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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
September 20, 2004 Coyote Valley plan falls short
Inadequate Parks, Transit Should Force Planners Back to Drawing Board Opinion By Tom Steinbach With good planning, San Jose's idea for a new community of 25,000 homes and 50,000 jobs in Coyote Valley could be a national model of smart growth, with vibrant neighborhoods surrounded by farms and parks. Without good planning, development will just bring more traffic jams, smog and sprawling subdivisions. Unfortunately, the plan is off to a bad start. Last June, Greenbelt Alliance released our vision for the valley called "Getting It Right: Preventing Sprawl in Coyote Valley." We laid out how to develop the valley responsibly while preserving farmland, reducing the need to drive and providing affordable homes. Now we've done a report card evaluating how the City's plan measures up to that vision. Its grades are low -- mostly C's and D's, with many Incompletes. The city's consultants have gotten some things right. They call for a vibrant town center with a mix of homes, shops and offices. At the edge of the town center, they include a transit hub, which will link the valley's own public transit system with Caltrain. But in its current form, the plan gets more wrong than right. Outside the town center, the plan separates homes and jobs. This means office parks in one end of the valley, housing tracts in the other, and a lot of driving between the two. Coyote Valley's existing road network is jettisoned in favor of big highway-like roads, unwelcoming to people on foot and on bikes. Creeks are inadequately protected, and parks are unevenly distributed. Though planning for transit scores high, the proposed system scores low -- it will be extremely expensive and may not be frequent or accessible enough to work. Some parts of the plan aren't wrong, they're simply missing. What about protecting the hills that cradle Coyote Valley? What about making sure agriculture stays viable? How will the required affordable housing be funded, as well as the foundations of the new community: roads, sewers, health clinics, and parks? The consultants and city officials say they're working on these issues, but we've seen nothing yet. Fortunately, this plan is not a done deal. The San Jose City Council now has the chance to tell the plan's authors to go back to the drawing board and bring up those grades. They can still get it right. TOM STEINBACH is executive director of the Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay
Area non-profit working to protect open space and promote livable communities.
He wrote this for the Mercury News. GREENBELT GRADES These are aspects of the city's Coyote Valley plan that so far merit a C or D grade from the Greenbelt Alliance: Segregating housing and jobs instead of creating a mixed-use community. Planning for suburban style subdivisions rather than compact, walkable neighborhoods. Inadequately planning for parks and protected creeks. Planning a costly transit system that may not meet demand. Building an expensive new road system at once that will encourage piecemeal, sprawling development rather than orderly growth from the town center. Considering allowing development to move forward without regard for San Jose's financial health. Source: Greenbelt Alliance ### |
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