Hi, Davis Citizens Planning Group here.
You won’t be surprised that as the general plan process kicks off and the community grapples with development proposals, we have lots of thoughts and ideas to add. But before we dive into another set of articles, we thought it might be useful to provide some baseline context and start out by explaining where we are coming from.
Urban Planning 101:
For most of human history, cities were built around a simple idea: everything important goes in the center of town for easy access to everyone.
For medieval villages and early cities, that made perfect sense: People walked to the market square, the church, the blacksmith, and the city hall—all tightly clustered in a dense hub. The farther out you lived, the longer you had to walk, and that, naturally, encouraged efficient compact neighborhoods.
Then came the automobile: Cars allowed people to live many miles from the city center and still commute to work or shop. Suburbs expanded, highways spread like vines, and downtowns swelled with daily commuters. But this model has a fatal flaw: there’s only so much space for all the cars. Highways clog, parking becomes a nightmare, streets jam up, and the idea that everyone can travel to the same town center at the same time breaks down.
Here is a picture of downtown Houston from the 70’s as they learned this very lesson:
The “monocentric” concept of a city where there is “one downtown” thus simply fails in the age of the automobile, and once cities get over 30,000 to 50,000 people we need to start thinking very differently.
Moving Beyond the “One Big Center” Model
Modern city planning solves this problem with the concept of a “hierarchy of centers.” Instead of forcing every trip into one single congested core, a well-designed city spreads housing, services, and workplaces across multiple nodes. Which means that people can meet most of their daily needs closer to home, and longer trips into downtown become the exception, not the rule.
It is often the case that the “downtown” is still the largest and most dominant of these nodes, and that there are some amenities that exist only there (e.g., sports arenas, courthouses, theaters) but the daily amenities, such as grocery stores, cafes, barber shops, gas stations, etc should be available uniformly across the city.
This concept is now so universally accepted and so mainstream that various urban planning thought leaders have ended up coming up with a number of different terms that all refer to this same set of principles:
- “Transit oriented development”
- “15 Minute cities” / “20 Minute neighborhoods”
- “Smart growth”
- “Complete communities”
- “Walkable urbanism”
- “Traditional neighborhood development”
- “Urban villages”
- “Complete streets”
- “Human scale urbanism”
Indeed, the LEED-ND “rubric” which the measures environmental impacts of neighborhoods that the Davis City Council discussed in recent years, is yet another outgrowth of these same ideas and it also points us in the same direction: the creation of a network of neighborhood centers distributed across the city, ideally laid out in such a way that they are connected by transit and bike paths, and are easy to navigate by people of all ages and income levels..
A Leaf as a Metaphor for Sustainable Urban Design
When we think of how these distributed centers work together to form the landscape of an overall city, and we think about transportation and connectivity of these centers, it is helpful to invoke the metaphor of a leaf as pictured above.
A leaf is actually a very well evolved mechanism for efficient distribution and transport across a 2 dimensional plane, and, in the fall, as the colors change, leaves often reveal a good analogy for urban planning as well.
Along the veins where the supply of nutrients is high, you have areas that remain green longer, and this is directly analogous to transit corridors, carrying the city’s “lifeblood” of movement and activity of people. This is important for cars but is especially important for transit which needs to be planned out in “lines” that cross the city. These major arteries carry people, and much like the leaf, those arteries are most effective at delivering those people to the areas directly adjacent to the artery — which is why we see the green stripes on the leaf here. This is after all, why major streets are often called “arterials.”
These are the corridors where it makes the most sense for us to have our commercial services and our higher density neighborhoods:
- Major centers (the thickest veins and base of the leaf) are where high-frequency transit converges. These are our downtown and a hierarchy of regional commercial nodes, that are homes to shops, schools, clinics, and cultural amenities.
- Moderate-density corridors (branching veins) support apartments, small businesses, and local parks. Everyday retail such as cafe’s local pubs, and grocery stores are distributed throughout.
- Lower-density neighborhoods (the red inner zones of the leaf) offer single-family homes, and quieter streets but cannot be served efficiently by transit.
In a well-planned city, density and commercial activity occurs along these arterial corridors, and it makes inherent sense that the city’s supply of multifamily housing should coincide with these corridors as well, as it ensures that the most people possible have walking-distance access to our transit lines and to the shopping that is distributed along these lines.
