In The News & Review, new Butte County Chief Administrative Officer Brian Haddix was quoted saying:
"The population in Butte County is growing because people are moving here," he said, noting that some other areas grow only when babies are born. "The trick is to not make this L.A. or San Jose, but to keep that flavor."
Haddix is right. The “trick” is to preserve the best qualities of the region without growing our way into a future patchwork of communities less desirable than now.
With Chico, Butte County, and other communities in the region embarking on new General Plans to guide its future growth, the next few years will be paramount to chart policies that, in many respects, minimize the likelihood that we’ll follow the negative aspects of L.A. or San Jose growth.
Recently I read an essay by Don Snow, who has written several interesting articles on the concept of rurbia, which he describes as a “seldom-used neologism…a contraction of ‘rural’, ‘urban,’ and ‘suburbia.’
I think many of the characteristics of rurbia, as Snow describes, is apt for Butte County and our region. Snow writes:
“Rurbia is a regional phenomenon. It affects large, broad areas, not just a single growing town. The rurban explosion is directly related to and dependent upon the surrounding countryside. Rurbia can’t happen just anywhere; it happens in places with peculiar attributes that attach to shifting American values about landscape, the sense of personal well-being and fitness, recreation, and the sense of place.In order for rurbia to take root, the deliberate maintenance of undeveloped land is crucial. Ironically, in the rapid economic transformation that comes with rurbia, it is the absence of obvious development that feeds development. What land developers call “build out” is not in the best interests of rurbia.
Commercial businesses transform rapidly. In the ruurban archipelagoes, the commercial zones fill with an amalgam of high-end retailers and services that appeal to ruurban sensibilities and tastes: specialty bicycle shops, Callaway golf club outlets, Orvis fly-fishing franchisees, designer outdoor-wear shops, wine boutiques, microbreweries, sophisticated restaurants. The “old” businesses standing alongside them suddenly seem quaint by comparison.
Rurban growth, while effecting a thorough economic and social transformation in communities where it occurs, also tends to value selective elements of the natural resource economy it replaces. Local agriculture, for example, may continue to exist, but often as a hobby rather than a vocation.
What’s driving rurbubia?...Boomers are likely to retire in record numbers to the nation’s beauty spots, many in rural areas. Moreover, the richest members of this generation are lately showing a remarkable desire to own more than one residence, often to conduct a kind of town-and-country life. If the demographic hallmark of post-World War II America was the suburb, the hallmark of the postmodern Information Age may be rurbia….”
The sense of place and the centrality of conservation, agriculture, and open space is critically important for our region, if we are to prevent, as Haddix noted, our region from mimicking the growth patterns of L.A and San Jose.
Today's Scrabble word is nevus, a birthmark.
Dan--
Our region is not at any significant risk of mimicking the growth patterns of LA or San Jose inasmuch as the economic drivers that provoked that sort of metastatic sprawl do not prevail here. What is more likely is a persistent trend towards an exurban pattern as championed by Joel Kotkin, among others.
LA and San Jose grew because they centralized the industrial bases, attracting skilled workers, and creating demand for affordable, if pedestrian, housing. Certainly the emphasis on an automotive culture, the lack of trans-regional planning, and opportunism of real estate speculators all contributed to these developments, as well, but the fundamental economic driver was an expanding industrial capacity in the inner city.
Far more likely, at least in Chico's case, is a pattern similar to San Francisco. Chico's ambit has been fairly definitively circumscribed, with the only likely growth corridors being along highway 99, and that is limited. Chico and SF are roughly the same size and shape geographically, and while SF is constrained by water on three sides, Chico is constrained by political water; the green line, the foothills viewshed, and a durable hostility to sprawl that forces growth to areas outside its influence.
Chico will grow, probably a great deal, in the next half a century, and the only direction it can go is up. Higher density infill will contribute to some capacity, but ultimately we will need to build taller buildings in the city center, and in the centers of the neighborhood "villages" that will coalesce around commercial corridors.
One thing we will have to do, and very soon, is get over the illusion that we are a "rural" community. Chico is now and will increasingly continue to evolve as the commercial center for the tri-county area. Folks who want to maintain the fiction that they are living in a bucolic, rustic enclave will find their addresses in Glenn, Tehama, and Yuba counties, where development of old-school suburban sprawl proceeds unabated.
