Development that serves the whole community

By Jesse Townley

Community involvement, 100% Green Building Codes, Area Plans, and respect for the entire community...

Too often development projects are presented as virtually complete packages to the community at large. Neighbors and other community members are faced with a choice of merely making minor mitigations or of completely opposing the project. Neither of these choices are optimal for a positive democratic process nor healthy for the long-term outlook for our cityscape.

If neighbors and the community were an honest part of the development process from day one, Berkeley would be rewarded with a less contentious process, more community-based value per project, and appropriate building heights/uses/public amenities. There would still be disagreements- that's the price of living in a democratic society- but the disagreements would be between co-planners instead of between warring sides. Litigation and endless appeals to various Commissions and the City Council would be less likely from a collaborative process than from an antagonistic process.

I will push for majority green building codes, with the goal of requiring 75%-100% green building codes for new buildings within 10 years. Berkeley has led the nation in ecological innovation for years (curbside recycling, recycling and garbage trucks running on biodiesel fuel), we can take the lead again in providing incentives for alternate fuel sources for buildings- especially solar power.

Berkeley has a series of Area Plans which are often the result of years of paid and volunteer hours from planning professionals, the City, developers, neighborhood associations, engineers, architects, community activists, and other residents. Different sections of the city are clearly more complex than others- the West Berkeley Plan took 8 years to complete while the Solano Avenue Plan took just 1 year. The Plans cover land use, business density, housing types, building heights, and much more. They are comprehensive and the result of a lot of hard, earnest work by a wide, City-sanctioned strata of our community. They are meant as blueprints for our future, and should only be violated in truly exceptional circumstances.

Unfortunately, all of this community-wide planning is often seen as superfluous by members of the local planning, realtor, and developer communities. Area Plans are ignored or minimized when they are inconvenient for the establishment players in and around City Hall. This disrespect for our community as a whole is shameful and a disservice to our city and to our future. We, the people, have made clear what we want through these Area Plans, and our representatives on the City Council, the Zoning Adjustments Board, and the Planning Commission, should stick to the Plans unless there are exceptional, publicly explained circumstances.

I will work to ensure that development will serve the whole community, and not merely powerful segments of it.