How to avoid taking one step forward and two back
The following appeared on the “Viewpoint” page of the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal on June 2, 2006
By Scott Knies
The next mayor had better like land-use issues. With Coyote Valley, Strong Neighborhoods Initiative, North San Jose and downtown, San Jose sure has a lot of big development priorities and plans. Major land-use issues are where our municipal leaders can have the most lasting impact and influence. Where is the focus placed, and why?
With all due respect to the community members diligently working on the Coyote Valley Plan task force, San Jose needs to create a whole other city at its southern edge like a hole in the head. The very powerful, but myopic, pressures for San Jose to sprawl again – to continue to grow out instead of in and up – have to be resisted by our civic leadership. San Jose is never going to rid itself of tax-sucking, community-deadening sprawl, but we certainly don’t have to keep adding to it.
And what has happened to the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative (SNI)? It has ballooned into this unsustainable size that now absorbs 15 percent of the entire city. As initially proposed, the SNI program made a lot of sense when it targeted four or five inner city neighborhoods that really needed some help, but it has lost its focus and now sprawls (that word again) throughout the city – into nine of 10 council districts. This enlarged concept of SNI overreaches and is fundamentally flawed as a redevelopment strategy in the way that it spends redevelopment money but exempts SNI areas from generating any tax increment (redevelopment) funds themselves.
Now, given that the word ‘neighborhoods’ is like ‘mom and apple pie’ in this city, it is reasonable to assume no candidate will touch SNI reform with a 10-foot pole, but we need a mayor who will be a steadfast champion of sound long-term economic policy. The SNI approach, as currently conceived, needs a reality check. Consider pruning back SNI to maximize its impact and improvements to neighborhoods instead of being spread too thin and ultimately pleasing too few.
North San Jose is a much more ambitious – and aggressive – proposal, and perhaps its numbers are overreaching, too. They are staggering: 20 million square feet of office space, and 24,700 units of housing, more than double the future growth projections for downtown. There is much to like about the logical expansion of jobs and mid-rise housing in North San Jose feeding into the downtown, but there is some fear, too, and we must sound a warning now because the temptation to sprawl again on North First Street will be great. We need a mayor who understands how important the planning, zoning and triggers will be, and oversee, with a tenacious diligence, those details as we proceed with elements of the North San Jose plan.
Most of all, we need a mayor who knows the emphasis is on downtown. Great cities grow in their heart and that is also how they stay vigorous. We all understand this. Downtowns are the centers of culture, art, entertainment, commerce, transit and fun. The great observer of downtowns, the late Jane Jacobs, in her 1961 masterpiece, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” described how cities are different than towns and villages. Downtowns are “an intricate ballet of individual dancers and ensembles together making a dance of improvised parts,” Jacobs wrote.
That quote might just sum up where San Jose is at this election cycle. We can have an exquisite ballet in our future – or we could end up doing the three-step: one step forward and two back.
Scott Knies is Executive Director of the San Jose Downtown Association.
