Encourage Smart Growth

Now that Ventura County voters have said no to the traditional “suburban sprawl” style of development, it’s time for city and county governments to adopt policies that encourage--or at least permit--smart growth within the designated urban boundaries.

A report in today’s Ventura County Edition of The Times demonstrates that these necessary changes of policy and attitude are too slow in coming.

Investigation by staff writer Daryl Kelley found that since 1998, when two-thirds of local voters passed Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) measures to protect what remains of Ventura County’s fertile topsoil, it has been mostly business as usual. City councils and planning codes still favor large-lot subdivisions and shopping centers with vast parking lots. New houses and businesses are gobbling up acres at the fastest rate since the 1980s.

It would take more than votes to stop Ventura County’s population growth. According to widely accepted forecasts, the county will grow by 22% over the next 20 years--the period covered by SOAR--adding 166,457 new residents in need of 54,586 new dwellings.

By state law, each local city has to do its fair share to accommodate population growth. If they refuse to act in good faith, the state can reject the housing portion of the city’s general plan, opening it up to lawsuits by developers.

Even erecting brick walls at the county line would not stop growth: In recent years, about two-thirds of the county’s new residents have arrived via the maternity ward rather than by moving van. Until someone dares to challenge the birth rate, public officials can only look for the best ways to accommodate larger numbers in limited space.

There are plenty of ways to do that, some of which are described in Kelley’s report. Options include building more dwellings per acre, rebuilding run-down neighborhoods and rezoning land now set aside for other uses such as stores, industry, farms or open space. Some cities in Ventura County are already changing their rules to allow homes and businesses to coexist in reinvigorated downtowns.

In Fillmore, city officials suggested that the owner of Ballard’s furniture add six second-floor apartments when rebuilding after the Northridge earthquake. The result has been good for the owner, good for the tenants and good for other downtown businesses. In Oxnard, a residential loft occupies the upper floor of an ambulance company. In downtown Ventura, 26 condos share a single acre. In Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, zero-lot-line construction allows more homes to house more families.

Developers stand ready to create such options--if building and zoning codes are modified to allow them, and if buyers find them appealing.

“You can’t just draw a boundary around a city and then let everything else happen the way it’s always happened,” local planning expert Bill Fulton told The Times. “And that’s what we are doing right now.”

Ventura County voters have decreed that the spaces between cities be kept in open space or agriculture. Now it’s up to elected officials to heed the advice of their own professional planners and adopt policies that encourage the kind of development that will make the most of each urban acre.

Those who wish to remain leaders had better scramble to get back in front of the parade.