But this is Chico, too

I drove all the way through the sprawling mass of Greater Sacramento just to check out Laguna West. I had been led to believe that it is a “new urbanism” development. We have a few in Chico and we’ll be getting more, so I wanted to see an example of what we might be in for.

After an hour of looking around Laguna West, I fled to the nearest freeway onramp, thinking to myself “There must be some mistake. This can’t be an example of new urbanism.”

It was more like new suburbanism, with large houses on small lots. The only thing distinctive about Laguna West is that the housing developments are grouped around a long, central park, full of fountains and ponds, crossed by bridges dotted by handsome lightposts.

The park has a recreation center, called a “town hall,” but it’s not a real town hall. Laguna West isn’t a real town. It’s part of Elk Grove, which is one of the fastest-growing cities in the state.

I couldn’t find anything in Laguna West that looked like a traditional town. Except for the park, there didn’t seem to be any areas that cater to pedestrians. All of the offices and businesses are grouped around typical suburban-style parking lots.

Laguna West is pretty. I’ll say that for it. Its buildings are attractively designed and it’s lushly landscaped. This helped me appreciate how you can have a great-looking community, but it can still have no soul.
In addition to the large park, small open spaces and playgrounds dot the housing developments. They made me think of the Cat Stevens’ song “Where Do the Children Play?” His worry was that bulldozers were leveling all the places to play. The problem with Laguna West is that although there are plenty of places to play, no children are playing in them. They are in day care, they are at soccer practice, they are hanging out at the recreation center, but they aren’t out playing in the parks. They are at places where other adults supervise them, while their parents work to pay to live in this upper-middle class, new suburbanism development.

After Laguna West, my next destination was the Sacramento Delta. Boy, was I ready for it. After such an unsettling encounter with the new California, which seems more like an Orwellian nightmare than a utopia, I longed to immerse myself in an old, unchanged part of California.

The Delta, which starts less than 10 miles from Laguna West, fit the bill perfectly. This vast flat land has a labyrinth of waterways, winding levee roads, ferry boats, drawbridges, orchards and crop fields and is dotted with the kinds of towns that I believe the new urbanism movement is trying to replicate.

Locke has a sense of place that is almost overwhelming. The guide books say it is the only Chinese community in the state that was built by Chinese settlers. That was 100 years ago. Some of their descendants are still there.

The town has one narrow main street, lined on both sides by weathered two-story clapboard buildings with balconies. The passageways between the buildings invite further exploration on foot.

Locke has a museum and gift shops, a sign that it has become a tourist attraction, but so far it has a long ways to go before it becomes a Disney version of a Chinatown.

I also spent time exploring Isleton and Walnut Grove. They are similar to Locke in that they have so far been able to walk a fine line between becoming either cutesy tourist traps or crumbling ghosts towns.

The Delta is hardly an untamed wilderness. It’s as artificial a landscape as Laguna West. It’s just agricultural rather than suburban. But so far, urban corporate America seems to be content to leave the Delta alone. It still feels like it’s miles from nowhere (another Cat Stevens song) even though the tide of suburban sprawl has crept to within just a few miles of it.