Best and Worst about Living in SLO?? (Santa Barbara, Atascadero: big home, to buy)

[travelmonkey]

I lived in SLO for 2 yrs and I'll echo what some others have said. The best things are the climate, the relatively controlled sprawl, and the outdoor opportunities. I like to hike and there are tons of open spaces near town to go up in the hills and go for a hike, some of them are really backwoods which is great. The north county areas of Atascadero and Paso Robles are beginning to sprawl, but the south county areas of San Luis Obispo and the 5 Cities are fairly controlled. And all around the county the traffic is very manageable.
The worst parts of living in SLO is indeed the "community", which as others have said is not a real community. Mostly college students and retirees. The retirees pass on, the college students leave for the cities, and you have a whole new batch of residents. Very few life long SLO-ites. The other negative is the encroaching urbanization. Already, Los Osos Valley Rd. is getting far too built up and in a few yrs. will look like an urban strip mall area. It's only a matter of time before Cal Poly extends to the ranchland north of campus, and subdivisions are built along Foothill Rd. I love SLO, but I fear it won't keep it's small town flavor for very long.

[grimstuff]

Already, Los Osos Valley Rd. is getting far too built up and in a few yrs. will look like an urban strip mall area. It's only a matter of time before Cal Poly extends to the ranchland north of campus, and subdivisions are built along Foothill Rd. I love SLO, but I fear it won't keep it's small town flavor for very long.

Right now, the City's constituency is split between growing upwards and growing outwards, with most of the commissioners, half the council, and the entire planning staff leaning towards growing upwards - i.e. raising the hieght limit in downtown and building high-density residential complexes while at the same time trying to keep the SLO-feel. The opponents are not so worried about the slightly higher density, but more worried about the constricted views of the nearby hills. THe comical thing (and this is more of a personal statement) is it seems they would rather be able to see the hills while sitting downtown with houses built all over them rather than have a harder time seeing the hills from downtown and have them without development covering them. But that's just another biased viewpoint.... One thing is for sure, no matter which type of development wins out: California's towns are changing and SLO will be no exception.

About the areas you mentioned, Cal Poly is building a 2,500 bed housing complex on the north slope, right where Brizziolari creek comes down out of Poly Canyon. The complex will have all sorts of supporting facilities like (from what I've heard) laundromats, restaurants, and a bar. It is a little awkward with City and State lands abutting each other like what we have here - basically Cal Poly does whatever it wants and SLO City is along for the ride. THere are many other contruction projects all over campus now too, including all new engineering facilities, const. mgmt building, new grand stands for the stadium, but we have yet to see a parking garage - which really goes to show the priorities of the bureaucratic University.

Los Osos Valley Road already looks like a strip mall, with almost all the car lots in town, Home Depot, Costco, and their associated satellite retailers under construction as we speak, and then all the existing commercial and light-industrial establishments inbetween the car lots on the north side of the road. THere is a new subdivision right where Modonna Rd. ends at LOVR, very bland, cracker-box type housing.

Being a city and regional planning major at Cal Poly (4th year) I can appreciate all the conflicting interests the City of SLO tries to juggle. On one hand, you have to provide housing in order to foster an inclusive community and lessen things like traffic and crime, but on the other hand those residential areas are fiscal losers when it comes to the services they demand from the City and the property taxes they pay which were greatly reduced by Prop 13 back in '72, (my date may be off a year). So they provide LOVR as a strip mall area for all the big boxes and automalls (which also generate a ton of revenue in taxes) in order to finance themselves into the 21st century. Its a never-ending cycle, really... because in order to nourish our current type of economy you have to have constant growth - including population growth. SLO is at 44,174 as of 2000, with a projected population of 45,326 in 2010, which is 1.0% growth, just below the average 1.1% for the entire State of California.

In SLO, the 45-59 year old cohort growth rate is projected to almost double, as more and more retire here. That is another reason why the City is encouraging more housing downtown - for the retirees who want their metropolitan amenities without driving. (growth rate for 50-54 cohort is at a whopping 10% between 2000 and 2010)
The 22-34 year old cohort will actually decline in growth rate, as more freshly graduated students realize the local market for their skills is saturated, and also much less able to buy a house here.

