Dear Editor,
Your Dec. 29 editorial titled,
”
Principled by Compassion
”
raised interesting issues. It concerned a City Council vote for
the South County Housing’s
”
Rancho del Sol
”
project that proposes a blend of market-rate and low-income
dwellings.
Dear Editor,
Your Dec. 29 editorial titled, “Principled by Compassion” raised interesting issues. It concerned a City Council vote for the South County Housing’s “Rancho del Sol” project that proposes a blend of market-rate and low-income dwellings.
As a former Gilroy resident writing now from Italy 6,200 miles away, I can’t comment on the specifics. I don’t even know where “Rancho del Sol” will be built exactly. The project goals seem laudable ˆ there is much merit to blending residences of different income levels in a common zone.
My concern is more with population densities than with demographics. It appears that this housing project will result in yet another residential zone added to Gilroy city limits instead of consolidating existing zones. Has enough consideration been given to density areas that can be served by future public transportation systems?
To anyone who has spent much time in Europe, a return to a relatively “small town” such as Gilroy comes as a shock. City limits extend beyond the horizons! Even when Gilroy had a population of less than 8,000, as it did for much of the time when I was growing up there, it took a surprising amount of time to traverse the town on foot or bicycle.
Residential areas and businesses take up a notable amount of real estate in California. Primarily the land goes to copious lawns and backyards for the residents and sprawling parking lots for the businesses, with luxuriously wide streets for both.
The width of city streets is perhaps the most striking aspect of life in a Central California community for someone now accustomed to living abroad. What barely servers two-lane traffic in Gilroy would easily accommodate four lanes throughout most of Europe.
It is wonderful that so many people have such large yards, wide streets, and ground-level parking, but “spread” has a downside – very little is close or convenient. A car (or two, or three) becomes a basic necessity of living, such as a roof over one’s head and enough heat to keep from freezing in the winter.
An automobile-based city model was appropriate for towns like Gilroy in the past. In fact, life in the 1950s and 1960s was even more of a “car culture” than today. Back then, drive-in movies were popular and hamburger joints served your meal on a tray attached to your window, sometimes by pretty waitresses on roller skates. You could fill your tank for less than $5.
Today the automobile is still queen of the landscape, but her reign is not as much fun. Most time in a car today is spent sitting in traffic, often in an enervating work commute.
Times have changed and will continue to change. A car-centric plan may become far less viable in the future. One hears outrage about $2 or $3 prices per gallon at the pump in America, but we may look back to this as a bargain in the future. Gas prices are already at $5 a gallon in much of Europe. A doubling or tripling of current prices worldwide is a very real possibility, and sooner than we might imagine.
There is another consequence of sprawl. If a reasonable balance between residential, commercial, and recreational harmony is not maintained, a city can “grow out” but not necessarily “grow up” in a way that preserves its heritage while adding cultural benefits that larger size can sometimes bring.
Gilroy seems to be growing out faster than it is growing up. This was a complaint we had with San Jose housing projects like “Tropicana Village” in the early 1960s. SJ’s “cover the map” planning (or lack of it) led to suburban sprawl with serious social consequences. We used to call San Jose, “A thousand villages in search of a city.” That was inaccurate. Villages have more self-identify.
When our parents visited relatives in Burlingame or Milbrae, my sister and I could not see distinguishing characteristics that delimited one neighboring town in that area from another. It was all an endless strip.
I saw the extreme consequences of a “lack of identity” when I lived and worked around Paris. The “City of Light” has tons of identity, but les banlieus – the endless suburban residential areas encircling Paris – have none. The suburbs of Paris are empty husks, devoid of culture or social interchange. They also lack efficient transportation routes serving the center. France’s recent riots in these outlying zones of strangers living among strangers did not come as a great surprise to me.
Don’t let anything like this happen to southern Santa Clara Valley!
Coyote, Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy should not meld into an anonymous pool, like so many of its neighbors to the north, or like the Los Angeles amoeba.
Gilroy planning must meet at least these challenges:
n Mitigate consequences of radical change to the automobile-centric model that we know today.
n Preserve a sense of community identity at all costs. A mass of mutual strangers living together without a common sense of identity is worse than dead – it is dangerous.
n Blend the best of small-town intimacy with large-town opportunities and conveniences.
The Dispatch editorial was right to bring the factors of both “principle” and “compassion” into the planning equation. The trick will be to blend in a third consideration: “wise foresight”, and to find a stable balance in that triad of factors not just for our tomorrow, but for the tomorrows of generations to follow.
Gary Walker, a Gilroyan
(Gilroy High School Class of ’67,
Gavilan College Class of ’69)
now living in Lucca, Italy
