns. “The individual’s mobility and freedom is where people want to go.”

This is the Tom McClintock fiction of suburban life. In fact suburbia has very little freedom of mobility. Suburbs like those in Orange County, where I was born and raised, are car-only. For decades they actively resisted providing mobility choices. Bikes and pedestrians were discouraged. Rail was flatly rejected, and even though dozens of passenger trains now ply OC’s rails they recently killed a light rail project. There is no mobility freedom in California suburbs – only the tyranny of the car.

And those actions were the result of deliberate governmental choices, including on the state level. Even at a time when everybody and their brother knows we need to provide more mass transit, Sacramento politicians continue to gut the transit budget.

Walters goes on to paint a picture of cities making local decisions outside state guidelines:

The state could have theoretically affected land use by wielding its latent power, such as control of transportation projects and water supplies. Local officials, however, guarded land use authority jealously, not only for financial reasons, but because their voters wanted to control their communities’ socioeconomic ambience. And with the exception of coastal development, the state largely left land use alone.

This is not entirely true. California has not mandated a statewide urban growth management plan the way Washington and Oregon have. But California has greased the skids for sprawl for decades. An important and often overlooked factor in the passage of Prop 13 was a desire to stop Jerry Brown’s urban density program and starve the cities of tax dollars to provide economic opportunity and the resources for urban growth. It gave sprawling suburbs a massive tax break. The state legislature further obliged the suburbs in 1982 by passing the Mello-Roos Act, which allowed developers to pass fees onto buyers for schools – but did nothing for urban school districts.

Walters suggests that Darrell Steinberg’s SB 375, which Arnold signed this week and finally links land use planning to global warming – 38% of California carbon emissions are from transportation, which sprawl helps produce – could lead to a political backlash:

It’s a momentous step, but also one that could create a backlash among cultural traditionalists and create even more political fault lines in an already highly fragmented state.

“Cultural traditionalists?” Sorry Dan. California’s sprawling suburbs aren’t a cultural choice. That’s a myth. They are the product of decades of favorable land use policy.

How else to explain the fact that so many young people from the suburbs – myself included – make a beeline for the urban cores as soon as we are able? Or the desire among many suburbanites for more transportation choices and a less auto-oriented lifestyle? Or the fact that urban property is holding its value while suburban and exurban property values are in free fall?

California’s future is an urban future. Only by encouraging urban density and providing the transit infrastructure to serve it can we have a California Dream for the 21st century – sprawl can no longer provide affordable housing or economic security, and it comes at a massive environmental and climatic cost. Californians are already coming to understand and embrace this future. The only political backlash to worry about is the backlash from the landless millions who demand a dense, sustainable, affordable life in the California of the 21st century.

Arnold has been making some rather shocking vetoes of important legislation this week, including a cave-in to Sarah Palin on port air quality and the veto of the anti-rescission bill. On balance his record on bills this week is atrocious.

But there are a few bright spots, including a bill that has the potential to revolutionize land use in California. Arnold has signed Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s SB 375, a bill that links land-use planning to the AB 32 global warming targets. The intent is to eliminate sprawl by limiting sprawl and favoring infill development.

The logic is clear – sprawl creates more auto traffic, and more auto emissions, which worsens global warming. 38% of greenhouse gas emissions in California come from transportation. The obvious solution is to crack down on sprawl and encourage infill development – urban density served by mass transit. SB 375 includes language streamlining CEQA review for infill development that meets carbon emissions reduction goals.

That’s an important element of an anti-sprawl, anti-global warming effort. It’s the Portland model – you can’t stop sprawl merely by limiting growth on the edge of a metro area. You must also encourage infill, dense development and provide the mass transit to serve it.

It’s also vital to California’s economic recovery. As I have argued before, we must redefine the California Dream by using urban density to provide for affordable living and economic security.

There are still some outstanding issues regarding SB 375 – business groups were lobbying to have urban commercial projects given the same CEQA streamlining as residential projects:

Some business groups remained critical because the bill did not allow commercial development to benefit from CEQA changes. And some local officials said it overreached by allowing the state to dictate greenhouse-gas reduction goals for each region.

Steinberg said he promised the governor that next year he will clarify that projects funded by the 2006 voter-approved transportation bonds will be exempt. But Steinberg said he agreed only to have “good-faith” discussions about the commercial development issue.

“The balance we struck was so precarious, we couldn’t pile anything more on top of the bill,” Steinberg said.

California cannot afford sprawl. SB 375 is a big step forward in our efforts to redefine the California Dream and follow Portland’s successful model into a prosperous 21st century future.

This happened a couple days ago, but as it’s crucial that the clean-truck program at two of the nation’s busiest ports go forward, I think it’s significant:

A federal court judge in Los Angeles on Monday tentatively denied a trucking association’s bid to block a landmark clean-truck program at the nation’s busiest port complex.

After a 40-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder said she would probably allow the program to move forward, despite objections from truckers.

