A new city has been proposed in California, and I’ve never been more captivated by a vision for the future of my home state in my lifetime. This post is part of a series I’m writing about this bold proposal.
As an urbanism nerd, the aspect of California Forever’s plan that I was most eager to hear about was land use and urban planning for the new city. From reading the ballot initiative and speaking with their team, I was pleased to see that their plan incorporates the hard-earned lessons we've learned about city development over the last 75 years. They recognize that the dominant sprawl development pattern is not working, and California Forever is trying to turn the tide of how cities and neighborhoods are developed in California.
As I dug deeper into the plan, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how seriously they took these ideas. California Forever is essentially proposing the urbanist dream. This might sound like hyperbole, but if voters approve the plan in the November election, it has the potential to be one of the best cities in the US. It will be a walkable city that improves quality of life and brings down cost of living by prioritizing walking, cycling, and public transit, using space efficiently, and removing unnecessary rules that slow down the ability to meet the demand for housing.
Once I dove into the details, I was surprised by how much they differed from the press coverage. The dominant framing is that this city will be a futurist utopia run by tech nerds, but as far as I can tell, the plan is actually to build an urbanist utopia – not a technological one. The initiative and company website feel like they were written by YIMBYs, renewable energy advocates, and walkability activists, and they echo the philosophies of Jane Jacobs and Donald Shoup rather than Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.
An illustration from California Forever's website depicting the type of community they plan to build(A side note: While this is all a great concept, the next question is whether the plan actually has legs. California Forever certainly has its work cut out for it — the site has little existing infrastructure, it has no rail connection, and water is scarce across the entire state. I’ll dive into those questions in other posts in this series, but for the purpose of this post I’ll focus on what their goals are and whether I think they are worth striving towards to begin with.)
Here are some of the details from the initiative that stand out to me:
Emphasis on walking, biking, & high quality transit: Compact development is at the core of this proposal. It leads to walkability and enables efficient, high-quality transit services. This not only reduces carbon emissions but also fosters a sense of community and accessibility. Imagine being able to walk or bike to most of your destinations, with public transport as a convenient option for longer trips. The city plans to embrace townhomes and small apartment buildings that create gentle density, moving away from the sprawling single-family homes that dominate much of American suburbia. This approach allows for more people to live in a smaller area, preserving natural spaces and reducing the need for long commutes.
Cyclists in nearby UC DavisA map of California Forever's proposed bike network, pulled from the ballot initiativeA focus on ‘missing middle’ housing: The plans feature housing that is fairly high density but not high rise — a combination of "row houses" between 2-4 stories high, and apartment buildings going up to 8 stories. This is the type of neighborhood that makes up the most beloved places in the world. Places like Amsterdam, Venice, Santa Monica, Lake Como, Kyoto, and Lisbon are all made of missing middle housing.
In political discussions about building housing, I sense that a lot of opponents are imagining the towering condo buildings of Hong Kong or Manhattan, but that level of density is not necessary to solve California’s housing crisis. Gentle density can make a dramatic impact in the housing supply. It's counterintuitive, but just going from standard suburbia to row houses, cottage courts, and small apartment buildings can get you into densities that are 4x+ those of suburbia!
It’s also significant that this type of middle density housing can be built with wood frame construction methods, which makes it more cost effective to construct. Reducing construction costs results in more housing being built, and at a more affordable price point.Beloved cities like and London and Amsterdam are made up almost entirely of missing middle housingForm based codes instead of zoning: Form-based codes are another innovative feature of this proposal. Unlike conventional use-based zoning, which restricts how buildings can be used, form-based codes focus on how buildings interact with each other to create a cohesive neighborhood. This allows for more flexibility and creativity in the use of space.
Conventional zoning might enforce rules like "you can only put restaurants and shops over here and you can only put homes over here", whereas form-based zoning says "as long as the building doesn’t generate noise at night between 9pm and 8am and its height is ≤4 stories, it can be used for whatever the owner thinks the neighborhood needs". For example, if someone wants to open a coffee shop on the first floor of their home, they can do so as long as it meets the standards set for its impact on its neighborhoods.
Technically the city will still have 4 zones, but the permitted uses table shows that these are not exclusive zones like you typically see in American zoning codes where only one use is permitted. They are more like different flavors of mixed use neighborhoods. For example, all types of residential uses are permitted in 3 of the 4 zones, and retail is permitted in 4 of the 4 zones. This is exciting to me because it's a lot more like how the Japanese approach zoning, which limits the "maximum nuisance" in a zone but then allows for any development below that threshold. You can think of this as whitelist vs blacklist approaches:
In North American zoning, zones typically allow only 1-2 usesThe Japanese include all uses up to a maximum "nuisance level"Granularity: The city also plans to embrace small parcel fabric (consisting of row houses and small apartment building), which allows for changes over time. This is in contrast to building in large blocks, whether through HOA associations of single family homes or via big apartment complexes with hundreds of units, both of which often freeze developments in place. The granularity of this approach is what makes places like Tokyo so special. Small storefronts will enable small businesses to thrive, and mixed uses will be encouraged. The diversity of things close to where you live makes it easier to walk and bike to where you want to be.Form based codes make it possible for you to walk to your favorite coffee shop in the morning · La Marais Cafe in SFTokyo allows for tiny storefronts, which unleashes small businesses to express creativity and try new things Parking minimums are set at zero: Most US cities require you to build a tremendous amount of parking along with all construction, regardless of the demand for parking. The result: the area of parking per car in the US is larger than the area of housing per human! A groundbreaking aspect of California Forever’s proposal is setting the minimum parking requirement at zero for the entire city. This bold move encourages alternative modes of transportation and reduces the dominance of cars in the urban landscape.
The saddest part: most required parking lies empty most of the time! Just look at these pictures of Tulsa, Rochester, and Camden – there's more space devoted to parking than there is to city!Minimum density is 20 units per acre: The voter initiative locks in at least 20 units/acre (~50 people/acre) as the minimum average density. This is similar to beloved neighborhoods such as Marina in SF, Centrum in Amsterdam, Kensington in London, and Historic Charleston in South Carolina. Even though people love these places, we’ve built close to zero of them in the past ce
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