Yesterday I asked the question: “Should There Be a Community Vision?”
As I pointed out in my piece on Monday, it is likely that a vision will emerge from the General Plan update process—though it remains unclear exactly what that would look like.
I remain reluctant to engage in a new visioning process outside of the General Plan for reasons I articulated yesterday.
I wanted to add a couple of thoughts here.
First, as one person put it: “Davis does not have a lack of vision, as we have demonstrated several times over the years. What we lack is the will to implement those visions. Calling for another visioning process is simply a call for more delay, or in other words, a call to continue doing nothing.”
As another person put it: “A visioning process outside of a new general plan while Measure J is in effect is a waste of time.”
I tend to agree with both of these thoughts.
That said, the only path forward for a vision appears to be a General Plan update process. That could bring the community together, create whatever type of shared vision can occur and, most importantly, it could get cemented through a vote of the people.
I would argue that part of the General Plan update needs to set aside land that could be exempt from a further vote to allow the community to meet both the sixth and seventh RHNA cycles.
How feasible would that be?
That’s a big question. There is a segment of the population that would be dead opposed to any effort that would facilitate the building of housing—even if that is housing required by the state of California and likely to be enforced through litigation.
This notion of Davis as a bedroom community is not so much of a vision as it is a de facto vision if we do nothing. This notion that we can preserve the community as it was in 1970 or even 2000 I think is fatally flawed. The world has changed and the community is going to change as well.
As I have stated a number of times, my top priorities for Davis are as follows:
- Davis needs to at least adhere to state guidelines on housing and work to create workforce and family housing that can ease the housing crisis and allow families with children and UC Davis faculty and staff to live in this community.
- Failure of point 1 will lead to an inevitable decline in the quality of our schools and put additional strain on the community.
- Davis needs to present a path forward for economic development, capitalizing on the proximity of a world class university.
- Failure to provide housing and diversify the economy will in fact lead to Davis becoming a community where people commute to UC Davis to work during the day, and then leave at night. While community residents increasingly commute to Sacramento and the Bay Area for their jobs.
In my view, this negative vision, will harm the fabric of the community—it will lesson community engagement, harm the schools, and hollow out the core of the community.
Given that, I would like to see the General Plan focus on housing, transportation, and economic development with an eye toward stabilizing our schools and revitalization of our downtown core.
As such, the idea that we need to know what we want the community to look like in 5 or 20 years isn’t the driver; rather it is taking the steps to avoid the dystopic vision I laid out above by creating a mechanism by which we can actualize our vision of more affordable housing, jobs, and good schools.
David, you have just put forth a Vision Statement. It is rough around the edges, but it is reasonably clean and understandable. There will be other Vision Statements that come forward to compare yours to.
One thing that you have done is include an evaluation of the consequences of the Bedroom Community Vision Statement.
I’m probably a little biased here, but I think that the vision for the community should start from the perspective of economic and community development, not RHNA compliance, as I feel the default has been.
A vision that starts with “the state mandates that we grow so lets do the bare minimum” isn’t very compelling to me.
I would rather start with an aspiration: “We want a community that is vibrant, well maintained, has lots of things going on, and is a pleasing place to spend our lives alongside our neighbors” maybe discuss what those things are in detail a bit…. but eventually get around to “how do we make that happen”
There is a saying that I repeat a lot: “Money isnt everything, but its right up there with oxygen”. And if you want a city with a good police department, paved bike paths, good programs for youth, graffiti and litter removal programs… all of that.. we have to PAY for them. So our city’s finances and economy very very quickly take center stage again.
When we then move to talking about finances and economy there are really two big issues:
1) Housing & Retail / Service sector development ( community and neighborhood development issues )
2) Industrial / Economic development.
People who know me know that Ive been waiting for a long time for this city to get into gear with #2, but that one is actually pretty straightforward, there is really only one obvious path for us to take, its pretty straightforward and shouldn’t be very controversial.
Its the housing and commercial development that is both more impactful and more of where Davis residents to NOT currently see eye to eye. We are already far far behind the curve in terms of housing our own workforce and maintaining talent here, to the extent that we could exceed our RHRA allocation 5-fold and still not solve the problem… let alone create any housing capacity for “growth”.
it is also true that we are fighting the social momentum of the 1950’s form factor of single family housing, and doing anything other than repeating the failures of the past is apparently controvertial.
That is where the focus of the community discussion on our “vision” needs to be, because that is where there is the most disagreement. Any vision that wallpapers over the baseline differences and doesnt address them air them, and make a decision is not going to be really that useful. The decision will be more controvertial, and people will likely leave the table feeling like I do about our national elections right now… but that is how the process will need to work.
I share Tim’s bias. His comment bears repeating “the vision for the community should start from the perspective of economic and community development, not RHNA compliance, as I feel the default has been.
Regarding Vision, if we get down into the details too much, I believe the effort will stall. If we can get broad agreement at the aspirational level of “We want a community that is vibrant, well maintained, has lots of things going on, and is a pleasing place to spend our lives alongside our neighbors” then we certainly aren’t going to get agreement when the devilish details enter the discussion.
David published my aspirational Vision statement, which was, “my vision for Davis is that UCD and the City bury the hatchet and collaboratively put together a plan for leveraging the one asset that the community has … intellectual capital creation … to begin building the job base within the City of intellectual capital jobs, and build new housing to support those new jobs.“
For his discussion of Vision, David critiqued the Davis should continue to be a bedroom community for a population that is predominantly current or retired government workers, with the proportion of retirees getting larger and larger each year. All the alternative Visions for Davis have consequences … both positive and negative. David chose to explain what he believes the negative consequences are of that Vision alternative, but his biases overwhelmed his balance.
I would hope we can be open minded about the feelings and desires of all the stakeholders in our community. Your Vision statement starts, We want a community that is vibrant …” I suspect your definition of vibrant is significantly different from the definition a resident of URC might give. I believe the only way we can actually have some direction as a community is to talk about our various aspirations. Absent that we will continue to be a Tower of Babel.
(note… the post above should have said “SOME people will likely leave the table”). The way that statement reads at the moment is way more pessimistic than i intended! apologies.
The city and University should work together…
That ship has sailed. It sailed when the West Davis neighbors sued UC over West Village.
Why would UC want to work with a dysfunctional city on its border when it can easily grow in Sacramento as it is doing?