Concentrating housing along transit corridors allows robust public transportation, reduces car dependency, and supports a thriving mix of services. Residents of multifamily housing (students, young couples, service workers, and retirees) are also the most likely to use transit, further reducing traffic. It is simply the most effective way to plan a city: You think in terms of your arteries, plan your transit lines along them, and then you cluster your higher density housing and shopping along those lines.
The result is a city with:
- Lower carbon emissions
- Less traffic congestion
- More independent mobility for both kids and seniors
- Stronger local economies
As a fun aside, consider the image below which is a 3D map of Kansas City showing “revenue contribution per acre” -— basically a combination of property and sales taxes. Higher revenue means higher density housing and the presence of commercial stores. We can see the “arteries” of density and economic activity radiating out from their core.
What This Means for Davis
Davis already has elements of a distributed city. Our grocery stores, for example, are spread across town.
The map above shows each of our existing grocery stores with a ¼-mile walking radius around each store. This shows that although we already have a distributed model, we are quite spread out and anyone who does not live within one of these circles is most likely going to be taking their car to the grocery store instead of biking or walking… so we’re not yet a “15 minute city.”
Next lets connect our city, lets map the “arteries” of our leaf / the arterial roads that connect our neighborhoods.
There could be some argument as to how we draw these, but for the sake of this illustration lets define our “arteries” as the following corridors:.
- East-West: Covell/Mace, Russell/5th to E. Second, Richards
- North-South: Arlington/Lake, Anderson, F Street, Pole Line, Mace
Now let’s lay these corridors on top of our map:
If we followed best practices for urban planning, then our task in the upcoming general plan process would be quite simple:
- Establish accessible and sustainable transit along these arterial corridors.
- Up-zone these areas for higher density housing and include mixed use commercial in many areas along them
In this image we have done exactly that. The red dots are our designated targets for highest commercial and residential density, with downtown being the largest and then our existing secondary nodes distributed around town.
Over that we have laid two conceptual transit lines, a blue and a gold line:
The blue line circles our eastern neighborhoods before heading downtown, connecting to the Amtrak station, and then across campus terminating at the west village
The gold line connects west Davis through a similar loop before heading onto campus and terminating downtown also at the Amtrak station.
(Note we are not saying this is what our transit system should be. There are gaps and there are good reasons for doing it differently. We just wanted to get a simple system on the map for the sake of illustration)
With a map like this, we have a high-level plan that yields for us a city where we have effective transit, low traffic, low greenhouse gas emissions and AMPLE amounts of affordable multifamily housing. If we decided to take the housing crisis AND the climate crisis seriously, this (or something very similar) is what we would do.
But have you already noticed the catch?
The challenge of up-zoning.
The largest challenge is that this map represents change. And while all cities inevitably change and evolve over time, that change is often difficult and generates significant friction.
There is no argument that densification of our arterial areas, the establishment of transit along them and the integration of mixed use zoning is the superior way to plan our cities growth. Such an approach wins on every conceivable metric especially as compared to the default of sprawling tract home development:
- Traffic
- Sustainability (energy / VMT / water use)
- City finances
- Housing affordability
But when we look at many of our “arterial” corridors at ground level, we see that they are lined with single family homes — built long ago when nobody was thinking about the long-term needs for city growth or that their streets might someday become our most traveled thoroughfares.
Do you remember the drama of the Trackside development on Third Street? Now imagine that happening for every single redevelopment / upzoning / densification project along every corridor like this across the city.
This is unfortunately an extremely common, (if not stereotypical) challenge for cities, but many cities have weathered these storms successfully and the universal solution is this: A robust, long-term planning process that proactively faces these issues.
After all, there is a world of difference between:
- Waking up to bulldozers tearing down the house next door so apartments can be put up.
Or
- Telling a homeowner that the general plan for the city includes a re-zoning of their property for multi-family housing 20 years from now.
That latter gives residents plenty of time to respond to the change, or to move if they want (their property value will immediately rise of course) and since the average family only lives in a given house for 16 years, nobody gets caught off-guard.