One upside is that this urban growth within Chico's boundary will be accompanied by increased economic opportunity and wealth, both imported and home-grown. When people wistfully argue for a perpetuation of the "small-town feel" and rural mystique, they are also arguing for the perpetuation of below-market wage rates, suppressed capital formation, deferred investment, and a stagnant economy. The problem with firefighters and police officers pay rates isn't that they are higher than the median wage rate; it's that the median wage rate is too low. You can't fix that and prevent growth at the same time; you can only plan growth in ways that are sustainable and benignant.
--Ax
Alan,
You make very good points.
I think the General Plan updates for both Butte County, Chico, and other communities will reflect this tension - maintaining the "rural" lifestyle, while urbanizing within City boundaries.
That's why I like this rurbia concept. Rurbia, as I'm reading more about the concept, places strong emphasis on landscape. For our region, that's our open space, farmland, and foothills.
Given our distance from Sacramento, I don't see the region becoming a suburb of that major metropolitan area - yet, that is. In some respects, however, one could argue Yuba City/Marysville has become a bedroom community, or suburb of the Sacramento region.
I envision less growth in Chico over the next several decades due to the political and environmental constraints you've mentioned, compared to growth that may occur in Oroville and other communities in Butte County.
Dan -
This caught my eye:
This may have been true a year or two ago, but I think these assumptions will need to be reassessed, and soon. With the tanking of the economy (which had been propped up temporarily by subprime loans), to the passing of Peak Oil in July 2006, to the increasing war and violence in the Middle East, the "postmodern Information Age" is going to look very different than pictured by Don Snow or most planners and developers.
Owning multiple homes, building energy-sucking sheet-rock palaces, and hobby farming will soon be a thing of the past, I believe.
If anyone wants a cold dose of reality, I suggest James Kunstler's blog entry from a week ago. Kunstler's website has more unrelenting reality, just in case anyone is feeling happy and needs a slap in the face. :)
Well, the only way to get people to stop moving to a place because it's a great place to live is to make it a not great place to live. I'm not sure that's a sustainable strategy. Chico will grow, whether we plan for it or not. Better we should figure out now where and how those people will live than to find out after the fact.
Open space, farmland, and foothills are find things, and arguably worth preserving. The downside of that, though, is that places nearby that don't share these values will soak up a lot of the demand for housing; places like Yuba City, Orland, Corning, and Red Bluff. But Chico will still remain the social and cultural center to those populations, which means more traffic, more fuel burned and exhausted, more demand for parking, etc. And the property taxes on those homes will be collected in Yuba, Glenn and Tehama counties, although most of the miles driven will be on Butte County roads. So preservation of rural features comes with a price, and it may be a high one.
I'm certainly not arguing against preserving open space and viewsheds, or even suggesting such an argument could prevail politically. But we do need to think ahead about the consequences of doing so when our neighboring communities have other priorities.
Which is one reason why I think we need to start thinking about Chico as a collection of distinct neighborhoods, and planning for concentrating resources and services on a neighborhood basis. We can make Chico increasingly walkable and pedestrian-oriented, transit-integrated, and higher density. But we need to decide now that we want that, and plan accordingly.
>one could argue Yuba City/Marysville has become a bedroom community, or suburb of the Sacramento region
One could also argue that it is becoming a suburb of Chico, as well. Chico is becoming the "urb" that surrounding communities are "sub" to. So we might as well get good at it, by embracing that leadership role and exercising it wisely. And we should start be lawyering up and changing our form of government to a strong-mayor form with district elections for council.
You might find this page at The Century Foundation interesting in sorting out "exurbia" from "rurbia"; http://www.tcf.org/publications/pow/jan12_2005.pdf
Alan,
When I grew up in Chico, one could walk from one end of the town to the next (in any direction), in about ten minutes. Concentrated resources and services did exist on a neighborhood basis. It was much healthier then, and we can do it again on a larger scale. It has already reached the point where we need to change our form of government to a strong-mayor form with district elections for council. As it stands, the buck never stops, but just keeps evolving in musical chairs, allowing large scale Image Building. This is not healthy for Democracy; rather is a breeding ground for tyranny. District elections would safeguard diversity and individuality.
How do the people begin this process of "lawyering up"?
Ann