Is Sacramento a boring city? (Davis, Elk Grove: section 8, homeowners association, how much)

[NorCal Dude]

Originally Posted by redtide2012

Sacramento is like taking De Moines Iowa and placing it in the heart of the Big Valley. People move there to still live in California but live a mid-western lifestyle.

As in we have decent sized houses on decent sized lawns, with out a huge sticker shock. With good schools and safe streets to boot. If that is what you mean than yea, we are kind of like the midwest.

-Midwest transplant

[Phil Minor]

Originally Posted by cgator89

I will be flying back to Orlando Mon., after having been here in Sacramento for the last 6 months, and I must say that I couldn't be happier. Sacramento is boring, hot, dry and land locked. The people are rather perculiar as well. They think that their dogs are actually "people"..and I'm not kidding. Finally, it will be a tremendous relief to never again have to hear, after asking a local what there is to do around Sac.? "Have you been down to see the railroad museum?" I feel like saying, "Okay, right after I have my 3rd heart attack from riding the "bike trail", I'll get right on down to stare at the choo choo.

I really liked Orlando when I visited it. Right now its also pretty cheap. I can see why you want to move back. Good luck in Orlando.

[mrc136]

Sacramento is a medium sized city and for a medium sized city it is very culturally diverse. people who live here are from all over the place, and yes there are still quite a bit of folks "born and raised" in the Sacramento region.

I really like sacramento proper, i.e. "midtown". It has walkable city-streets, with lots of trees, (which are desperately needed in the summer here). However sacramento county seems like a bunch of disconnected suburbs. It is clear that the region as a whole did NOT plan for growth. I mean, between Watt avenue and Sunrise blvd there is absolutely NO way to get over the American river, which results in those two streets becoming more like freeways. during peak hours the roads are CLOGGED and during non-peak hours people drive WAY to fast because there is not a proper north-south freeway that runs through east sacramento county.

Weather: Well its CALIFORNIA. People here think its freezing when it gets below 60 degrees, which is laughable because in many parts of the country you have to shovel snow just to back your car out of the driveway for 5 months out of the year. We don't have to do that, and to me thats a good thing. However, since it is 100 miles inland it gets VERY hot in the summer. It seems like most sacramentans have adapted to the heat, but after living here 14 years I STILL hate the summers. Thank heavens we don't have humidity like my cousins enjoy in the mid-west and east coast however.

Culture: VERY ethnically diverse, minus Roseville-Rocklin, Granite Bay, Folsom and El Dorado Hills. Those cities are 90 percent white and people there (especially El Dorado Hills) seem to want to keep it that way. Sacramento is a medium sized city, but I guess because it is in california it seems to have something for every ethnicity. It also has a relatively large Asian presence for a region of this size. Aside from race, the culture is also predominately sub-urban. Most people aside from sacramento proper live in either low density apartment complexes or single family detached homes. CAR IS KING in sacramento county, and it's a damn shame they do not have any good north-south freeways on the east side of the county.

A side note on driving: I　ａｍ　ｏｒｉｇｉｎａｌｌｙ　ｆｒｏｍ　Ｌｏｓ　Ａｎｇｅｌｅｓ，　ｓｏ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　ｏｎｅ　ｔ ｈｉｎｇ　Ｉ never understood about sacramento。 People drive really passive on the freeways up here, but once you get off the freeways people drive like mad-men! I　ｍｅａｎ　ｄｏｎｔ　ｙｏｕ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｉｔ　ｓｈｏｕｌｄ　ｂｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｏｔｈｅｒ　ｗａｙ　ａ ｒｏｕｎｄ？　　Shouldn't you go fast on a freeway if there is no traffic，　ａｎｄ　ｄｒｉｖｅ　ｓｌｏｗ　ｔｈｒｏｕｇｈ　ｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｔｉａｌ　ａｎｄ　ｃｏ ｍｍｅｒｃｉａｌ　ｄｉｓｔｒｉｃｔｓ？？　Ｎｏｔ　ｉｎ　ｓａｃｒａｍｅｎｔｏ　ａｎｙｗａｙｓ．．．　 ｐｅｏｐｌｅ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　howe, watt, ｇｒｅｅｎｂａｃｋ/madison, and ｓｕｎｒｉｓｅ/hazel avenue　is　the indy 500 speedway.

Boring? Eye of the belholder. Well everything is boring compaired to NYC or downtown SF, but I mean COME ON sacramento is a medium sized city what do you expect manhattan?

[wburg]

mrc136: Your basic assumption is correct--the region did not plan for growth at all. Neighborhoods were built by developers working outside city limits to avoid city fees and regulations. This pattern started in the 1880s and continues through the current day--in that sense, we are a bit like the greater Los Angeles region, and for similar reasons. There is a new growth plan, the "SACOG Blueprint," but we are considerably behind the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which seems to be starting to learn from its own mistakes.

Until 1911, Sacramento was just the downtown/midtown "grid" (from the rivers to Alhambra and Broadway.) Over the past century we started annexing suburbs that were already built, typically with urban planning based on the developers' priorities. New suburbs were carved out as flood-plains were reclaimed and levees built, others were built on high ground away from the flood-prone central city.

Until 1923, Sacramento was the only incorporated city in the county. In the 1920s Isleton and North Sacramento incorporated (North Sacramento was absorbed into Sacramento in the 1960s) and in 1946 Folsom and Galt incorporated. