However, the East Solano Plan, as proposed, can offer a model for how to build new cities with the whole ecosystem in mind, intentionally: dense housing, paired with walkable and transit-accessible necessities and amenities like jobs, parks, daycares, shops, and services.
— California YIMBY (@cayimby) June 19, 2024
Just to catch everyone up.
This would be an example of my concerns with naive YIMBYism.
It's almost like reducing sprawl wasn't really the goal
The advocates for this project have gone on at great length about all the great ideas and innovations in this proposal, how walkable and sustainable it will be, how the planners have thought through smart ways to use public spaces and encourage local dining and culture, but before we go down the rabbit hole and pursue the feasibility and impact of each of these ideas, this is a good time to step back and remind ourselves why density is considered a good thing and sprawl bad.
There are a lot of arguments for densification. It decreases the footprint required for housing. It reduces commuting time. It reduces the need for additional roads and other transportation infrastructure. It reduces carbon emissions and other pollution.
While these are all valid, all but the first (and in the West, probably least important) depend on how we define density. If were just talking about having a bunch of people living very close to each other, but still driving considerable distances work, shop, dine, etc., then our densification has accomplished little, and may have actually made things worse.
That last point is not just hypothetical. Though we can go back and forth on the magnitude, we note there are cases of new housing in San Francisco being taken by people who worked and previously lived in Silicon Valley. Assuming they were not fully remote, the result was to increase the time and distance being driven and all the negative externalities that go with that.
Now let's take a look at the Solano County project. We'll need more precise details and in-depth traffic impact studies to be more exact, but we are looking at a site roughly halfway between San Francisco/Oakland and Sacramento, slightly closer to the latter, with commute times ranging from 45 to an hour and 15 minutes. It will probably be forty-five minutes to an hour away from University of California at Davis. About the same to Stockton.
Though San Francisco is somewhat smaller and population than most people seem to think, when combined with Oakland we are still talking about well over a million people. Sacramento is about half that but, being the state capital, it tends to punch above its weight. Stockton has over three hundred thousand. If you were looking to establish an exurb to service all of these areas, this is where you'd put it.
And not to put too fine a point on it, exurbs are bad.
Keep in mind that there will be no passenger rail service to this new town for the foreseeable future and that traveling by bus will inevitably make these commute times longer even assuming excellent service. How likely are people to live here without a car? Remote work complicates the picture a bit but presumably most of the residents will work in either Sacramento, Stockton, or the Bay Area. We can easily be talking about over 150 to 250 miles a week of commuting. What about shopping, dining, entertainment, and other services? Even given the most optimistic estimates, for years to come this will still be a relatively small town that can't hope to compete with the major cities on either side.
No matter how densely packed or efficiently laid out this town is, no matter how well designed and innovative the local transportation system is, any conceivable savings will be dwarfed by the fact that this is an exurb.
On a completely unrelated note:
Other investors include Nat Friedman, a co-founder of California YIMBY and a current board member. Brian Hanlon, who leads the organization, said Friedman had no influence on California YIMBY’s endorsing of the East Solano Plan.The thought never crossed our minds.
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