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It is more complicated than that. There are state mandated housing requirements that are imposed through ABAG. They are going to tell you how much housing your

by NoPiece 13y ago

It is more complicated than that. There are state mandated housing requirements that are imposed through ABAG. They are going to tell you how much housing your town MUST build regardless of what the citizens or city council of the town want.

anigbrowl 13y ago
Actually they're state-mandated environmental requirements, from SB 375 which s designed to reduce the output of greenhouse gasses. Stuff that people ultimately voted for (indirectly, via the election of representatives to our republican form of government) and have not so far seen fit to overturn via ballot initiative. I am not too big a fan of planning, but then I am not too big a fan of sprawl either. The fact is that ABAG is a local organization and the Plan Bay Area initiative is an attempt to coordinate planning activities between the local governments that they have voluntarily entered into. So, some people don't like it. Not everybody gets everything they want in a polity. People like myself who don't care for sprawl had to accept the fact that we were in the minority on many past planning decisions too.
- NoPiece 13y ago
  You've changed the argument from "I don't understand why libertarians might be opposed to ABAG requirements" to "I support ABAG requirements because I don't like sprawl." Whether people "ultimately" voted for it is as irrelevant as saying people ultimately voted for Obama and therefore libertarians should support war in Afghanistan. ABAG takes local control of housing away from city governments. It is less accountable to residents than city government. Of course a libertarian wouldn't want local control of development superseded by regional, or state, or federal mandates. And if you don't like sprawl, you shouldn't be forcing Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Burlingame, etc. to increase density, you should look for density in downtown San Jose and San Francisco, and try to get people to move from the suburbs back to urban centers.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Well I'm trying to respond to things other people have said which also broadened the scope, and I still don't understand the basis of the Pacific Legal Foundation's suit. As for complaining that ABAG takes control of housing away from city governments, you seem indifferent to the fact that ABAG is an association of local governments. The various counties around the Bay Area (with whom city governments already had to deal) are entirely within their rights to work together, and frankly it seems a good deal more efficient to coordinate some things through a medium like ABAG than to come up with 9 separate plans that take no account of each other and would result in 9 separate bureaucracies to administrate them and so on. Downtown SF and SJ are already quite dense, and while I'm in favor of them getting more dense your notion that smaller cities lying along the 280/Caltrain corridor are some sort o rustic havens doesn't make sense. As I said earlier, if you really want to get away from it all it would make a lot more sense to go to Half Moon Bay or even Portola Valley, whereas Palo Alto is situated along 3 major transit arteries (101, 280, and Caltrain). I'm sure you've lived in Palo Alto a while and don't like to see it change, but look at a map; all the coast around the Bay is dense and you're sitting in between 2 cities with populations of around a million that are only about 45 miles apart. I'm not particularly sold on the ABAG plan, but I am quite in favor of working together and having a plan instead of just muddling along pretending the various counties around here don't impact each other.
  - NoPiece 13y ago
    Come on, San jose is not dense. It has 5,256.2 people per square mile. Compared to LA, the ultimate sprawl city which has 8,225/sq mile, or New York which has 27,550/sq mi. As I said earlier, ABAG is complicated. It isn't just an association of local governments. Cities can't leave it and relinquish themselves of the housing mandates, so they might as well stay in it and fight for something reasonable. Cities and their citizens should decide for themselves whether or how they want to grow, or shrink.

by NoPiece 13y ago

anigbrowl 13y ago

Actually they're state-mandated environmental requirements, from SB 375 which s designed to reduce the output of greenhouse gasses. Stuff that people ultimately voted for (indirectly, via the election of representatives to our republican form of government) and have not so far seen fit to overturn via ballot initiative. I am not too big a fan of planning, but then I am not too big a fan of sprawl either. The fact is that ABAG is a local organization and the Plan Bay Area initiative is an attempt to coordinate planning activities between the local governments that they have voluntarily entered into. So, some people don't like it. Not everybody gets everything they want in a polity. People like myself who don't care for sprawl had to accept the fact that we were in the minority on many past planning decisions too.

NoPiece 13y ago
You've changed the argument from "I don't understand why libertarians might be opposed to ABAG requirements" to "I support ABAG requirements because I don't like sprawl." Whether people "ultimately" voted for it is as irrelevant as saying people ultimately voted for Obama and therefore libertarians should support war in Afghanistan. ABAG takes local control of housing away from city governments. It is less accountable to residents than city government. Of course a libertarian wouldn't want local control of development superseded by regional, or state, or federal mandates. And if you don't like sprawl, you shouldn't be forcing Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Burlingame, etc. to increase density, you should look for density in downtown San Jose and San Francisco, and try to get people to move from the suburbs back to urban centers.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Well I'm trying to respond to things other people have said which also broadened the scope, and I still don't understand the basis of the Pacific Legal Foundation's suit. As for complaining that ABAG takes control of housing away from city governments, you seem indifferent to the fact that ABAG is an association of local governments. The various counties around the Bay Area (with whom city governments already had to deal) are entirely within their rights to work together, and frankly it seems a good deal more efficient to coordinate some things through a medium like ABAG than to come up with 9 separate plans that take no account of each other and would result in 9 separate bureaucracies to administrate them and so on. Downtown SF and SJ are already quite dense, and while I'm in favor of them getting more dense your notion that smaller cities lying along the 280/Caltrain corridor are some sort o rustic havens doesn't make sense. As I said earlier, if you really want to get away from it all it would make a lot more sense to go to Half Moon Bay or even Portola Valley, whereas Palo Alto is situated along 3 major transit arteries (101, 280, and Caltrain). I'm sure you've lived in Palo Alto a while and don't like to see it change, but look at a map; all the coast around the Bay is dense and you're sitting in between 2 cities with populations of around a million that are only about 45 miles apart. I'm not particularly sold on the ABAG plan, but I am quite in favor of working together and having a plan instead of just muddling along pretending the various counties around here don't impact each other.
- NoPiece 13y ago
  Come on, San jose is not dense. It has 5,256.2 people per square mile. Compared to LA, the ultimate sprawl city which has 8,225/sq mile, or New York which has 27,550/sq mi. As I said earlier, ABAG is complicated. It isn't just an association of local governments. Cities can't leave it and relinquish themselves of the housing mandates, so they might as well stay in it and fight for something reasonable. Cities and their citizens should decide for themselves whether or how they want to grow, or shrink.