Guide for Growth

California’s magic days are over. No longer can leaders stand by and watch in awe and self-satisfaction while the state glories in unrestrained growth. The problems created by runaway development are eroding the California dream and threatening the state’s economic vitality. Activists in the slow-growth movement understand this even if their local land-management initiatives have had only transitory and isolated effect, as reported this week in a series of articles in The Times.

The California dream still may be salvaged, but not unless local, regional and state officials embark on an urgent, cooperative mission to impose some rationality on growth in the state. Growth cannot be stopped. And sporadic local campaigns, even when successful, will only push growth-induced problems off onto the next city, the next county or the next generation. One encouraging note emerging from The Times’ series is the evolving realization that growth management must be elevated to the regional level to be effective.

The next logical step for frustrated slow-growth advocates is a statewide initiative measure to achieve their goals. This prospect gives local and state officials fair warning, but scant time, to draft the sort of comprehensive growth-management program that California should have adopted 15 or 20 years ago when visionaries began warning that the magic bubble could not expand forever.

California leaders cannot afford to abdicate the field to an initiative that might narrowly restrict housing and building construction without addressing other issues that are linked inextricably to growth and development. These include transportation, affordable housing located near job locations, open space and farmland preservation, redevelopment of cities, air quality, airport development, schools, water supplies and the disposal of sewage and solid waste.

Officials will have to reach beyond the usual array of suggested solutions. They must, for instance, reexamine tax policies that reward local governments for encouraging overdevelopment so that they can collect additional revenues. Overlapping levels of government should be consolidated, but there also has to be a mechanism for full public participation in the processes of planning.

The first step is to fully and candidly inform Californians of the extent of the problem and the options for solutions. They must be told that the state cannot maintain its economic vigor without aggressive action. Officials must generate support and confidence for proposed solutions among growth-control proponents, the public and the business and development communities. Reluctant city and county governments must either be enticed to cooperate, or required to. This is a crisis in which no entity can go it alone.

California can maintain and revitalize its greatness and its openness to all who want to share the dream. But the task requires fresh leadership, vision and cooperation--now.