Futurist Says Free Market Can Best Solve Urban Ills : Vision 2020: Civic leaders are urged to back growth and to use cash incentives.

A sluggish economy, freeway congestion and overpriced housing in Ventura County can best be addressed by an unrestricted free-market economy, a noted futurist told a group of government and business leaders in Thousand Oaks on Saturday.

In his keynote address to the Conejo Future Foundation, author Roger Selbert said the future of the region can be bright if progressive change and growth can overcome slow-growth philosophy and “political gridlock.”

“You cannot have a steady state,” he said. “Change is the only thing that is going to be a constant.”

Snail-paced traffic and overflowing landfills can be addressed, Selbert said, through cash incentives, such as charging commuters for driving during peak hours and boosting the cost of garbage collection for people who don’t recycle.

Selbert, who worked for six years as a corporate futurist for Security Pacific Bank, was the headline speaker at “Vision 2020: Shaping Tomorrow Today,” a series of seminars and workshops aimed at solving problems in transportation, housing, water and waste management and the environment over the next 30 years.

The Conejo Future Foundation is a nonprofit civic think tank founded in 1972 that includes business executives, journalists, council members and real estate agents among its members.

Selbert, a laissez-faire economist, told the group that government needs to “develop an environment that is low on red tape . . . so that you do have an incentive for growth.”

Local real estate specialists and community planners also discussed such issues as housing prices and traffic in Ventura County.

At a housing workshop, Kim Bryson, co-owner of Bryson Escrow, suggested breaking from traditional planning techniques to provide affordable housing for the county’s growing population.

“We are still building with a post-World War II mentality,” she said.

Bryson suggested taking the approach of building “high-density, cluster housing projects” with large areas of open space around them. She also supported the development of a regional growth plan drafted by a coalition of city, county and business interests.

Bryson spoke critically of the emerging slow-growth sentiment in the county.

“Do we really think we can limit growth?” she said, noting that births accounted for 47% of the county’s growth in 1989.

Bryson said the county’s population should jump to 915,000 in the year 2010 from 653,000 today.

Although support for slow-growth policies seems to be increasing, Bryson said housing prices would skyrocket unless new development is allowed. “In the ‘40s and ‘50s you were in the mainstream if you were a ‘pro-growther’; today you are ducking shells going over your head,” she said.

The median income in Thousand Oaks is $43,400, Bryson said, and the median house price is $290,000. To afford such a house, she said, a family needs an annual income of $90,000.

“In many cases we are losing the first-time buyer,” who she said are usually young, middle-income people such as nurses, plumbers and firefighters. “These people are the lifeblood that make this community tick.”

At a transportation workshop, Ginger Gherardi, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, predicted that the biggest advance in transportation by the year 2020 will be electronic devices that tell motorists where congestion is and how to get around it.

However, she said, the biggest problem facing commuters is “that most people think mass transit is great but it’s not for them. The time is now to make a decision whether gridlock is going to be a thing of the past.”