This weekend I attended the Housing California conference in Long Beach. The conference was open to government workers, community advocates, and academic researchers and students, but was ultimately heavily geared towards housing developers. I had intended on taking notes and analyzing the conference from a sustainable communities perspective, but was stymied by the lack of opportunities to dig into the topic. Unfortunately, only a handful of the workshops directly addressed sustainability and they were too packed to attend. Looking over the agenda for the conference, it is hard not to reflect on how ‘sustainability” is compartmentalized in planning and development. It’s a concern, sure, but just one of several.
Aside from some brief remarks at the plenary session regarding the necessity of denser housing as a response to climate change, there were essentially no mentions of sustainability or resilience in the sessions I attended. Still, I can’t bring myself to make a more though indictment of the conference.
In California, housing is the one type of development where it seems the standard approach to sustainable development (thoughtful, lengthy consideration of environmental impacts and alternatives) is reversed. This is a decidedly recent phenomenon, stemming from acts by the governor and state legislature in the last few years to significantly curtail the applicability of environmental law and land use limitations on housing projects. One of the most prominent targets of this curtailing is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The goals of CEQA are noble and environmentally sound, including in part “Develop and maintain a high-quality environment now and in the future, and take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance the environmental quality of the state,” “Ensure that the long-term protection of the environment, consistent with the provision of a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian, shall be the guiding criterion in public decisions,” and “Create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony to fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.” (PRC § 21001(a),(d), & (e)). While many often assume that CEQA requires complete mitigation of all environmental impacts, it is actually directed at is the decision-making process. Projects subject to CEQA must have a transparent process where all environmental impacts and potential mitigations are evaluated, alternatives are considered as necessary, and the final decision has a clear justification – all in public view, with public input. This can be a long process, with significant uncertainty for developers. It also takes for granted that all projects receive roughly the same amount of scrutiny, or at least that public interest will scale with the potential impact.
In practice, actual impacts and perceived impacts are not the same. In the past, some of the most broadly sustainable housing projects (dense, infill, affordable) have been the focus of intense public pressure, triggering in-depth CEQA analyses in response to subjective concerns about aesthetics or effects on “community character.” This can dramatically drag out project timelines and costs, and has resulted some projects being abandoned entirely, to say nothing of the chilling effect such a system has on potential proposals.
The reason for these reforms is understandable. Shelter is a basic human need, and the predominant model in much of California is suburban sprawl reliant on lengthy car commutes for work, groceries, et cetera. The status quo is deeply unsustainable, and blocking attempts to rectify that with a law intended to encourage considered, sustainable development is anathema to both the law itself and sustainability in general. Unfortunately, the housing development community still tends to sideline sustainability concerns instead of considering it holistically throughout the process, but it is clear that CEQA cannot be used to encourage anything else without getting in the way. At least, not in its current form.
Sustainable Communities 