Custodians of Place: Governing the Growth and Development of Cities

2 The Context for Local Choices: Growth Pressures, Fiscal Incentives, and the California Setting

Chapter 2 The Context for Local Choices: Growth Pressures, Fiscal Incentives, and the California Setting City governments confront growth—and often agonize over development policy—because they must. Like it or not, population increase is an inexorable fact of life for communities in much of the United States. The nature of development is, moreover, not simply a matter of aesthetics or lifestyle; rather, the built form of the nation ’s cities is linked to their fiscal health and the resources available to support public services. With respect to sheer growth, in no state has population increase been as massive in numbers and as sustained over time as in California, which has been a growth powerhouse since it became a state in 1849. At the end of World War II, Californians represented about one of every fifteen U.S. residents, whereas at this writing, one of eight Americans is a Californian. Not only has the state grown at remarkable rates for most of the postwar period, but its population is also among the most diverse across ethnic, racial, lifestyle, and economic dimensions.1 Municipalities in California have absorbed and continue to accommodate the vast majority of this new growth—either by spreading their boundaries to encompass development (i.e., annexation) or by filling in (infill). Where neither of these occurs, municipal incorporation often soon follows population growth and urbanization . Therefore, in deciding on policy responses to growth and development, the cities in California, like those in most states, are the front lines of development policy, especially given the state’s emphasis—quite typical in America—on home rule and local prerogative . The Census Bureau reported in 2004 that among cities in the United States with populations of greater than 100,000, eleven of the twenty-five fastest growing for the 2000–3 period were in 29 30 The Context for Local Choices California. Thus, even from a very large population base, the state continues to grow at high rates, with its municipalities absorbing the bulk of that growth and helping to dictate, through their land use policies, what form it will take.2 This rapid growth has continued despite California’s notoriety, acquired in recent decades, for politically powerful antigrowth and environmentalist movements, and despite a fiscal system that is often criticized for hampering the capacity of local governments to plan constructively and provide high-quality services for new residents. Because rapid growth continues even in the face of these countervailing pressures, some might be tempted to conclude that cities are fairly powerless to confront or shape growth, given its overwhelming magnitude and the seeming ineffectiveness of antigrowth proponents in restraining the state’s growth. Others might jump to the conclusion that rapid growth goes on because city policymakers have undemocratically restrained or ignored antigrowth pressures as a result of having been captured by prodevelopment interests—the so-called growth machine. We argue that neither of these critiques hits the mark. Rather, there is a meaningful realm of city autonomy in which governments acttoshapetheircommunities’futures.Itistrue,however,thatbroad demographic and economic growth trends, as well as the state’s system for financing local governments, set basic parameters within which local policymakers must operate. Nevertheless, although these broad forces are very important in shaping cities’ options and desired goals, they are certainly not the only major influences on local choices or outcomes. Growth may be destiny, but not all cities are determined to grow in the same manner or at the same rate. This chapter examines these two factors—population growth and fiscal pressures—that provide basic contours for local growth policies in California. Along the way, we highlight features of California ’s social, economic, and governmental landscape that in some ways render its land use challenges unique, and in others make them more broadly typical of recent American experience. Growth and Change: California’s Population and Urban Form Political and media attention to growth and growth policy tends to be cyclical—a feast-or-famine pattern. The human and Growth Pressures, Fiscal Incentives, and the California Setting 31 environmental consequences of growth are discussed with great sound and fury during periods of economic expansion, but they are largely ignored during periods of recession and downturn, when housing construction, population growth, and business expansion tend to stagnate. Thus it is helpful to take a step back from current debates and examine growth trends in our California setting over the long...