Nevertheless, looking this far into the future needs to be the ambition and the scope of our general plan process. We need to develop a robust, long-term vision for our city and proactively take the steps to get there, and we should not be afraid to tackle these big issues.
We hope that this article has raised some thoughts for you, and caused you to be interested in the general plan process and what is possible if we ARE able to summon the collective courage to take this process seriously and not shrink away from asking all of the big questions.
Our group feels like the general plan process is an opportunity for us to make our city significantly better for the next generation. Will our descendants look back and wish we had made better choices, and curse us for kicking the can down the road? Or will they be grateful that we took the time and had the courage to make tough decisions that yielded a more sustainable / affordable / equitable city in the long term?
Our planning decisions both in the upcoming measure J processes as well as in the following general plan process, will all call upon some level of fluency with the basic principles of city planning, and those decisions can only be made wisely in light of some higher-order principles to guide us.
We have two articles coming up about both the general plan process and our peripheral proposals, but we hope that it has been helpful to start with these higher-level principles discussed here today.
The Davis Citizens Planning Group
plandavis.org
Alex Achimore
Richard McCann
Anthony Palmere
David Thompson
Tim Keller
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Several of the inline images (Houston, “A Leaf as a Metaphor,” and “lay these corridors on top of our map”) aren’t showing up.
Should be fixed
The Davis Citizens Planning Group’s Motto: “Unachievable solutions intended to create problems”.
Alternatively: “Your source for creating problems where none currently exist.”
Who wants to take a vote on the best one (or propose one of your own)?
Ron O
Since you don’t live in Davis nor have any interests here, you aren’t able to discern the problems we have in Davis and can’t be part of the solution. You haven’t presented an alternative solution to high prices in Davis that keep our workforce living out of town. Others who do know that there’s a significant problem can read our discussions about how best to address this problem.
Maybe I don’t think it’s a problem.
Maybe I don’t think housing prices are “high”.
Maybe I don’t think that anything proposed here will lower them.
Maybe I think that housing prices shouldn’t dictate a community’s decisions in the first place.
Maybe I have connections to Davis that I don’t care to share, here. And maybe you should focus the conversation on issues, rather than individuals. (Maybe that’s too difficult for you to handle?)
Ron O
As an outsider you have no right to attempt to dictate to Davis stakeholders how we manage and build our community. Since you have no apparent stake in the positive evolution of our community you are only a negative nihlistic influence. I’m willing to discuss the issues when you’re ready to concede that at times your wrong or that the evidence contradicts your unsubstantiated assertions. But I don’t see that day coming soon so I will continue to point out that you are not a legitimate commentator on Davis-specific issues.
That means no one should care whether you think the housing cost crisis in Davis is a problem or not. Your stance that a price premium of 50% in Davis is fine because that’s how the market functions but then railing against allowing the market to reduce this premium is hypocritical to its core. I’m tired of your endlessly circular arguments that never concede that you got it wrong. You still haven’t conceded the simple math error you make a year and half ago on density calculations that was the whole basis of your argument on that particular issue. You can’t even acknowledge a simple obvious mistake. It’s that obstinance that rankles almost every one here.
Or at least until you are willing to reveal your connections to the community. Your stance on this matter so hypocritical given that you attack other commenters such at Tim Keller for their revealed connections. Your need to hide something is very telling about your likely motivations here.
“That means no one should care whether you think the housing cost crisis in Davis is a problem or not.”
I care what Ron thinks…
Thank you for this post. I have long felt the same way about the city planning and road design of Davis – we need intentionally-designed arterial pathways through town that utilize mass transit without the only focus being student access to campus. Upzoning areas in that yellow is pure common sense, especially around downtown (F St. is abominable).
F Street has some decent bike lanes – not sure what is abominable. The main problem there I find is that the rude DoorDash drivers create hazardous situations in the bike lanes as parking by putting on their emergency blinkers, and there is zero enforcement by the City to stop this behavior.
Thank you for your careful work and helpful graphics. I appreciate your multi-pronged emphasis on traffic, sustainability, housing affordability, as well as city finances.
I don’t know how comparing Davis to Houston or Kansas City is appropriate.
Ron, if you ever go to the farmers market on a saturday. or downtown at dinnertime, you understand inherrently that these are universal principles.
Huh? Why?