“The balance of hardships and the public interest tip decidedly in favor of denying the injunction,” she said in court.

Under the program, the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach would upgrade their aging fleet of about 16,800 mostly dilapidated rigs that produce much of the diesel pollution in Southern California.

Though the American Trucking Association is opposing the bill and filed the attempted injunction, the clean-ports program was borne of a true blue-green alliance between labor and environmental groups, which is the next level of how we’re going to fight climate change in this country and build millions of new green-collar jobs.  The courts are now on the record as saying that reducing greenhouse gas emissions are in the public interest.  And the ATA is being a little coy here – a good number of the trucking firms are already upgrading, so their injunction effort was meant to satisfy a few big corporations.  It didn’t work.  

The second exciting development is SB 375, which for the first time links emissions to urban planning, and could easily become a model for the nation.  We have to make sure it’s signed into law, of course, but if and when it is, it will represent a great leap forward for the environment, live/work issues, quality of life, and traffic reduction.

The measure, known as SB375, aims to give existing and new high-density centers where people live, work and shop top priority in receiving local, state and federal transportation funds. The idea is that such developments check sprawl and ease commutes, in turn cutting the car pollution wafting through the Golden State.

Authored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the bill reflects California’s push to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Sponsors say the measure is part of a much-needed growth policy for a state whose population is expected to swell to 50 million from the current 38 million in two decades.

“Many places across the country have realized that if you just build spread-out developments, with the expectation that everyone will have to drive for everything, it should be no surprise when the result is excessive burning of gasoline,” said David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group that helps cities and towns plan more workable, environmentally friendly growth.

“SB375 breaks new ground, because it specifically links that pattern of development to excess driving and what we need to do to address climate change,” he said.

Instead of trying to capture more resources every time there’s an energy shortage, we can reorganize our lives to maximize existing resources while making our lifestyles far less stressful and more pleasant.  It’s the solution that works on all fronts.

The budget madness is super-depressing, but these developments are cause for optimism.

I will be on KRXA 540 AM at 8 AM to discuss this and other California political issues

Today Darrell Steinberg is expected to finally be elected as Senate President Pro Tem, bringing the failed leadership of Don Perata to a welcome end. George Skelton welcomes him to office with a column the landmark smart growth bill that Steinberg has been pushing through the legislature. Although the bill won’t pass this year, it has a big head of steam behind it, and faces good prospects in the 2009 session.

Steinberg’s bill would link land use planning in California to the AB 32 global warming targets:

“One issue everyone has been afraid to touch is land use,” Steinberg says. “Everyone understands about using alternative fuel. But land use has been the third rail. AB 32 changed the equation because now land use has to be part of the solution to global warming. You can’t meet our goal just with alternative fuels. You have to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled.

“If people are going to drive — and they are going to drive — we need to plan in ways to get them out of their cars faster. That means shrinking — not the amount of housing, not economic development, not growth — but shrinking the footprint on which that growth occurs.”

Steinberg wants it to occur within a smaller circle around downtown.

Basically the bill would work like this: Each metropolitan region would adopt a “sustainable community strategy” to encourage compact development. They’d mesh it with greenhouse emissions targets set by the California Air Resources Board, which is charged with commanding the state’s fight against global warming.

Also included are preferential funding for transportation projects that fit with the “sustainable community strategy” and an expedited permitting process for those developments that fit the law’s and the community strategy’s goals.

Tom Adams of the California League of Conservation Voters called the plan “the most important land-use bill in California since enactment of the Coastal Act three decades ago” and he’s right to say it. But the plan does more than help the environment and reduce carbon emissions.

One year ago I called for “redefining the California dream” – restoring the economic security of California workers by abandoning sprawl and turning to urban density and mass transit. This is not just an environmental move, but it is absolutely necessary for job growth, affordable housing, and basic financial security.

California can no longer afford sprawl. The national housing bubble burst right here, in the exurbs of Stockton, Modesto, and Moreno Valley. As gas prices rise at a rate of 30% every year since 2002, sprawl becomes literally unaffordable for most Californians, with a devastating ripple effect throughout the economy.

Republicans will predictably be furious with Steinberg’s plan, but that’s because they represent the emergent “homeowner aristocracy” – certain (by no means all) households that bought their home prior to 1990 or so, those who want to preserve the conditions of the 20th century at all costs.

As Jerry Brown recognized when he was governor 30 years ago, and still recognizes today, density done right is the key to maintaining the middle-class California dream for the 21st century. Only by following the Portland model of strictly limiting sprawl and encouraging infill development and providing the transportation options needed to serve that development can we bring affordability back to California, and secure the economic future for new generations of Californians.

Steinberg’s genius move is to link that strategy to the fight against global warming. It’s nice to finally see some real leadership from Democrats on this matter and particularly from the new leader of the State Senate. SB 375 may not make it to the governor’s desk this year, but it deserves our strong support in the 2009 session. It will transform California for the better, and there are few bills aside from SB 840 that can credibly make that claim.