Urban Sprawl or Smart Growth? Sacramento Supervisors Consider Master-Planned Community

This week the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will consider whether to approve a controversial master-planned community known as Cordova Hills that would be comprised of a whopping 8,000 residential units and 1.3 million square feet of commercial space. While planning staff have affirmed that it adheres to growth-managament criteria, critics argue that the project will contribute to urban sprawl and the environmental impact is a cause for concern.

The Sacramento Bee has been a critic of the project and has argued that the environmental analysis that has already been conducted includes a university in the picture, despite the fact that a proposed university has withdrawn its plans for the area. Without the university, the impact to the environment is far different when it comes to density, public transportation use, greenhouse gas emissions, and air quality.

The Business Journal reports: “The county acknowledged the change in course, incorporating language that requires the land to be set aside for a campus and that it refer back to county control if no campus locates there within 30 years. Any change in use for that site would require environmental reviews and public hearings, planners said.”

On the flip side, developers are keen to get the project going and opine the plan is an example of smart growth and that a university could still step into the process.  The Bee has opined that “Cordova Hills is leapfrog development at its most egregious.”

http://www.californiacountynews.org/2012/12/urban-sprawl-or-smart-growth-sacramento-supervisors-consider-master-planned-community.html