Debate Over Growth Just Beginning

Ventura County voters probably thought they had wrapped up the debate over urbanization last week when they approved the SOAR measures, the strictest set of growth controls in Southern California history.

But according to urban planning experts and government officials in areas with similar growth restrictions, the debate is just beginning.

Will Ventura County cities rethink their approach to land use, allowing taller buildings and more apartments to more efficiently use space?

Or will they allow the same tract homes and strip malls that led to sprawl in the first place--thereby forcing growth into neighboring counties. Many who opposed SOAR, or Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, worry residents will favor the latter.

“We’ve got to find a way of revitalizing our communities,” said farm leader Carolyn Leavens, who for years championed efforts to bring a public four-year university to Ventura County. “We can do that and have multistory buildings where we have room. That’s not a terrible thing. We’re going to have to look at new options. We just can’t say, ‘No, no, no, you can’t come in.’ ”

But SOAR proponents say there is every reason for residents to agree on smarter growth by redeveloping aging neighborhoods and business districts.

“I do think it will be healthy for cities and all of our residents if they try to revitalize their existing areas as much as possible,” SOAR leader Steve Bennett said. “The whole urban infrastructure could benefit from reinvestment, and that is a far better investment than building out.”

Despite opponents’ warnings that the measure could increase congestion and development within cities, more than 62% of county voters supported the countywide SOAR initiative in last week’s election. It prevents officials from rezoning farmland and open space outside cities without voters’ approval through 2020.

Voters in Camarillo, Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks also overwhelmingly approved local SOAR measures that keep their cities from expanding beyond designated borders without a public vote.

In Ventura, which passed a SOAR initiative three years ago, the changes spurred by growth control are becoming evident--and the public debate is already taking place.

Most of the city’s business efforts have focused on re-energizing Ventura’s faded downtown and resuscitating the Pacific View mall, formerly the Buenaventura Mall, and not developing the outskirts of town. And the results are clear, from the trendy eateries and multiplex movie house to the new apartment complexes popping up around the city’s historic downtown.

Panel Looking at Ventura’s Future

Urban planning writer William Fulton said SOAR has clearly forced the city to consider solutions to its problems--increasing the tax base, providing low-cost housing--that do not involve sprawl. A Ventura resident, Fulton chairs a city committee looking to draft a vision for Ventura’s future.

“I think the experience in Ventura is actually pretty instructive,” said Fulton, author of “The Reluctant Metropolis,” which explores L.A.’s development and the region’s future.

“Regardless of what you think about SOAR, it has led Ventura to have a serious discussion about our future growth. We now have accepted we have limited boundaries, which we did not [accept] before.”

Some cities may choose to ignore the new realities spurred by growth controls, Fulton said. But eventually, he said, all virgin land within city limits will be used, and cities will then have to confront these realities.

“A lot of the voters in Thousand Oaks and Camarillo probably thought they would do this and that would be it,” Fulton said. “But that’s not how land economics works.”

The SOAR measures simply hold the county and local cities to their existing general plans--growth blueprints that can otherwise change with the political winds. The measures do not call for an increase in urban densities, but critics argue that such increases can result from the measures.

In Portland, which has the nation’s longest history of so-called “urban growth boundaries,” planners calculated from the outset nearly 20 years ago that increases in density were the only way to stop sprawl, since growth had to go somewhere.

The result has been one of the most celebrated urban planning experiments in American history. But it has not come without controversy; many homeowners grew angry as open spaces around their neighborhoods gave way to apartments, and traffic clogged once-clear streets.

“There seems to be this schizophrenic attitude here,” said Kelly Ross of the Portland Homebuilders Assn. “Yes, we really need in-fill development and tight urban boundaries. But just don’t do it in my neighborhood.”

“The market hasn’t accepted that very well,” added Jeff Fish, a Portland-area developer. “Most Oregonians want to live in a big house with a two-car garage.”

Desire for Return of Old Concepts Cited

Humbug, says a growing group of planners and architects who believe people are increasingly demonstrating they really want a return to the pedestrian-friendly, downtown-centered communities of old.

The developers, they say, just don’t want to build such places because they can make more money from continuing the postwar pattern of building sprawling tracts far into the horizon.

“I think the post-World War II experiment is over, and it’s failed,” said Shelley Poticha of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national organization advocating more compact communities.

“This is really coming down to people’s life experiences . . . people are fed up with the development patterns. People want to have some sense of connection to their community. It [urban sprawl] has fueled a lot of the discontent they feel in their lives, and they want to do something about it.”

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* SOAR SUBJECT: Columnist Robert A. Jones looks at the regional effects of the slow-growth movement. B9