Bigger Is Not Always Better

#19, July 21, 1999

 

To a child in the late 1950's, it was a fascinating vision of the future: a map, part of a calendar on my barber's wall, with cities marked by yellow patches… Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose.  And there, with the biggest yellow blob of all, was my home town. "Grow with Gilroy!" blazed the tagline in red block letters.

 

I looked at that map with the kind of prescient pride young Clark Kent himself must have felt, knowing that he would grow up to be the biggest, the strongest, the bestest…

 

Irrational? Of course! I was seven years old! But as I grew up and grew to appreciate my small town's values and grieve their loss before the bulldozer, I marveled at the irrational power of the notion "bigger is better".

 

Sometimes we learn the hard way, if we learn at all. I wish Gilroy's city fathers could have read Eben Fodor's new book, "Better Not Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community." Fodor, a Community Planning Consultant from Eugene, Oregon, has meticulously documented what growth does to and for communities, and deconstructed the mythology that drives "the urban growth machine."

 

Fodor begins by noting "all growth is not the same." Unlike personal or economic growth, which have no limits, growth of "the built environment" is limited by the resources of a finite planet (ultimately, urban growth must end, gently or with a crash.) We have to think longer term, he says. What seems like a modest growth has huge impacts within the lifetime of a child born today. If Petaluma's annual growth is only one percent (compared to the 2% over the past 10 years and 2.5% since we implemented growth management in the early 1970s), the population would double to 100,000 in 70 years. At 2.5% growth, the population jumps to a quarter million.

 

Here's the crux of Fodor's work: in city after city, aggressive urban growth has failed to live up to its promise of economic prosperity and affordable housing. Quite the contrary, as Fodor illustrates with examples around the country, the benefits accrue mostly to the urban growth industry while the costs (of additional schools and infrastructure, and reduced quality of life) are born by the community at large.

 

My experience corroborates Fodor's research. Gilroy at population 7,000 was a great place to live: decent schools, safe neighborhoods, and clean air. It was surrounded by orchards and fields that nourished people, businesses, and people's spirits . Forty years and over 30,000 people later, smoggy Gilroy is virtually a suburb of San Jose. Who is better off? Not the people whose downtown stores collapsed after the factory outlet mall came and covered up what local growers called the best farmland in the state. But even these victims of growth would sigh and say, "you can't stop progress."

 

Well, you can redefine and redirect progress so everyone benefits, however, as Petalumans have learned. But past wins, like UGBs, don't guarantee a successful future. Today, the Rainier interchange presents a more subtle test of our commitment to intelligent growth. Here's a $32 million project that was planned ostensibly as a cross-town traffic solution. But the flood plain development that must accompany it would not only increase downtown flood risks, but eventually generate enough traffic to neutralize its initial traffic relief on the Washington Street interchange. With global warming's potential to raise the sea level (and flood levels) as well as raising the price of gasoline and driving, is it wise to spend this much money on automobile-centric development?

 

In the final analysis, there is a better way to meet human needs than riding the urban growth spiral, says Fodor. His book ends with an uplifting chapter about what it will take to build sustainable communities. If you would like to be a part of this solution, join Mr. Fodor and other local community leaders at a day-long "Better Not Bigger" Workshop, Friday July 23, in Santa Rosa. For ticket information, see www.monitor.net\~ec\fodor, or call 763-1532. See how much better we can grow.