Cupertino's land use shot heard far and wide

Sharon Simonson
Published: November 21, 2005
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Cupertino may have only 50,000 residents in a metropolitan county with
nearly 1.7 million people, but an attempt there to wrest land-planning
power away from local elected leaders induced laser focus from a broad
range of land-use interests, many of whom could be described as
outsiders to the tiny town.

Regional affordable housing advocates, environmentalists, officials in
neighboring cities, local and statewide Realtor organizations, multiple
new-home builders, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, even Apple
Computer and Hewlett-Packard (which aren't often seen wallowing publicly
in local political fights) spent close to $200,000 -- or six times their
opponents -- to defeat the three locally sponsored measures, all
intended to limit the density and intensity of future land development.

If they had passed, the measures would have governed only Cupertino's 11
square miles, well less than 1 percent of Santa Clara County's entire
land area.

So why the intense interest in thwarting them? The answer lies in fear
that if the measures were approved, Cupertino would become a weighty
domino whose falling would trigger an unstoppable chain reaction of
similar growth-limiting initiatives in towns across the South Bay.

In the balance is the future of Silicon Valley. Land-use is clearly the
most important and contentious public policy question confronting the
region today. As land use goes, so will go the area's physical
appearance, the nature of life for its residents, and, some argue, even
its economic stature on an increasingly competitive global stage.

The Cupertino story contains all of the debate's narrative threads. It
illustrates the discomfort that residents are feeling as they watch the
valley come loose from its historical, agricultural moorings and float
toward an unknown future characterized most fundamentally by a far
greater local population.

It shows the increasing tension between homeowners trying to protect
their own property rights and public officials who are charged with
balancing those rights and community needs. In the case of housing,
local public officials are being further hammered by the state, which is
telling them they must build more housing, whether their residents want
it or not.

The Cupertino fight also magnifies the inherent conflict of interest
between those who have managed to become homeowners in the Bay Area and
those who wish to, but still remain outside the pale, thwarted by the
overwhelming cost. Those who already have a home want prices to continue
to rise, and a sure way to do that is to limit new supply.

The Cupertino fight also shows with great clarity that state and local
elected officials have not persuaded significant portions of the
electorate that today's generally preferred public policies, which favor
much more intense use of land compared to 20 years ago, are the best way
for the region to go.

They have not convinced the electorate that density is the only way to
safeguard the environment by reducing sprawl. That density is the only
way to produce enough new housing to keep housing prices in check lest
the costs further undermine the region's business competitiveness. That
density, by beefing up public transportation use, will prevent total
gridlock on the region's already overburdened roadways.

Land-use fights akin to Cupertino's have played out in recent years in
Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Redwood City with mixed results. Even in the
Nov. 8 election, voters in Antioch and Pittsburg agreed to expand their
town's urban growth boundaries by thousands of acres, but Brentwood
voters narrowly defeated a like effort there. None of the expansions
were proposed to make way for highly dense new development.

At the same time, San Jose's Coyote Valley, 3,500 acres now being
planned for new development, will have 24,000 new homes and 50,000 new
jobs, at least. That's far denser development than any similar-sized
property in San Jose now. But the council, and indirectly the public,
has not approved the Coyote Valley plan yet.

Tellingly, the Cupertino measures were defeated by relatively slim
margins. That clearly surprised the town's five-member council, which
had dismissed their backers as outsiders with limited insight into their
fellow residents' sentiments. The votes' outcomes prove beyond a doubt
that the council's perception was wrong and that close to half the
voters in Cupertino prefer yesterday's development practices to today's.

Saratoga Mayor Kathleen King, who watched the town's battle with intense
interest, predicts that local officials in Cupertino will be listening
far more carefully to their residents going forward. "This was a wake-up
call," she says, not only for them but for other cities' elected leaders
as well.

Morgan Hill City Councilman Greg Sellers, who also watched the Cupertino
fight with interest, says the vote's outcome persuades him more than
ever that leaders have lots of explaining to do. Morgan Hill restricts
new housing development to about 250 units a year, much of it
single-family detached housing in the past. But Mr. Sellers is proud to
say that the community has recently approved several substantial,
high-density infill housing developments in its downtown.

"It's incumbent on all of us (elected leaders) to talk about what a
diverse housing stock means. That it's not 'if' we grow, but 'how' and
'when' we do," he says. If not, fights like Cupertino's will almost
certainly occur again and again.

Angst about the future of land use is evident in every Bay Area
community in which his company does business, says Chek Tang, a
principal with Oakland architect and land-use consultant McLarand
Vasquez Emsiek & Partners. McLarand is overseeing South San Jose's
Hitachi redevelopment and was the architect for the two-building complex
in Cupertino that was the genesis of much of that city's subsequent
community fight.

As recently as 15 years ago, his firm was still designing low-density,
single-family and townhouse developments in the Bay Area, he says. So
change has come fast.

But, he argues, there is no going back to that kind of development, not
in Northern California and ultimately not in many other parts of the
country as well.

Still, implementing new high-density urban-planning principals will
likely be a fight for some time. Americans still cherish the past of
wide open spaces and the big sky, available to all. American companies
(think truckmakers) regularly reinforce that national mythology of
individual rights and power to sell their wares.

"Urbanism is not natural to the United States," concludes Mr. Tang.

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