I find this rather intimidating. All of a sudden we're seeing new plans for how we will live and where we will live. I don't know where this is coming from or how widespread this will be or if any of this will see the light of day, but I've now seen two examples in two days. Actually 3 but I can't find the link to the third so I'll put it aside for now.
In San Francisco, city planners using two California Sustainable Communities bills as guidelines are looking at ways to bring people closer to jobs and well, just plain closer together. "For example, any new developments in the San Francisco Bay area will have to develop the property with no fewer than twenty housing units per acre. Instead of single family homes, most of the future development will be duplexes, triplexes, condos and apartments."
Seems the planners don't like people living out in the suburbs or countryside because they have to use cars to get to work and use more gas which adds to emissions. So they want to get people crammed tightly into urban areas. There is hope in California that by 2035, more than two-thirds of regional new housing developments will be condos and apartments.
Ok, that's California. That can't happen here can it?
Well, Steve Patterson of Urban Review in St. Louis, a long time blogger on St. Louis urban issues, has a post up on an upcoming speech by Katherin Perez on building around light rail. He finds many things lacking at most St. Louis Metro stops which would currently preclude building condos and other housing, but the idea is similar. Get people all together in places where they do not have to drive. This may not be as emission minded an idea as in California, but the theory seems rather similar to me. Suburbs and rural living='s not so good.
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