I go to the Farmers Market all the time. I can always find parking.
People are always worrying about Davis becoming Elk Grove, a place where there is a good supply of single family homes at reasonable prices and a diverse population. I get the concern people have about massive home building even though I don’t agree that adding supply to meet demand is a bad thing. But comparing Houston and Kansas City to Davis? Are you serious?
Ron G
Elk Grove is a place where sprawl is gobbling up farmland, greenhouse gas emissions are rising, neighbors don’t really know each other because they have to get into their cars to go anywhere, where there’s not a strong sense of community because it’s so dispersed without strong community centers and strip malls instead. That’s the type of community we are trying to avoid–one planned entirely by profit maximizing developers. We want input on what our community should look like, not the vision of a single individual who has an overly rosy view of the past.
Here the problem with universal anything. It’s simply people trying to tell other people how they should live.
Or, people trying to tell other people what they should build (including on farmland) – supposedly on behalf of people who don’t even live there.
So you don’t think people should be able to tell developer what they should build?
Yes – they do so all the time (via zoning, building codes, building heights, square footage, mitigation fees, urban growth boundaries, etc.). Not specifically, but generally in regard to what’s allowed to be built.
It’s also true in regard to the state’s new laws (e.g., requirements that developers have to follow in regard to the “builder’s remedy”.)
That’s true regarding all buildings (including the one you live in). It’s what prevents chaos in regard to civic infrastructure, for example. It can even be a matter of life and death for occupants, all neighbors, first responders, etc.
It’s what ensures that there’s sufficient water, sewage, roads, schools, parks, libraries, bike paths, etc. (Last I heard, the state won’t even consider some of these limitations – such as water availability in regard to their new laws. Though I believe they still restrict some developments in high risk zones – and Bonta actually put a stop to one of them somewhere in the Berryessa area.)
I think the housing market can tell developers what to build.
Ron G
That’s like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk excusing the rampant social disorder caused by their social media platforms as simply responding to the market. They manipulate personal preferences to increase their market value. Corporate greed is driven by short term incentives that are contrary to long term well being. As a professional economist I can go through the very long list of market failures that lead to adverse outcomes that are not reflected in market prices. That’s why the market does not do a good job of telling developers what to build.
I don’t think the Public should DIRECTLY tell them what to build. That’s the City Council’s job. The Council is (in theory) more informed than the public. So they may know of more long term needs by the city than the Public is aware of or even cares about. It helps to prevent those extremes with hardlines from mucking up the process. Council members tend to be more pragmatic than John Q. Public.
It’s up to City Council (LEADERS) to get these projects through and sell them to their constituents.
The Council needs to respond to the public’s request to change the parameters of the current proposals to better fit the public’s desired long term outcome. It’s the Council’s job to curb the short term desires by developers. Just putting a developer’s proposal with no modifications by the Council is an abdication of this responsibility.
I’ll also point out our group has as much professional experience in these issues as the consultants that the Council has retained to advise it. The citizenry is not just a group of blathering idiots.
All this is nice pie in the sky ideas and all. At one time in the bay area I used to track down various properties located near BART Stations for redevelopment because the density bonuses provided….and that was 20 years ago. I used to sit on discussion panels hosted by Spur in San Francisco (25 years ago). So I get what this “Davis Citizen Planning Group” is talking about. But it’s not grounded in reality.
The reality is that the city needs housing (even more urgently it needs economic and commercial development…but that’s another discussion). When you’re dying of thirst and you start to tell the people offering you water what brand of flavored sparkling water you want….well…less and less people will offer you water and your selection will become more limited….and you’ll lucky to get any water at all. Basically Paralysis by Analysis….which is what Davis is good at. I’m all for planning. But I’d say that Planning needs to happen while concurrently current housing projects are fast tracked (and even more so…like 10X’s more so….commercial projects) for development to meet the immediate state housing requirements and get the pro (smart?) development campaign under way.
Keith E
We’re not saying that we don’t need more housing–we’re saying we don’t need any more 3,500 square foot “executive homes.” We already have enough housing that serves upper income commuting households. You need to ask “why do we need more housing?” And we’re answering that is housing for middle income households that have workers who are now commuting into Davis, but desire to live here for the amenities the community offers. We have an invisible financial moat that keeps these families out. We are saying that building the type of housing being offered by the developers will only reinforce that moat and not solve the real problem.
