Future of Sacramento (Los Angeles, San Diego, Burbank: condos, houses, neighborhood)

[robertpolyglot]

Sacramento will always continue to be mediocre. A cousin of mine who came from Europe and went through it said it was "vapid," a big nothing compared to other West Coast cities.

The nastiness of the South area, Arden Fair and the 70s' built Rosemont/Rancho older neighborhoods will intensify. They are kind of ugly, anyway, as there is ZERO topography. White flight will continue further out to Roseville/Rocklin/El Dorado Hills/Cameron Park, making them more of what they are and disconnecting them further from the downtown core, or even the idea of working there. Midtown is the biggest joke ever. It's a trashy little hell-hole with no comprehensive zoning. Never have I seen such mixed use: a restaurant next to a storage facility next to a government building next to a fenced in parking lot next to beauty parlor next to a transmission shop. And people want to live there? At least the bohemian places in other cities have a collective, identifiable charm. Light rail will help some ...and some of the trajectories will get scarier. The airport line might be good for the city...and Natomas.

Never forget that, when people are asked what's good about Sacramento, they ALWAYS remark "well, it's close to everything....the Bay Area, the Sierras, Tahoe" but they can't say anything redeeming about the town itself.

[cityx]

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of truth in what you say...but I caution on the side of optimism, that hopefully, the infrastructure will improve and things will gradually get better - maybe in 10 or 20 years.
My biggest hope is that the air quality will improve. For me, the poor air has to be in my top three concerns for the area. This last summer was so bad I could barely stand it.

[wburg]

Never have I seen such mixed use: a restaurant next to a storage facility next to a government building next to a fenced in parking lot next to beauty parlor next to a transmission shop.

Wow, it's almost as though the term "mixed use" meant a mix of uses within a short distance. I'm sure for some, "mixed use" is limited to "overpriced lofts next to a sushi restaurant next to a foo-foo boutique," and if you walk a couple more blocks in Midtown you'll find that too. But for those of us who live here, it makes a lot more sense than auto-centric, separated-use suburbs.

Even more amazing, it's almost as though businesses in Midtown grew organically over the past 150 years, rather than being a master-planned suburban community thrown up ten years ago. That kind of "granularity," a mix of uses at the street level, is what makes a city street interesting.

Are you seriously criticizing the city's topography? Sure, it's flat here--river valleys are flat. But there's exactly zero that we can do about that--we can build lots of things these days, but mountain ranges aren't something we can build yet. I'm sorry you don't have any appreciation for Sacramento's trees, or the river, or the architectural charms of the central city. There are plenty of us who are capable of appreciating this city for what it is, not trash-talking it for what it isn't.

I moved to this "trashy little hell-hole" because I like it here. I can walk to just about anything I need (and take bus or light rail to the rest,) I like the buildings and the trees and the people. There's some kind of street fair or film festival or cultural event or music festival pretty much every week, and a ton of little places to see shows and do things or just hang out any day of the week. I like the fact that Sacramento's bohemia is so varied and random, rather than being an identifiable collective: hanging out with only one particular type of bohemian gets boring.

Never forget that, when people criticize Sacramento, they always bring up that tired old saw about "well, it's close to everything" but conveniently ignore anything said by those who have something good to say about the city. If you don't like it here, take the advice of the "close to everything" people and get out.

[robertpolyglot]

Originally Posted by wburg

That kind of "granularity," a mix of uses at the street level, is what makes a city street interesting.

I'm sorry you don't have any appreciation for Sacramento's trees, or the river, or the architectural charms of the central city. There are plenty of us who are capable of appreciating this city for what it is, not trash-talking it for what it isn't.

I like the fact that Sacramento's bohemia is so varied and random, rather than being an identifiable collective: hanging out with only one particular type of bohemian gets boring.

