Sprawl, Not Growth, Could Ruin O.C.

Regarding the editorial on the “Beyond Sprawl” report from the state Resources Agency, one can question if the report is actually recommending against further growth in Orange County (“When Will We Hit Too Much Growth?” Feb. 19).

The report recommends against “sprawl,” which it never defines but implies to be any outward low-density development on undeveloped land. It clearly states it is not recommending growth limitations but rather redirection into already developed areas through “infill” and more dense redevelopment.

Since most of Orange County is already developed, it would qualify as a receptor for this redirected growth. The report is not clear about where it would arrest or redirect growth. One could read it to imply that we should stop the further development of planned communities such as Irvine or Rancho Santa Margarita, communities which have created affordable housing and thousands of jobs, and redirect that growth into central and north county; or that we should redirect growth from Riverside and San Bernardino counties into Orange County. Both cases could well result in worse congestion, increased housing costs and more damage to quality of life.

Southern California is the most dynamic urban region in the industrialized world, recessions and bankruptcies notwithstanding. Our pace of growth and change poses immense challenges, which we have met with innovation and major accomplishment in many cases. True, we have made mistakes, and there is much that needs to be done to correct these and to improve our economy, our natural and built environment, and social opportunity. It is highly questionable, however, if the implied and ill-defined growth redirection policies in the “Beyond Sprawl” report would be beneficial for Orange County or for Southern California.

FRANK E. HOTCHKISS

Laguna Niguel

* The Times asked the wrong question in its Feb. 19 editorial “When Will We Hit Too Much Growth?” The answer to that question is “Not for a while.” The real question you should have asked is the same question that was addressed by the Wilson Administration, the Bank of America, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Low Income Housing Fund in the report “Beyond Sprawl” that you discuss. The right question is “When will we hit too much sprawl?” That’s a different question, and it has a different answer. The answer is “We hit it some time ago.”

Orange County is becoming urbanized, and the model to judge us against is not suburbs, but cities. Does Seattle have too much growth? San Francisco? Even New York--even with its horrors, Manhattan is an exciting, vital place.

What these places, and many others, have in common is limits to sprawl--geographical or historical. Even now, we might have the potential to be like that--between the Pacific and the Cleveland National Forest, between the Chino and Puente Hills and Camp Pendleton, surrounded by green and the ocean, with green areas within--Laguna Canyon, Aliso Canyon, the Plano Trabuco. But this can’t be, and won’t be, unless development is confined before the green areas are gone. Not confined in amount, but confined in space, to high-density regions surrounded by green.

This is the only paradigm that offers hope for the future and its inevitable growth. If a city can expand too easily, or too far, the center dies, and you get not Seattle or Manhattan, but Los Angeles or Mexico City.

That’s why people are still fighting the toll roads. The toll roads are the biggest threat to the green spaces that now confine sprawl.

Of course there are issues to solve--issues of property rights and transportation, to name the two biggest. But more roads will generate more sprawl. Is that what we want? Or should we not, as The Times editorial ended, “balance competing interests and work together in the interest of future generations”?

DON HARVEY and PETER JACOBSON

Orange County Bicycle Coalition