Achieving Sustainability inCalifornia’s CentralValley
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The concept of sustainability has been described as“the current object of planning’s fascination”(Campbell,1996), especially in fast-growing areas attempting to balanceeconomic, social and environmental priorities for long-termcommunity welfare.California’s rapidly growing CentralValley is one such area.The CentralValley is at a criticaljuncture—the 2009 population of about seven millionpeople is expected grow to 12 million people by 2040according to California Department of Finance estimates.“By developed world standards,such growth is phenomenal,”outstripping any other region in California,the United States,and even Mexico (Johnson and Hayes 2004; p.7).This report assesses the capacity of the CentralValley’scities to manage the economic, social, and environmentalproblems associated with this rapid population growth ina sustainable manner,offering alternatives to sprawl andautomobile-dependent lifestyles.California’s response toclimate change will only bring these issues more to theforefront as state laws like SB375 and AB32 encourage localgovernments to take action to reduce emissions.We developed an“environmental policy sustainability”index to measure the presence of 50 different sustainabilitypolicies in 100 incorporated CentralValley cities in Butte,Colusa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Kern, Kings, Madera,Merced, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Stanislaus,Sutter,Tehama,Tulare,Yolo andYuba counties. The indexincludes policies thought to contribute to the“triple bottom-line”(Rogers and Ryan 2001) of economic,environmental,and social welfare,but focuses on environmental sustainabil-ity policies.(SeeTable 1 on page 2 for full listing of policies.)We searched archival information (i.e. general plans,city ordinances,websites) to determine if a particular policyexisted in a city and then surveyed local planning officialsabout the existence of the same policy. This information wascombined into an index within each city that had a possiblerange from 0-50; observed scores ranged from 5-33 withan average of 17. Figure 1 (page 3) shows a map of thesustainability index,and more detailed information aboutits construction can be found in the full report,
Achieving Sustainability in California’s CentralValley,
online athttp://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=1286.Second,we conducted case studies in seven CentralValley cities—Fresno, Modesto, Davis,Wheatland, Lincoln,Sacramento,and Citrus Heights.These cities reflect thediversity of the CentralValley,ranging from high to low onthe index,and including both small rural cities and major urban centers.The case studies consist of interviews with key cityofficials about the definition of sustainability, the policiesin place in the city,and the factors that influence the city’sability to pursue sustainability goals. Many technical detailsregarding development of the environmental policy sustain-ability index are in the full report,which also contains pro-files of individual cities.
U C D AV I S S U S TA I N A B L E T R A N S P O RTAT I O N C E N T E R
AchievingSustainabilityinCalifornia’sCentralValley
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