Obviously you have better tolerance for "granularity." I call it "blight." The trees lack variety and the palm trees are full of bird crap at their bases. Many of the Victorians are falling apart and their porches are buckling. The river...that's Sacramento's biggest problem. Here's a city that is to be California's capital, a force to be reckoned with, and the confluence of the rivers is poorly planned with wasteland, a park with no personality and decrepit railyards. As far as planning and development, I am very, or too, familiar with it, via my studies and work. Sacramento should have had a sweeping Capital Mall on all 4 sides of the Capitol and the rivers should have been a focal point of the development...it's too late, too much crap is now in place. Where was Pierre L'Enfant when he was needed?

No doubt, lots of nice, diverse people. It is the most diverse city in America, with a smattering of this and that. Other than some scary people in the South area and in Del Paso Heights, most people are ok.

It's just a physically unappealing city and that's what most people take away from it. From an aesthetic viewpoint, it was a missed opportunity. That's why, for beauty, many opt for the foothill towns.

[zen_klown]

If you look at the parts of city that change the most over time, its the commercial retail. The Arden Fair Mall started as a strip mall, then it was enclosed, then it was remodeled again as a two story mall. So this mall that has only been around since the late fifties, early sixties, has been significantly remodeled/redesigned at least 3 times that I am aware of. Country Club and Country Club Plaza have each been redone at least a couple of time, as have Birdcage and the Florin Mall. The K Street Mall is getting ready for at least its 3rd major remodel. Even the Roseville Galleria is on its second major remodel and the mall is probably less than ten years old. But none of these malls are all that old.

Residential land uses are the hardest to change over time. If you drive down, J street or Folsom Blvd, the housing still has the look and feel of when it was built out in the 20's to the 40's but a lot of the retail is brand spanking new. The Trader Joes, Burger King and Rite Aid are a lot more recent additions to the neighborhood, comparatively speaking you don't see a lot of new residential infill in those neighborhoods. Most residential neighborhoods don't change much.

The strength of South Sac, Arden Arcade and Rancho Cordova is that a lot more land in those neighborhoods is dedicated to retail. Nimbyism tends to stop adaptive reuse in residential neighborhoods, but its pull isn't as strong in land zoned for offices or retail.

I am not sure what is going to happen on Fulton Avenue, but I know that neighborhood is going to change dramatically over the next 20 years as the car dealers abandon the area for the higher sales that occur in automalls.

I don't know of any plans yet to add housing to the malls here but already they are doing it in San Diego, so I wouldn't be suprised if this gets added to the toolbox of things to do to turn around dying malls.

Déjà vu in Mission Valley | The San Diego Union-Tribune
LaJollaLight.com | Commission approves revamp of UTC mall

The bad outcome is the Madmax social disutopian breakdown, that struck Florin Road in the late 80's.

In the late 80's it was a little unclear if the Arden Fair Mall was going to go the way of the Florin Mall and Birdcage and just die a slow and painful death. But new investment has revived all three places.

So the madmax social disutopia may not be realistic either.

The other thing that I am expecting but we are only just starting to see in the region is the rise of middleclass to wealthy minority majority neighborhoods. The closest thing to it right now is probably the pocket area, but in the Southbay and in Los Angeles you have wealthy minority majority neighborhoods and communities. These are the neighborhoods that are attracting engineers from China, Taiwan, Korea and India. In Whitter which is down in LA, you have a neighborhood where the educated 2nd and 3rd generation of hispanics is moving. The Sacramento region is getting big enough where we should start to see that happening here as well and I bet its going to happen in these older suburbs in Sacramento County.

At the local high school in my area, a non-profit has been set up to offer Mandarin Classes. The presence of such a school out near Carmichael probably makes the area a lot more welcoming for the educated immigrant families to move here and probably foreshadows how the neighborhood is going to change over the next 20 years.

Sacramento Mandarin School

[wburg]

Of all the things to complain about--bird crap??? Gee, maybe it's because birds live in the trees!

