Last week, The Davis Citizens Planning Group discussed the issue of density, rightly noting, “density is a term that some Davisites fear, and misunderstand.”
As they noted in their op-ed on December 23, “One commenter last week accused us of wanting to “Manhattan-ize” Davis. Other people use terms like “packing people in like sardines.””
The authors lay out many of the advantages of density, arguing, “One of the key things that we think many people who live in low density suburban neighborhoods (like most of Davis) don’t understand or appreciate is that density can create very attractive and desirable places. One of the most positive attributes is walkability; the ability to move around on foot and gain access to amenities that are close together.”
In my view, this has been one of the “foibles” of Davis. When Measure J was passed in 2000 for the first time, there was a notion that Davis can survive by growing up instead of out.
That almost immediately ran into a problem—existing neighborhoods and residents balked at infill projects and redevelopment that densified the city, especially the part of the city next to their housing or along their perceived transit routes.
That pushback led to kind of a planning by compromise approach by the city and developers. New infill projects and approaches have been more dense and have gone up in scale, but only to the point where existing residents are willing to accept it.
The clearest example of this was at the University Mall. The city had pushed the applicants to submit a mixed-use project for the underutilized mall. Once they came forward with it, there was massive pushback by residents in the area—even among those residents that would largely not be impacted by the taller building and despite the fact that, across the street, a seven-story building was approved with virtually no opposition.
The result was a compromise at the dais to reduce the density and thus the height of the project, but the applicant couldn’t make it work and they came out with a new plan, an all-commercial plan that has no housing.
That is a perfect example of the problem here. The margins for being able to get financing and build housing on infill, especially mixed-use spots, are much tighter than most people want to believe.
And while that will undoubtedly lead people to conclude maybe we shouldn’t be doing mixed use, that will foreclose any opportunity to redevelop huge swaths of the town.
That brings me now to Village Farms. I can already tell, 1800 is a number that is going to *scare* a good number of folks in this town.
For a lot of people, they see 1800 units as bringing in a lot of new traffic to an already congested corridor.
For others however, 1800 units is not nearly enough and not nearly dense enough.
The problem we are going to face is that perceptions about traffic and density already torpedoed a non-Measure J project—what is it going to do for a project where the voters get the last word?
As I noted earlier in the week, former councilmember Will Arnold argued that the Village location is “the absolute best place in town for that project to be, full stop.”
The campaign against Village Farms is going to argue the opposite—that it is the worst possible place for housing in Davis.
There is something to be said for both positions, frankly. I will say, a lot of the debate is going to focus on traffic.
There is something to be said for Will Arnold’s argument here: “If you want to find a not-impacted intersection, I think Road 29 and Road 95 is a not-impacted intersection. Let’s just build stuff out in the middle of nowhere and have sprawl.”
I also believe that if you look at actual traffic problems through the corridor, they are caused not by local traffic going to places like the Cannery and Wildhorse, but rather most of the traffic there is either headed to Woodland on Pole Line becoming Road 102 and going onto Mace to get on I-80.
And, if that’s the case, having more local housing where people can commute to work by bike and bus instead of cars, you may actually improve traffic conditions with additional Davis housing, rather than worsen them.
Bottom line: people fear traffic. Traffic concerns have caused several projects, including the 2005 project at this very spot, to be defeated.
The Citizens Planning Group in their piece noted, “It’s not that we want Davis to be denser than it already is. What we want is for moderate density to be well planned—considered not just as a stand-alone development, as is happening now, but as a part of the whole of the city. And that means deliberately planning for transit and bike connectivity, ensuring that the density is co-located with that transit plan, and incorporating mixed-use commercial into these neighborhoods as well.”
They add: “These are not things that we are going to get via the vote-as-they-come-up Measure J process, and so it is our hope that by advocating for more sustainable and CONNECTED city design, we can inspire the developers or the city, to engage in a better process for developing these neighborhoods.”
Unfortunately the next project is going to come forward, there will be some give and take between the city, the community, and the developers, and then the voters will be asked to vote up and down after a bunch of naysayers do the best to scare the hell out of them as far as traffic impacts go.
Where I agree with the Citizens Planning Group is the need to turn this into an ongoing dialogue.
They want to see better integrated transit—and I personally think a lot of the problem with traffic is exacerbated, if not triggered, by the fact that people are having to commute into town to work at UC Davis, while at the same time existing residents commute out of town to work in Sacramento or the Bay Area.
In other words, I think housing in town could actually ease rather the exacerbate traffic problems, but convincing the critical voters of that will be tricky.
DG: “people fear traffic.”
