California, known for its far-ranging suburbs and jam-packed traffic, is
close to adopting a law intended to slow the increase in emissions of
heat-trapping gases by encouraging housing close to job sites, rail lines and
bus stops to shorten the time people spend in their cars.
The measure, which the State Assembly passed on Monday and awaits final approval
by the Senate, would be the nation’s most comprehensive effort to reduce sprawl.
It would loosely tie tens of billions of dollars in state and federal
transportation subsidies to cities’ and counties’ compliance with efforts to
slow the inexorable increase in driving. The goal is to encourage housing near
current development and to reduce commutes to work.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has not said whether he will sign the
bill.
The number of miles driven in California has increased at a rate 50 percent
faster than the rate of population growth for the past two decades. Passenger
vehicles, which produce about 30 percent of the state’s heat-trapping gases, are
the single greatest source of such emissions.
The fragile coalition behind the measure includes some longtime antagonists, in
particular homebuilders and leading environmental groups in California. Both
called the measure historic.
“What California is doing for the first time,” said Ed Manning, a lobbyist who
represents the state’s 25 largest homebuilding companies, “is planning for
housing needs, transportation needs and climate-change needs all at the same
time.”
Thomas Adams, the board president of California’s League of Conservation Voters,
said the changes were “all going to support a development pattern that will help
the state meet its climate goals.”
The bill yokes three regulatory and permit processes. One focuses on regional
planning: how land use should be split among industry, agriculture, homes, open
space and commercial centers. Another governs where roads and bridges are built.
A third sets out housing needs and responsibilities — for instance, how much
affordable housing a community must allow.
Under the pending measure, the three regulatory and permit processes must be
synchronized to meet new goals, set by the state’s Air Resources Board, to
reduce heat-trapping gases.
Seventeen regional planning groups from across the state will submit their
land-use, transportation and housing plans to the board. If the board rules that
a plan will fall short of its emissions targets, then an alternative blueprint
for meeting the goals must be developed.
Once state approval is granted, or an alternative plan submitted, billions of
dollars in state and federal transportation subsidies can be awarded. The law
would allow the money to be distributed even if an alternative plan fails to
pass muster.
State Senator Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who is sponsoring the bill, said in
an interview that he expected the Senate to approve the bill soon.
Mr. Steinberg, who will be the Senate majority leader in the legislative session
beginning next year, said Wednesday that he met with Governor Schwarzenegger
this week and received “positive signals, no guarantees.”
Environmentalists have long blamed profit-driven land-use planning around the
country for creating the expansive, sometimes redundant network of roads that
have carved up farmland near urban areas.
They have also praised regional planners in Portland, Ore., for that city’s
clustered growth and pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly communities.
The tools Portland planners have used are called urban growth boundaries,
efforts to control sprawl by encouraging higher density development within an
area and largely prohibiting it outside.
These boundaries have gained little traction in California, where developers
have seen them as too restrictive and local governments have been jealous of
their own planning powers.
Sacramento and San Diego have recently tried to build coalitions to support
clustered development.
Most environmental groups strongly support the pending bill. Among them is the
Natural Resources Defense Council, a major force in the development two years
ago of the landmark state law to limit heat-trapping emissions from all sectors
of the economy.
But some groups have expressed reservations, objecting to the relaxation of some
existing environmental constraints on developers.
Jan Chatten-Brown, an environmental lawyer in Santa Monica, wrote in an e-mail
message that the bill “gives up an important tool” by relaxing some requirements
of the California Environmental Quality Act and making it harder for citizen
groups to sue developers.
Communities that take part in the process will be able to revise their housing
plans every eight years instead of five; developers working with a
state-approved plan will have to do less extensive environmental reviews of
their projects.
Ms. Chatten-Brown also said the legislation overlapped with some of the
provisions of the 2006 law committing the state, by 2020, to a 30 percent
reduction in the projected level of emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters
estimate that $15 billion to $20 billion in annual federal, state and local
transportation grants support highways, bridges, bike paths and light-rail
systems.
Because there is no assurance that regions would lose transportation dollars if
their plans fail to win state approval, a few environmental groups stayed in a
neutral corner.
But Mr. Adams, with the League of Conservation Voters, said that “a land-use
bill of this magnitude had not been successful since the 1976 passage of the
California Coastal Act.”