For Immediate Release: September 29, 2000

Long-Term Changes in Neighborhoods "Not Thought Through"

SAN LUIS OBISPO – Unspecified growth controls mandated by a ballot initiative could have significant unintended consequences, warns a study on growth in San Luis Obispo County released today by the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute. The study, "Too Easy to Be Good—Growth Management and Options for the Future of San Luis Obispo County," explains that the higher density development that will be necessary if voters adopt the SOAR initiative in November will lead to higher levels of traffic congestion in San Luis Obispo and other county towns.

"Every growing town in America is having a vigorous debate about how to manage growth," said Dr. Steven Hayward, senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute and author of the study, which was released today at a news conference held at the San Luis Obispo Farm Bureau. "There are some good ideas and some bad ideas for how to manage growth, but above all there are a number of important trade-offs between ways of managing growth that need to be better understood by community leaders and citizens alike."

"By referring most land use changes directly to the voters, the SOAR initiative is silent on exactly what steps should be taken to improve growth management in the county," Hayward said. "The most likely outcome will be higher density development within the existing city limits of towns throughout the county. The data show that traffic congestion increases dramatically when density is increased."

The study finds, based on U.S. Census Bureau estimates for population growth, that density in the city of San Luis Obispo could double over the next 30 years, to a density higher than Oakland or Long Beach today.

The other key finding of the study is that SOAR’s "ballot box planning" will make long-range comprehensive planning difficult or impossible.

"Town planning is very difficult to do well in a dynamic, changing economy," Hayward said, "but SOAR makes it impossible for any consistent long-range planning to be done. It creates an environment in which there is no predictability or certainty for community leaders in attempting to adapt to the challenges of future growth. Social science research on voting behavior suggests that the most likely outcome will be ‘growth-shifting’ from the larger towns to the smaller towns, which would be a highly irrational result from a planning standpoint."

"As Winston Churchill once remarked of a similar simplistic idea," Hayward concluded, "‘It is too easy to be good.’"

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