New Geography

Tag: San Diego

  • Counting Trees in San Diego

    Recently, I came across “Taking Inventory of County’s Trees” in the San Diego Union Tribune, an article that describes Robin Rivet’s “ambitious effort to map every urban tree in San Diego County”. Rivet is an urban forester-arborist at the Center for Sustainable Energy California and she ”aims to quantify the value of all local trees and make a statement about a huge but often underappreciated resource.” My concern is that this article may be alerting San Diegans to more regulations, costs and loss of property rights coming our way.

    Through California’s legislative sustainable development and smart growth initiatives SB375 and AB 32, look for the implementation of ‘urban forests’ to be another area of focus by the State of CA and environmental NGOs to significantly reduce GHGs by 80% to below 1990 levels by 2050.

    “The website keeps a running tab of the trees’ “yearly eco impact.” The nearly 300,000 trees listed as of Thursday, according to the site, have reduced 19,622,883 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere, conserved 83,213,745 gallons of water, conserved 8,502,988 kilowatts of energy, and reduced 46,244 pounds of pollutants from the air.”

    This project is being funded by CalFire. Why? Details in the CalFire AB32 Scoping Plan for Forestry reveal that CalFire is looking to assess CO2 sequestration in all forests and range lands across the state in order to mitigate GHG emissions. Capturing a map of San Diego County’s canopy becomes useful data to the state of California that is about to launch their highly controversial and lucrative Cap and Trade auction in November. The CalFire AB32 Scoping Plan states:

    “Unlike engineered projects or measures that reduce emissions at a point source (e.g. stack or tailpipe), the forest sector sequestration benefits are accrued through tree growth over large areas of the landscape, including urban areas. With such a large land base carbon benefits need to be accounted for in average stocks (amount of carbon stored).”

    Not only has the state of California legislated the reduction of GHG emissions through AB 32, it is mandating General Plan changes via SB375. SB375 is requiring municipalities (MPOS) to update their Regional Transportation Plans (RTP) and local land use plans to “reverse sprawl” with the intent of mitigating GHG emissions. Through the forest sector, CalFire suggests that if landowners saw the economic value of carbon sequestration, they would resist selling their land to developers and choose to participate in the carbon off-set market instead.

    “The creation and maintenance of carbon markets for forest carbon, both
    voluntary and compliance-based, will increase sequestration by providing
    landowner incentives to increase carbon stocks on their ownership. The value of
    carbon at $10/t is sufficient to interest landowners in changing their management
    practices to increase carbon storage. Updating the current California Climate
    Action Registry (CCAR) Forest Protocols can create the opportunity for a larger
    number of forest landowners to participate in carbon offset markets. The success
    of these markets will depend upon quality of the carbon that is being sold, which
    will depend upon the accounting principles applied in development of forest
    protocols used to verify and register carbon sequestration projects.

    Other incentives include providing landowners reduced tax or regulatory liabilities, which will encourage the retention of working forest landscapes, instead of land division and development. Additional opportunities may exist for subsidies or carbon taxes/fee revenues collected and reinvested in carbon sequestration projects.”

    The CalFire AB32 Scoping Plan for Forestry is full of useful information that can help us to understand and assess future regulations that might develop from their global warming mitigation and adaption schemes.

    “Tree planting under the urban forestry strategy has direct overlap with the goals
    of the “Cool Communities” strategy in the Land Use sector to encourage the development of communities that have lower surface temperatures. Urban tree planting may also have overlap with the Land Use sector strategies for “Landscape Guidelines” and “Smart Growth”. In addition, the forest sector Reforestation mitigation measure would require developers to provide 1 to 2 acres of reforestation as mitigation for every acre lost to development when converting forest land to other uses.”

    Based on what I know about sustainable development and smart growth, I propose we watch out for the adaptation portion of this urban forestry implementation plan in San Diego.

  • Population Dispersion Continues in Riverside-San Bernardino, San Diego and Sacramento

    Population growth continued the strongest in the suburban areas of Riverside-San Bernardino, San Diego and Sacramento, while unusually strong growth occurred in the historical core municipalities, all of which are dominated by a suburban urban form.

    Riverside-San Bernardino: Riverside-San Bernardino experienced by far the fastest growth of any metropolitan area in California, at 30 percent from 2000 to 2010. This growth rate placed the metropolitan area otherwise known locally as the "Inland Empire" fourth in growth rate among the 26 reporting major metropolitan areas, behind Raleigh, Las Vegas and Austin. The Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area grew from a population of 3,255,000 in 2000 to 4,225,000 in 2010. At the growth rates of the past decade, Riverside-San Bernardino would pass San Francisco, to become the state’s second largest metropolitan area by 2012.

    Riverside-San Bernardino is virtually an all suburban metropolitan area. The historical core municipality of San Bernardino grew 11.4 percent, from 188,000 in 2000 to 210,000 in 2010, capturing two percent of the metropolitan area growth. Suburban areas accounted for 98 percent of the growth.

