Staff Editorial

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

October 9, 2007

Tonight, the Santa Rosa City Council takes the next step in a necessary and inevitable evolution away from an automobile-dependent lifestyle.

As Mayor Bob Blanchard told Staff Writer Mike McCoy, this state "can no longer build freeways fast enough, wide enough or long enough" to keep up with the land-use patterns that defined California living in the decades after World War II.

Now, sprawl must be replaced by more intensive, in-city development that supports mass transit, bike lanes and neighborhoods designed for walking.

So, after two years of study, the council is poised to adopt the Station Area Plan, which lays down the strategy for development in a square mile of real estate that includes Courthouse and Railroad squares, and a portion of the Roseland neighborhood.

In many ways, this remains a work in progress. Consumers must accept new lifestyles that don't involve miles of new subdivisions. Government must find additional resources to finance new transit initiatives, and it must find the right balance between subsidized housing and the market-rate housing that pays the bills.

But California has run out of other choices. This new development paradigm recognizes that the old development pattern couldn't be sustained in a world in which natural resources -- and money, too -- are in limited supply.