San Ramon City Center
After reading the recent article in the East Bay Business Journal about the proposed San Ramon City Center project, we asked Randal O’Toole if he would gives a more in-depth opinion of his take on the project.
Randal has degrees and experience in city planning and transportation. He is recognized nationally as an expert on the subjects. Randal O'Toole is an economist who has studied public land management, urban planning, and transportation issues for more than three decades. He is the author of The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Harms American Cities and has taught at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Utah State University.
Expertise: Transportation, transit, housing, land-use planning, open space, Denver, Portland (Oregon), San Jose, wildland fire, federal & state lands, endangered species>
The City Center project in San Ramon has raised some concerns in regards to building heigth, transportation impact, cost and whether it will even achieve the high goals set by that those championing it.
Randal responded by posting a lenthing article on the issue over at his site – The Anti Planner. Read what he has to say and let us know your position on the City Center Project.
Anti-Town Planning #2: San Ramon City Center
May 9th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Randal has no degree and no experience in city planning or transportation.
He blogs about it and writes papers for conservative think-tanks, if you want to count that, I guess.
Therefore, my position on the city center project won’t be influenced by him as he’s not an expert in either subject.
Every town, everywhere, unfailingly trots out the traffic hobby horse as a reason to oppose [fill in blank].
I haven’t looked at your city budget, but I suspect the city can’t raise money for services via property tax.
And office parks at the same time: 1) don’t generate revenue and 2) occupy the space the city could use to emplace boxes to house Starbuck’s and automalls (like every other city around there has done to raise revenue), so they are looking for anything to tax to cover services that the residents never stop demanding yet don’t want to pay for.
So I suggest your opposition might work if you offer a solution on top of the template of traffic.
DS
May 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Dan – Thanks for the comment. We are not opposed to the project, but have concerns about the impact, cost and process, The majority of what we find on the subject is created by the city and the developer. Opposing views or those that raise questions and thought on the subject we encourage.