Courthouse News Service
Citizens Fight Bay Area 'Smart Growth' Plan
August 8, 2013
By William Dotinga
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) - Citing environmental concerns, a Bay Area citizens' group asked a state judge to set aside a regional urban plan which advocates high-density growth rather than suburban sprawl.
Bay Area Citizens, a nonprofit represented by self-described conservative legal watchdog Pacific Legal Foundation, filed for writ of mandate in Alameda County Court.
It sued the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, claiming the agencies' plan to comply with state greenhouse gas emissions law violates the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
State law requires that local agencies produce a sustainable-communities strategy to reduce passenger vehicle CO2 emissions by 7 percent by 2020, and by 15 percent by 2035.
The plaintiff claims the Bay Area agencies plan to do this through "a draconian high-density land use regime that will require nearly 80 percent of new housing and over 60 percent of new jobs in the Bay Area to be located within just 5 percent of the region's surface area."
Broadly speaking, the plaintiff opposes so-called "smart growth," which creates densely populated, walkable, mixed-use commercial and residential centers, to reduce sprawl and traffic congestion. Bay Area Citizens seems to prefer spending public money on road and bridge improvements rather than mass transit, and to oppose zoning-or to prefer "more flexible" zoning.
The plaintiff claims that while the sustainable-communities strategy itself does not regulate land use, it "provides powerful tools to coerce a local government to comply with the strategy's land-use prescriptions, even over the wishes of local residents, taxpayers and their elected representatives."
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