Ecotopia Comes South

In all the startlement over the Democratic resurrection last Tuesday, no one much noticed the passage of Measure B in Ventura County. Maybe we should have been paying closer attention. This initiative amounts to a sizable revolution in Southern California.

In effect, the citizens of Ventura declared that half a century of rape and pillage by land developers had come to an end, at least in their county. They stripped the Board of Supervisors of the power to approve new subdivisions on land zoned for open space or agriculture. They reserved that power to themselves. In the future, any such proposals will go on the ballot.

But that’s not all. Four cities in the county--Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Simi Valley and Camarillo--also voted to confine their future growth to within their own urban boundaries. In other words, they voted to cease the cancer-like process of annexing land for new subdivisions.

In so doing, they joined the city of Ventura, which made the pledge in 1995. So, as of last Tuesday, all of the county’s largest cities have decided to grow only within their boundaries unless the voters say different.

All of the measures were sponsored by a grass-roots group known as SOAR, an acronym for Save Open space and Agriculture Resources. Steve Bennett, one of its founders, says the group borrowed heavily from similar efforts in Napa County and Portland, Ore.

“We took the urban boundary concept from Portland. We took the idea of submitting zoning changes to the voters from Napa County,” Bennett said outside the high school where he teaches American history. “Our contribution was in combining both concepts. And getting them passed.”

The phrase “getting them passed” hardly describes the dramatic vote results. The countywide measure passed by a margin of 63% to 37%. Some of the city initiatives passed with majorities of 70%.

So there you have it. Ventura County appears to have enacted the most revolutionary set of land-use controls of any region in the country. And since both concepts have already passed muster before the California Supreme Court, legal challenges are unlikely to gain much traction.

I call the measures “revolutionary” because they stand the old system on its head. In the past, citizens hoping to curtail the latest wave of red-tile roofs and cul-de-sacs were forced to attend dozens of hearings, always on the defensive, pleading with public officials to limit the damage. Now, in Ventura, it’s the developers who will be forced to sell their projects to the citizens.

Will it work? The experiences of Portland and Napa suggest that it will, amazingly enough. The Portland law has encouraged developers to use neglected land within the city for new housing, creating more compact and interesting neighborhoods. In Napa, the county’s famous vineyards have been largely preserved.

Imagine, if you will, how this approach would have changed the outcome of the San Fernando Valley. Historian Mike Davis, in his new book “Ecology of Fear,” notes that Los Angeles’ official plan for the Valley, after World War II, called for concentrated growth that spookily foreshadowed the Ventura concept.

The plan, Davis writes, “opened the Valley to hundreds of thousands of house-hungry ex-GIs and aircraft workers, but concentrated new development (at medium density levels) around 16 already existing suburban nodes.” And each “node” would be separated from the others by open lands.

In this vision, each town constituted a separate, self-sustaining community. Housing would be dense, allowing people to walk to libraries and stores. The concentrated populations would also encourage the use of transit systems.

The city actually passed this vision into law, Davis writes. But it died from a thousand cuts as officials approved one exception after another for favored developers. And today we have the Valley that we all know and love.

In fact, so entrenched has become this pattern of defeat and destruction in Southern California that the Ventura scheme now comes as a shock. It’s one thing for Napa and Portland to try and save themselves. Up there in Ecotopia the sprout-eaters will try anything to keep their cities habitable.

But down here? Nah. Citrus groves are for ripping up. Flood plains are for paving. We think God made open space for the rich guys to get richer while the rest of us sit in our shacks, pop brewskies and wonder what the hell happened.

A while back, I remember driving along the Santa Clara River in Ventura, cruising past citrus groves that looked like scenes from orange crate labels. A jaded city boy, I began calculating how long it would take for the entire valley to be consumed by subdivisions. Maybe 10 years for an ugly patchwork to appear, I figured. Twenty years for the build-out.

And you know what? That calculation pretty much explains why Ventura did what it did. The people of the county came to similar conclusions about their fate and decided to do something about it.

One specific motivator was the infamous Hidden Creek development that, at 4,200 acres and 3,800 homes, would have doubled the size of the town of Moorpark. Another was Newhall Ranch, 19 square miles of development along the Los Angeles County side of the Santa Clara Valley that would perch itself on the Ventura border.

“We looked at the Newhall development and said to ourselves, ‘Here it comes,’ ” says Richard Francis, former mayor of Ventura and a founder of SOAR. “Ventura obviously was in the path of Los Angeles growth, and that’s what got us going.”

One caveat here: The SOAR plan is not perfect, and the organizers concede that some weak spots still exist. The cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore failed to approve boundary limits and could, by annexation, eat into the citrus groves of the Santa Clara Valley in future years.

But, in all, Bennett estimates that about 85% of Ventura County’s farmlands, valleys and rolling hills are now protected. It’s just possible that Ventura will become the great exception in Southern California.

As for the dire economic repercussions predicted by some of Measure B’s opponents, Bennett notes that neither Portland nor Napa has suffered as result of their decisions to control sprawl. In fact, he says, both have thrived. Napa has maintained its status as a premier tourist destination. And Portland has experienced robust growth within its core.

In 1995, when the city of Ventura passed its urban boundary initiative, Bennett says the opponents similarly predicted that the city would go into a downward spiral. One ad claimed that 30% of the police force would be laid off and the city would become a cesspool of crime.

“In reality,” he says, “we hired more policemen.”

To sum up, Bennett is saying you can have a habitable city and a growing economy at the same time. A radical notion that has never gained much currency in Los Angeles.

But, just maybe, it’s a notion whose time has come. And it’s knocking at our own back door.