Capitol Mall is not exactly the example I'd use for what to do with a neighborhood. The one Capitol Mall we have destroyed several neighborhoods, replacing a lively, active place where people actually lived, worked, played and shopped, with a boring promenade where nobody walks, lifeless after 5 PM. Why would we want to destroy more beautiful neighborhoods for more of that crap? Keep the "White City" garbage, we've already got enough of it.

You call it "blight," but "blight" is nonsense, it's an euphemism for a neighborhood that downtown boosters wanted an excuse to demolish, an artifact of mid-20th century urban "renewal" and suburban sprawl planning. "Blight" was the excuse used to demolish the neighborhood along M Street and replace it with boring Capitol Mall, accomplished because the African-American and Japanese-American communities in its way were too politically weak to fight city hall.

Some of the Victorians are still in disrepair, but many are still in great shape, and others are being rehabbed. Your solution to a building that needs a porch fix is demolition and replacement! That's ludicrous.

You're not the only one around here who knows a thing or two about planning, but your vision of Sacramento sounds like something out of a La Corbusier nightmare: bland skyscrapers and faux parks where beautiful, energetic neighborhoods once stood.

I can't abide people who look at a neighborhood like mine, filled with beauty and life, and claim they see nothing--or at best, "blight"--and exclaim that the only way to save it is to smash the whole thing and replace it with taller buildings and richer, whiter people. Utter garbage. Let them run screaming from Sacramento.

[zen_klown]

Yet if the skyscrapers were designed by Oscar Niemeyer instead of Le Corbusier, I would do it in a heart beat.

Oscar Niemeyer - The New York Times > Arts > Slide Show > Slide 1 of 9

Brasilia - World Heritage Site - Pictures, info and travel reports

[robertpolyglot]

Originally Posted by wburg

I can't abide people who look at a neighborhood like mine, filled with beauty and life, and claim they see nothing--or at best, "blight"--and exclaim that the only way to save it is to smash the whole thing and replace it with taller buildings and richer, whiter people. Utter garbage. Let them run screaming from Sacramento.

You're quite torqued.

No one ever said boring promenades, or landscaped emptiness, or high-rises, or Bauhaus.

Lots of your apparently beloved "bohemian" and lower-cost areas in other major cities just look and feel nicer --Virginia-Higland in Atlanta, Five Points in Jacksonville, the Heights in Houston, Hawthorne in Portland, and on and on.

The other thing is the obvious Gen-Y "if you're with the program, you live downtown" mentality. I've met tons of interesting people in suburbs.

Also, the negative viewpoints of Sacramento were mostly voiced by virtually anybody that has visited or I have travelled with. I just concur.

[wburg]

I suppose I'll take the "obvious Gen-Y" remark as a compliment--I'm 39. (Your assessment of my age is as off the mark as your assessment of Sacramento.) I've met plenty of interesting people in suburbs too (that's where I grew up, after all,) and most of them want to move downtown, if they haven't already. I'm sure there are "nicer" bohemian areas, but, well, I'm not all that nice either, so I fit in just fine here.

Your example of how Sacramento should develop (Capitol Mall in four directions instead of one) is based on what I consider to be one of the two catastrophes that struck Sacramento's downtown in the mid-20th century (the other being Interstate 5.) So while you didn't specifically mention boring promenades or landscaped emptiness, your example (Capitol Mall) exemplifies those two crappy things.

zen_klown: Brasilia doesn't seem like my kind of place: my dad was an embassy guard in Brazil, and very much preferred the wild street life of Rio to the antiseptic atmosphere of Brasilia. I share his appreciation for the funky and unplanned. Not that Sacramento compares to Rio, but it works fine for me.

[ubu]

Originally Posted by wburg

Capitol Mall is not exactly the example I'd use for what to do with a neighborhood. The one Capitol Mall we have destroyed several neighborhoods, replacing a lively, active place where people actually lived, worked, played and shopped, with a boring promenade where nobody walks, lifeless after 5 PM. Why would we want to destroy more beautiful neighborhoods for more of that crap? Keep the "White City" garbage, we've already got enough of it.