Not the fear stuff again. Always the F-word. To put people down. This isn’t ‘fear’ as it’s not irrational: there will be more cars.
I’m not against growth. I voted for Covell Village “X”. I’m voting against Village Farms because the same developer wouldn’t allow the road-free pedestrian path from The Cannery to the H-Street undercrossing through Cranbrook Court, a key safe route to school that now will never be realized. Also, VF plan does not include a ped/bike path UNDER Covell as CV did – one of the key reasons I voted for it. However, not that what I thought were promised alternative paths at voting time have been ‘not in the must do’ category for a few projects now, I don’t trust the City or the developers to deliver, only to deceive. So I’m voting NO even though I think it’s a good spot for growth. Create trust or lose votes, and trust was lost long ago.
As for the transit route, Keller et al have the right idea, but it has to fleshed out and part of a top-down city-visioned plan NOW, and I see no inclination of the City to do anything about it. We are going to end up with a bunch of transit-isolated, un-connected, project-level-defined blobs of development. One of the results of a City with high ideals and sh*t implementation of those ideals. There is ONE chance to get it right transportation-wise, and that is BEFORE the developments are submitted.
The simple plan – have a transit-bike-ped ‘road-but-not-a-road’ that runs north and east of Covell and Mace, and curves with the Mace curve. Build the densest housing along this path, and get less dense in each project as you move away from the path, especially to the north and east. Interconnect all the potential future projects, and then down Moore, and then through Village Farms and across from Oak Tree Plaza. When this is finished in a few decades, you can run a transit route along the densest housing, then down F Street to downtown and up 1st Street to campus east gate, then out to West Village. In Davis this is going to be a bus, but could be light rail “in the year 2525. If man is still alive, if woman can survive”.
You can’t plan with platitudes. You actually have to have a good plan, and then ENFORCE it on all developments. Otherwise you get a bunch of blob suburbs that will never be friendly to transit or bike/ped. Transit is the #1 polluter. The city doesn’t like air pollutants. So why are you planning so poorly, City?
Discussion about housing and peripheral development must also include protection of agricultural lands. We need more affordable housing. And, the best way to protect ag land and add housing is with increased density and more compact development. We really do need an updated Davis planning effort or at least NE Specific Plan. But, in the short term perhaps this, particularly transit issues, can be addressed through the EIR and mitigation process.
We have an abundance of farming lands. There is no need to conserve agricultural land.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Willow Slough be damned!
That is not true, Walter, especially high quality ag land with deep soils, irrigation water, and a Mediterranean climate. We have lost most of our coastal farm lands. The oceans are being fished out. There are more people. It is an irreplaceable resource. We sit on some of the best farmland on the planet and we need to protect it.
Thank you Bob for your common sense. Once farmland is paved over it’s gone forever and as the world’s population grows our farmland is needed more than ever. Some people just can’t see the full picture.
That’s just fearmongering Bob and Keith. Can you point to how much agricultural land the United States and the world actually needs vs. what is available? It’s the same thing with so-called induced traffic demand.
WS say: “Can you point to how much agricultural land the United States and the world actually needs vs. what is available?”
I don’t know about Bob and Keith, but I’m far too stupid to point to how much. So I asked ChatGPT:
“Globally, there are about 4.6 billion hectares of agricultural land, with ~1.5 billion used for crops and ~3.1 billion for grazing. Current food needs require roughly 1.5-2 billion hectares of arable land, but inefficiencies like food waste, meat-heavy diets, and unequal distribution make land use less efficient. The U.S. has ~895 million acres of farmland, producing enough to feed its population and export a surplus, though shifting to plant-based diets could significantly reduce land requirements. While the world has enough agricultural land, challenges like climate change, land degradation, and competition from biofuels strain resources. By 2050, population growth will demand a 50-70% increase in food production unless we improve efficiency. Better management, reducing waste, and dietary changes are key to balancing global land needs with what’s available.”
Save Willow Slough!
They can’t be. The EIR process is per development. Transit does not magically connect. It connects via planning, which much be in place and agreed to as developers design around the overall plan. Davis has pooched this, and peeps & council are so fixated on development, baby, development, that they are screwing the pooch on ever having this development be anything but cars, baby, cars. Those most likely to bike/bus won’t choose to live in car-shaped plans where it won’t work – because good transit and alternate transportation is all about making these convenient via good planning.
Note: That was supposed to be a reply to Bob S. comment
Bob
Davis needs to plan to protect the maximum amount of ag land, which means hosting the peripheral development that would happen elsewhere in the Sacramento Valley on the edge of Davis instead. Davis can push for higher density per acre which then preserves ag land around other cities that are less forward looking. It’s myopic to pretend that preserving ag land nearby here is actually saving ag land overall.
