Using a blueprint process, a series of meetings with deep public input, to come up with future plans for development, is not a bad idea; even though local government can essentially ignore the recommendations during the decision-making sessions of awarding new permits.
Plans create a sense of the possible and if they stimulate a larger public discussion about the future fabric and material of a community, so much the better.
Editorial: Fuelish sprawl
Bill would advance regional planning
Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, June 4, 2007
The Sacramento area's award-winning "Blueprint" plan has hammered home two key points.
First, endless sprawl is not inevitable in our region; second, through incentives, local governments can work to contain leapfrog development and promote transit and alternatives to the automobile.
The Blueprint works like this: A regional body -- in our case, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments -- assesses its housing needs over a 50-year period. Each local government determines where its share of housing will go, in concert with protecting watersheds and valuable farmland and designing a workable transportation system.
Since SACOG has control over regional transportation funding, local governments have an incentive to participate. Indeed, several cities have started planning future housing around transit stations instead of spreading it outward on the whims of land speculators.
The Blueprint doesn't have the sweep of regulatory measures -- such as Oregon's urban growth boundaries -- but it has changed the dynamic of local planning decisions. Every time a major project is proposed, people now ask this question: Does it comply with the Blueprint?
That raises another question: Why don't we have Blueprints in every major metropolitan area of California?
In the Legislature, state Sen. Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento is working on a measure that could imprint the Blueprint statewide. Senate Bill 375 would require the California Transportation Commission and regional agencies (those with populations larger than 800,000) to conduct the kind of modeling and planning that SACOG has done in this region.