You call it "blight," but "blight" is nonsense, it's an euphemism for a neighborhood that downtown boosters wanted an excuse to demolish, an artifact of mid-20th century urban "renewal" and suburban sprawl planning. "Blight" was the excuse used to demolish the neighborhood along M Street and replace it with boring Capitol Mall, accomplished because the African-American and Japanese-American communities in its way were too politically weak to fight city hall.

Some of the Victorians are still in disrepair, but many are still in great shape, and others are being rehabbed. Your solution to a building that needs a porch fix is demolition and replacement! That's ludicrous.

You're not the only one around here who knows a thing or two about planning, but your vision of Sacramento sounds like something out of a La Corbusier nightmare: bland skyscrapers and faux parks where beautiful, energetic neighborhoods once stood.

I can't abide people who look at a neighborhood like mine, filled with beauty and life, and claim they see nothing--or at best, "blight"--and exclaim that the only way to save it is to smash the whole thing and replace it with taller buildings and richer, whiter people. Utter garbage. Let them run screaming from Sacramento.

In terms of pure function, I image that one could just as easily carry out most of the functions that take place in the State Capitol in one of the many suburban office parks off highway fifty. But architecture is about more than mere function. There is a long tradition of using architecture to create civic monuments. Its why we have specific idea of what a courthouse, a city hall, a church or even a Capitol should look like. When you see the NYC Public Library you have a very specific idea of the role of books and learning in civic life. Could it be done cheaper yes, but should it?

I like Capitol Mall. Its part of the grandeur that I think we should expect from civic spaces like State Capitols. Even more than a university, I think the State Capitol needs powerful civic space.

If there was no Capitol Mall, there would also not be any of the buildings on Capitol Mall. It is the State Capitol and civic function it represents that creates Sacramento's claim as the leading city in the region. When people were proposing the regions first building over 50 stories, the logical site for such a structure was Capitol Mall. Nothing else has the prestige in the region to try to justify the rents to make such a project work.

If this region is to recruit a fortune 500 to the area it will probably end up either in an office campus in Placer County or if its in Sacramento on Capitol Mall. The prestigious law firms, the important lobbiests, even the Sutter Club are all along Capitol Mall. Certain addresses represent power: Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Rodeo Drive. In our region the closest thing is Capitol Mall.

The narrative that the black and Japanese neighborhoods were destroyed because their representives lacked power at city hall is incomplete. The area was redeveloped in an era before prop 13 when local governments relied much more on property taxes. This was also the time after the war when K street was losing its grip on retail sales to suburban malls like the Town and Country Mall or others which also offered plenty of free parking. The city both wanted to increase property taxes and preserve the retail corridor on K Street.

Just as Folsom ignored the chance to create a transit oriented development and Sacramento County is turning park space into the next Mel Rapton Dealership, governments have always been willing to bend public purposes for increased tax revenues.

Even today as often as not, redevelopment is still used to increase tax revenues for local governments.

If M street was full of poor white folks, the redevelopment still would have occured. The goal of the redevelopment wasn't as much as displacing blacks and Japanese as just displacing poor people who at that time often were black or Japanese.

But before we proclaim moral superiority of a more enlightened age, remember that most redevelopment projects are still about gentrifing areas and getting rid of the existing patch of poor people from a neighborhood. When you hear people talking about the railyards and township 9, rarely do you hear people talking about what that is going to do to homeless living along the river in that area or what happens to the Loaves and Fishes and the social services for the poor. Midtown, downtown and West Sacramento might be more fashionable for generation Y, but they area has also probably lost more than half of its single residency occupancy hotel spaces since the 60's. The city has also managed to close down the downtown greyhound. While its impolite to acknowledge the obvious, gentrification is a big part of these regions revival.

Modernly are we that much better? Will future historians really write much differently about our own era?