‘Alice in Wonderland, Meet the Sierra Club’

Growth management has become so incoherent and fractured, it’s practically worthless as public policy. What was a modest land-use plan is now a sacrosanct instrument of fear and envy. Instead of planning for the future, we’re just getting better at complaining about it.

Growth management used to mean developing in the inner areas and making new growth in the outer areas pay for itself. That way, we wouldn’t grow faster than our ability to pay for it. No urban sprawl. No Los Angeles.

But today, under the guise of growth management, environmental radicals are doing whatever they can to stop everything from backyard gazebos to new homes for young families.

They’re not going to stop growth. But they can prevent us from planning for it. If they succeed, San Diego will stumble into the future like a lurching drunk, and all their nightmares will become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Environmentalists don’t recognize that man is part of the natural order. We’re intruders. They would deny to us what they give to even the most insignificant creatures--the right to shape our own space.

They oppose every major private and public development in San Diego. We don’t have enough roads for new growth, they say. Yet when the city wants to build new roads, like the east-west connector in North City, they’re opposed. They say it encourages growth.

They’re against growth because of roads and against roads because of growth. Alice in Wonderland, meet the Sierra Club.

Like the devil using the Bible, the Growth Management Plan is widely quoted but mostly unread. For example, the plan calls for higher density near the Center City. The plan worked, sort of. The inner city grew 10 times faster than expected.

Because we had so much growth in places like Hillcrest and North Park, it made sense to allow more growth in the outer part of town. Or, more precisely, there was no longer any reason to deny property owners the reasonable use of their own land.

But environmentalists ignore that part of the plan. And now they’re against growth in the inner areas, too. Places desperate for new life, like Golden Hill. If there’s no room for development in Golden Hill, there’s no room for growth, or growth management, anywhere in San Diego.

It’s easy to be against growth. A lot of people aren’t happy because San Diego is different than it was 20 years ago. But no place is. And fond memories of old San Diego are more about who you were than what San Diego was. No amount of obstructionism or environmental extortion will change that.

Growth management is an idea that tells us how to handle change. The no-growthers have turned it into a legal straitjacket to enforce the status quo. They call for strict compliance with a plan written 10 years ago. Has our city changed so little, or is the plan so perfect that we should never alter it?

Of course not. But try changing the plan to allow innovative development. The demagogues scream that the plan is being “attacked.” But when the liberal special interests successfully lobby to restrict property rights, those are merely “updates.”

Alice in Wonderland, meet George Orwell.

But the biggest fantasy of all is the so-called Growth Management Initiative. Now, some of our most complex planning decisions will be made by a vote of the public. Whether you like the idea of voting on land-use issues or not, that’s not planning. That’s mob rule.

No-growthers don’t believe growth can be anything but a sinister plot to enrich the few at the expense of the many. But growth can improve the quality of life in San Diego.

For example, some growth relieves congestion. Rush-hour traffic is filled with commuters. If we developed jobs closer to their homes, we’d have less traffic, not more. That’s growth management.

The Sierra Club types believe that if we don’t prepare for the future, the future will never come. Elitist fear won’t stop the future. But it can make us late for it.