Gilroy's future: Climate resilience or foolhardy sprawl?
It's 2023, but Gilroy just can't get its head out of 1960s sprawl development. This week, Gilroy will ask a Santa Clara County agency responsible for stopping sprawl to look the other way and approve its plan to destroy a large swath of the city's surrounding farmland for low-density housing. If this happens, it will hurt both Gilroy's climate resilience and taxpayers' wallets.
When it comes to housing, location matters. If we build sprawl development — pushing new residential growth out to the open space on the edges of our cities — we not only destroy our open space and farmland, but we also put people and homes at greater risk of wildfire, flooding and other climatechange impacts. And we make the climate crisis worse by forcing residents into their cars for long, traffic-filled commutes to work, school and daily errands. The right place for new housing is in urban infill areas, near public transit hubs and job centers, creating neighborhoods that are walkable, vibrant and climate-resilient.
Sprawl isn't just bad for the environment, it's bad for our wallets. Low-density sprawl development creates greater costs for taxpayers who must pay to maintain urban services over a wider area. Things such as police and fire protection, drinking water and sewer service, trash collection, road maintenance and parks, schools and libraries all cost more in low-density areas.
How do we know? Because that's the way the Bay Area grew in the past. For decades, unchecked development gobbled up the fertile valleys and blossoming orchards of our region — a pattern that was repeated all over California. Finally, in 1963 the state stepped in, creating agencies called Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCOs) whose job it was to prevent sprawl, preserve open space and farmland and ensure orderly growth of cities and efficient delivery of services. Ever since, it's been the job of LAFCOs to channel urban growth into urban areas and prevent loss of open space to sprawl development.
Now Gilroy is asking the Santa Clara County LAFCO to abandon these principles and allow sprawl development to happen again, in spite of the fact that the city's own economic analysis found a negative fiscal impact on both Gilroy and Santa Clara County. The site in question is on open space north of Gilroy city limits, west of 101 and south of Day Road. The Gilroy Fire Department is already struggling with insufficient fire stations and unacceptably slow response times, according to a 2019 study. Most of Gilroy's roads have received minimal to no maintenance in years due to lack of funding. A new sprawling subdivision on the edge of the city would make all these problems worse.
Gilroy can meet all of its needs — housing affordability, open space, climate and more — by embracing policies that make it easier to build infill housing in the places where it makes sense, such as in downtown and along the Monterey Road corridor. Rather than building on agricultural land, by relaxing the city's density and height restrictions, setback requirements, parking standards and other existing impediments to multifamily housing construction, the city can have the healthy growth it needs while avoiding the severe impacts to the environment and city coffers that sprawl development creates.
If we want a climate-resilient region, we need to think sustainably about where we build the communities of the future. Reviving the misguided sprawl development patterns of the past would be going in exactly the wrong direction. To safeguard residents from climate-related hazards, reduce costs to taxpayers and create vibrant, walkable neighborhoods, the answer is simple: Build up, not out.