    San Diego: The San Diego metropolitan area grew 10 percent from 2000 to 2010, rising from 2,814,000 to 3,095,000. This growth rate was nearly double or more than that of the other major coastal metropolitan areas in California (Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose). Even so, the actual population count was approximately 130,000 below the California State Department of Finance estimate. We had previously questioned the aggressive population projections released by the State Department of Finance in an Orange County Register op-ed, 60 Million Californians: Don’t Bet on It).

    The historical core municipality grew 6.9 percent from 1,223,000 to 1,307,000 and, as in 2000 is the nation’s eighth largest municipality (having been passed by San Antonio and having passed Dallas). The city of San Diego, with a largely suburban urban form, attracted 30 percent of the metropolitan area population growth. The California State Department of Finance estimate for the city was much higher, at 1,376,000, indicating an estimate of two new residents for every actual resident counted.

    Sacramento: The Sacramento metropolitan area grew strongly between 2000 and 2010, at 19.6 percent. The population rose from 1,797,000 to 2,149,000, adding more new residents than the much larger combined metropolitan areas of San Francisco and San Jose.

    The historical core municipality of Sacramento grew from 407,000 to 466,000 (a gain of 14.6 percent) and accounted for 17 percent of the metropolitan population growth. Suburban areas grew 21.1 percent and accounted for 83 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

  • LA the Least Gentrified Major City?

    Los Angeles has been “gentrified” and made more stable in many of its areas by immigrant settlement, but the phenomenon of Anglo “gentrification” – what used to be “yuppies” or their more contemporary counterparts (original “yuppies” are now in their 50s) upgrading a formerly “bad” neighborhood by pushing up rents and squeezing out existing relatively poor folks – is rarer in Los Angeles than in almost any other American city.

    The closest thing to it has occurred in a few “paleo-urbanist” beach communities. (“Paleo-urbanist” means planned to New Urbanist specifications, but nearly a century ago!) And I think the reason for it has to do with the massive projects by the Irvine Company especially in the 60s and 70s. These projects, plus the nearby existence of Newport Beach – already a “watering spot” for the WAS (WASP but including Catholics, this being California) – plus the riots of 1965, plus the perception that the air in the Irvine and Newport region was less polluted at a time when smog was worse than now, led to a massive secessio patriciorum, a secession of the patricians, It was a physical manifestation of Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites. Corporate headquarters relocated en masse. Second homes near Newport Bay often became first homes. Many of the people that might otherwise be gentrifiers in Los Angeles were removed to the first great Edge City, at the head of Newport Bay.

    Los Angeles proper ultimately recovered from the Great Secession. It did so with the help of immigrants on the one hand, and the entertainment industry on the other. In days of old “Hollywood” and “Los Angeles” had been two separate cities occupying the same space. Outsiders who were concerned with the film industry often didn’t refer to “LA” at all, but to “Hollywood” or “The Coast.” “LA” was the rather bourgeois city that happened to occupy the same physical space.

    I remember, for example, when Los Angeles magazine was socially conservative enough to declare, “Why is it they never organize against the popular smut [pornography] – movies like Beach Party, for instance?” This is unimaginable now. I also remember how few were the movie stars in attendance at the openings of the major Music Center (now LA Performing Arts Center) in 1964 and 1967.

    It is now recognized that Hollywood is at the center of cultural life in Los Angeles. The two largest political parties in the state are the Hollywood Democrats and the Eastside LA Democrats, with quite different social priorities. The third party, the Republicans, is desperately trying to hold on to its veto on taxation and the budget. As a matter of fact, the terms Westside and Eastside are used a lot more now. When I lived in Hancock Park in my high school years, I had somewhat of a perception that I was in the exact middle. Wilshire Boulevard, the grand prestigious street of Los Angeles, had, because of foolish zoning, a strip of vacant lots where it went by the Hancock Park residential district (not to be confused with the city park of the same name, two miles west, where LACMA and the Page Museum are}. These lots were not built on until the 70s, when condos were allowed there.

    The so called “Park Mile” did provide a separation between the Miracle Mile on one side and the Wilshire Center – not in those days Koreatown, and in fact a serious rival to Downtown – but the separation between West and East has grown sharper as the Miracle Mile has faded a bit, and Koreatown is what it is and not a rival of Downtown any more. The perceived border between Westside and Eastside LA seems to run near Vine Street, through Old Hollywood and Hancock Park.

    Pasadena and Santa Monica, both singularly uncool places 40 years ago, have become among the coolest parts of the city. Remarkably, Pasadena and nearby areas were the main source of the secessio patriciorum of 40 years ago. The vacuum has been filled in a very interesting way!

    In contrast, downtown San Diego feels a lot like downtown Denver, except with palm trees and water. Both of those downtowns fill up on weekends at night with hard-partying young Anglos, not exactly to be seen on Broadway in LA at any hour. If there was a secessio patriciorum in San Diego, it was only to the UCSD area near La Jolla, much closer. If the secessio had gone, say, to Carlsbad, and upper class San Diegans had relocated to Carlsbad and La Costa en masse, downtown San Diego might be the ethnic wonderland Downtown LA now is. Carlsbad may be 30 miles away but the few Carlsbadians I know seem a lot more loyal to San Diego than OCers are to Los Angeles. Who knows?

    Howard Ahmanson of Fieldstead and Company, a private management firm, has been interested in these issues for many years.