It just goes to show you how cities are changing all the time, but especially the demographics among Californian cities, as millions of people migrate within the state every year and also in the rest of the country. I think it is human nature to not want to see your habitat changed. Whenever it is changed or the threat of change exists, there will be opponents to whatever type of development it is - no matter how well designed. It all goes back to a much more fundamental issue about the human civilization and how we can manage to grow without increasing conflict and resourse mis-management. In my opinion, expect more government everywhere. As population densities rise, government swells to control all potential conflicts (economic, social, environmental), which can already be seen in states like CA and NY, among others.

[travelmonkey]

Originally Posted by grimstuff

Right now, the City's constituency is split between growing upwards and growing outwards.

And that's why California is changing from a great place to live to a sprawling concrete wasteland. The battle is between growing upwards and growing outwards, with nobody standing up to say let's choose not growing at all. I guess it all comes down to the simple fact that the country is overpopulated and getting worse, and all the people need a place to live. But I worry about how quickly we're destroying open space in this country, and especially in California. We fail to realize that "sustainable development" is an oxymoron. No development is really sustainable, because as long as we keep "developing" eventually we're going to run out of space. SLO is really one of the last livable towns in California but I think that's on it's last legs before it starts morphing into Santa Barbara.

[grimstuff]

We fail to realize that "sustainable development" is an oxymoron.

No, it is not an oxymoron, but the way that phrase is often used by politicians, developers, and others does constitute an oxymoron when it comes to the items on their agenda.

[travelmonkey]

Originally Posted by grimstuff

No, it is not an oxymoron, but the way that phrase is often used by politicians, developers, and others does constitute an oxymoron when it comes to the items on their agenda.

"Sustainable development" IS an oxymoron. No development is ultimately sustainable. It's impossible. If you keep developing eventually you run out of space. I'd love to hear anyone's way around that.

[grimstuff]

Originally Posted by travelmonkey

"Sustainable development" IS an oxymoron. No development is ultimately sustainable. It's impossible. If you keep developing eventually you run out of space. I'd love to hear anyone's way around that.

The word "sustainable" means providing for present needs without reducing or eliminating the ability to provide for the needs of the future. With that in mind, you are really bringing up two issues: the ability of a development to sustain itself, and the assumption that all development is completely new, and therefore more space is always used up. You are wrong on both accounts.

I agree that the word "sustainable" is used and abused by a lot of people. Its the new buzzword. However, true sustainability is not unreachable. I think this argument is coming out of a basic misunderstanding; that development implies neverending building and covering over the land. In a sense, that "development" means more of what we already have. This is a falacy.

A development may be merely replacing something, maybe even remediating a brownfield in the process. It might mean taking that 1960's era stripmall, narrowing it, eliminating the front setbacks, putting parking around behind, bulb-outs on the corners to slow traffic and facilitate pedestrian crossing, all within the flow limits of available water and energy (less likely).

We are at the peak of new developments in California. Within the next decade(2010-), the emphasis will increase on re-development and infill. Sustainable will mean slightly different things to different cities and regions, because they have their own needs and abilities, basically, their own resources (fund or flow), and their own priorities (e.g. do we raise taxes for this new water treatment plant, or save $400/yr per person?).

Back to the definition of sustainability: part of it was "not sacrificing the needs of the future." This is tricky, because no one knows fully what the needs of the future will be. New technologies bring new uses for old stuff. So the most we can all do is to use our best educated guess as to what the needs of a community will be 10, 20, 50 years in the future, and plan in support of that. Speaking fiscally, in many cases a new development meets the needs of the present (jobs, services) but also provides for the needs of the future (investment return, tax revenue). On the other hand, it may not even meet the present socio-economic needs (e.g. the jobs bring in outsiders), nor the needs for the future (e.g. altering the demographics of a neighborhood, displacing social capital). This hypothetical example is one of knowing well what we need now, but misunderstanding or overlooking what tomorrow's needs will be.