You are suggesting the simplistic solution that got us into this mess in the first place. It was the single family suburban sprawl built in the 1990s that sparked Measure J in the first place. We need to acknowledge the rationale behind that rebellion and change what is being offered. Unfortunately the current offers repeat the mistakes of the 90s.
“We already have enough housing that serves upper income commuting households.”
I’m not convinced that is true.
To expand on this, while I think Richard is right that building only executive-style homes won’t solve affordability, it’s also misleading to suggest there are enough of them. In a constrained market like Davis, each missing segment ripples down. I’m not suggesting targeting the upper section, but I do think the statement is too simplistic.
We’re not saying that we don’t need more housing
You’re saying you’re pushing for a specific “pie in the sky” type of housing that only a segment of the housing market want (and segment of builders want or can build). You’re part of the development throttling process. I don’t oppose many of your ideas and support them as long term plans. But I think it the short term they’re limited and ill advised for fixing the current problems with the city.
“We’re not saying that we don’t need more housing–we’re saying we don’t need any more 3,500 square foot “executive homes.” We already have enough housing that serves upper income commuting households.”
The city needs what the market wants. Builders build what the market wants. That includes 3,500 sqft executive homes as well as moderate and starter homes.
“You need to ask “why do we need more housing?”
To meet RHNA goals. And most importantly to fuel economic development.
“We are saying that building the type of housing being offered by the developers will only reinforce that moat and not solve the real problem.”
Then unless you go with a public building option (which I support to a degree), you’re foolishly going against the market. Builders build what they can sell….and what won’t endanger their investment….right now that’s not Davis. From a developer’s standpoint, Davis is a no fly zone.
“We are saying that building the type of housing being offered by the developers will only reinforce that moat and not solve the real problem.”
Yes, as regions grow, housing generally gets more expensive. You can either build at a massive rate…like Levitt Towns…to keep housing stock to keep prices in check. Or just accept that pretty much nothing you can do (land/property is still a privately owned commodity) will make housing affordable and just plan/build to the best of your ability to meet RHNA and market demand.
“You are suggesting the simplistic solution that got us into this mess in the first place. It was the single family suburban sprawl built in the 1990s that sparked Measure J in the first place.”
OH, THE SKY IS FALLING….WE’RE NOT IN CONTROL!!!!! OMG! If we annex and build out a major shopping center to fuel economic growth…..you’re saying that shopping centers are like rabbits and will multiply and spread completely out of our control????? Yes Davis is stupid. To control growth they basically said…..we’re going to put in place a way for the hoi-poloi to kill almost all growth going forward. But measure J is in place already. So what’s going to cause the shopping center rabbits to multiply out of control this time?
“The reality is that the city needs housing (even more urgently it needs economic and commercial development…but that’s another discussion).”
I’ve recently been puzzled by calls constant calls for commercial development. Downtown Davis is full of vacant retail spaces. So I’m curious how to manage the desire for more commerce with the reality of over supply of bricks and mortar spaces available?
Because you’re trying to force square pegs into round holes. Many retailers want their own space. BIGGER space. Customizable (to a degree) space. Downtown is nice space for the cute Esty types of stores. And sure Davis needs more of them too. But if you think of the city as one big shopping center; all shopping centers need anchor tenants to support the smaller ones. ‘
It’s somewhat of the same argument against the residential infill or bust crowd. Infill redevelopment is very difficult to plan compared to developing new open areas. So the number of builders that can and will try to do an infill project dwindle considerably. Also the economic and financial window is much narrower for infill/redevelopment properties. That’s not to say Davis shouldn’t try to push for infill redevelopment. Just not at the cost of some unfortunate but necessary sprawl/annexation residential and commercial development…..at least until the city’s immediate needs are met.
Ron G
I will add to Keith E’s point that downtown Davis is now a long ways from many parts of Davis. In the 1970s the city was sufficiently compact that many people could easily bike or walk downtown. That’s no longer true. So focusing on commercial development downtown increases vehicle travel with attendant environmental consequences as well as blocking the growth of budding neighborhood communities. We need dispersed central gathering points around town.