And as mentioned below, waiting until the EIR to address these issues is too late. We need an overall plan, not scattershot developments to have effective development.
Perhaps what will help Davisites come to grips with the issue of traffic is to understand induced demand.
It is wrong to hope for traffic to not get worse because as long as you are building our society for the automobile, Car traffic will ALWAYS get worse, there is NO avoiding it.
When you build “good car infrastructure”, people use it, and automotive routes fill do capacity and only THEN do people stop driving that way.
This is “induced demand” and it is why many in Davis rightfully objected to the widening of i-80. It might provide temporary relief, but it is only going to encourage MORE longer-distance commuting until it backs up again. This has been shown time and time again.
The only way to not have people clogging our roads in cars is to provide ALTERNATIVES to driving.
If you build your city for cars, people will drive.
If you plan your city for transit and biking, people will bike and take transit,
..But like Alan said, Transit options don’t happen magically, they happen via planning.
So if we want the housing that we so desperately need, and we don’t want traffic to get worse, the ONLY answer that fits the bill is to orient our development around a master plan for transit and biking. The roads will always fill up to capacity no matter what we do.
TK, yes, and it must be done now. A single project built like an amoeba with a single mouth/anus will block any potential transit route FOREVER. This is no minor thing, but how to get “Davis” and the “Council” to see this, much less ask the applicants to go back to the drawing board. When BUILDING is more important than mitigating the effects of the building, all will lose, forever.
The time for a grand traffic/transportation plan would have been about 2010, when Chancellor Katehi announced the 2020 Initiative increasing student population by 5000 and increasing staff and faculty by 3000.
A comprehensive transportation plan, if past is any indication about planning in Davis, would take years.
Staff does not have the bandwidth to do this. It would entail the use of high-cost consultants.
Developers of the current proposed projects have no interest in this and have no reason to pay for it.
Any transportation plan needs to consider the Covell projects as they are being proposed, not try to force them “back to the drawing board.”
If some roads need to be widened to accommodate future transportation methods, to make room for future transit hubs, that’s probably doable. Yes, a transit corridor along 2nd to Mace to Covell and back to campus somehow is a great idea. But it shouldn’t be used as a pretext to block Village Farms or the other project proposals.
These calls for master planning are likely to just become another demand used to delay much-needed housing units, practically inviting the state to come in and take action.
Given that two of the crucial downtown projects seem to be unable to get funding, I suggest that continuing to load conditions onto proposed developments is becoming an obstacle to new housing construction. That is actually a pretty urgent issue.
Our planning process is an obstacle to housing development. I suggest we not make it worse.
DS, I know your stance from reading it repeatedly, but I wholly disagree. I agree the best time to have done a master plan was 15 years ago. But, as “they” say, “The best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago, the second best time is today”.
In the past, Davis’ vibe valued several things, including farmland preservation, alternate transportation and historical preservation. All these are potentially at odds and under-fire from the approach you advocate and that seems the embodiment of the current City Council and the truckloads of script-reading ‘housing advocates. BUT . . . Transportation is the core of good planning, and if anywhere should move heaven and Earth to plan for new developments friendly to alternate transit, it is Davis. But y’all are blinded by BUILD BABY BUILD.
People take alternatives to the auto when it is *convenient*. You can’t force people out of cars by really really really really wanting them too because your have ‘really good ideology’. People still have choice, and probably always will, so the way to get them to take alternative transit is to built neighborhoods that are conducive to that.
I don’t usually fly my flag here, but I’m a transit planner for alternative transportation, and I’ve been doing transportation-related work for over 30 years. There are basic concepts of design that are really simple once you know them, and it wouldn’t take a consultant — just listen to, um, I dunno, a local citizen who’s a transportation planner. Put a corridor design friendly to alternate transit through all the new developments, and connect it to downtown and campus via the most direct route. But what it does mean is STOP, create the basic design, and don’t accept any projects that, once they are all built, won’t put the puzzle pieces together into a strong corridor for bicycles, scooters, pedestrians, buses, and, in the year 2525, light rail.
But if you built butt-hole amoeba development blobs, they will only ever serve cars, sans a few diehards. Are you willing to condemn all those neighborhoods and Davis overall into this auto-centric fate? Apparently . . . so 😐
I agree we need to move forward with housing. But, we should make every effort to not preclude options. At a minimum we should clearly plan transit routes on the northeast corridor. Oh, Tim Keller did this, though perhaps we can refine it a bit. Providing for transit, increased density, protecting ag land is a reasonable goal. And, Village Homes is a long way down that road. This will provide significant housing now and give us time for additional planning.