Currently, I am emphasizing energy security, conservation, and efficiency as part of a new sustainable paradigm which I hope to see in state-to-state policy by the end of my lifetime. But to get back on topic, I lean toward your initial assumption that no development is good, but that's just because from up till now all I have seen is crappy development. But that's the way market forces are: clumsy and over-correcting. It always goes too far to either extreme in order to meet an equilibrium that can never be reached. (the 'invisible hand' is large and fumbling)

EDIT: you changed your initial comment of "sustainable development is an oxymoron" to "no development is ultimately sustainable." I cannot refute the latter, there are laws of decay and diminishing returns that will always apply. But for the purposes of staying within human time (i.e. not geologic or cosmic time), development can be sustainable, regardless of what you have seen built up till now, but it would require you to state your own personal criteria as to what being sustainable constitutes.

[Steve97415]

Sustainable development is meaningless when population growth is present. We've known about the negative consequences of population growth for over four decades, but we keep following the lemmings in front of us. In Europe, childlessness and single-child families are the norm, but here everyone wants to do their own reenactment of the Donna Reed Show and have a "nuclear family" that contributes to population increase.
Once the midpoint of the Baby Boomer bubble passes, we will have a population downturn in the U.S., i.e., more people will die each year than are born each year. That will start to occur in 20-25 years. Even before that, we will have a downturn in productive capital because the number of people who will be retired will overwhelm the size of the work force that is supposed to subsidize them. That will bring a new lesson in what sustainability means, but few people are preparing for it.

[greatbasinguide]

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" Ed Abbey.

Interesting thread here. My family has lived in the SLO area 100 years next year. Yes, there are changes and I hate everyone of them, too bad for me I guess. SLO went through a long period of no growth. It made the town pretty darned expensive. Now the big boxes are in. Los Osos Road does look like a cancer victim. Used to be, we farmed some of that land.

I have lived at Tahoe the past 30 but think of coming home for my dotage. The snow gets to you, I spend a great deal of time plowing. My horses sit idle for nearly 6 months,, eating. So... Pluses of SLO for us? No snow, can ride and hike and bike year round.
Negatives,,, the great negative!! To damned many people and a very limited supply of public land to wander aboot in.

You need to consider carefully your objectives. The climate is the world's best, the grey days are certainly grey and seem to go on forever, but 10 miles inland, you escape them.

I can tell you, that before the 1960's the whole central coast had heaven beat. Think of SLO with 15,000, Arroyo Grande with 6,000 and 4 policemen, Santa Maria with 15,000.

There was a time, in the 70's when there were no Kmarts or other big boxes in SLO,, they were in Santa Maria. In SLO there were backpacking shops, none in Santa Maria.. Shows the difference in the towns.

[californiaboy]

Originally Posted by kansaslady

Anyone here from San Luis Obispo, or has lived there? I know the cost of living is expensive just about anywhere in CA, but I like the SLO area and would like input about what you like and dislike about living there.

Thanks!
Katie

My wife and I lived in SLO for three years. We didn't like it. VERY FEW jobs, no sophisticated shopping, high cost of living, and a lot of crime. Happy to be in OC now.

[grimstuff]

Originally Posted by californiaboy

My wife and I lived in SLO for three years. We didn't like it. VERY FEW jobs, no sophisticated shopping, high cost of living, and a lot of crime. Happy to be in OC now.

Well, with all due respect, it looks like you have only 1 out of 4 correct - the high cost of living. If by "a lot of crime" you mean underage drinking parties, youre correct, but that's about where it ends. As far as "sophisticated shopping," goes, we have all the typical chains like Pottery Barn, Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic, Abercrombie & Fitch, as well as better, smaller boutiques. And, what I most disagree with is the "very few jobs." Which industry are you specifically referring to? There are a lot of jobs in SLO, even some manufacturing, which is rare for a CA city.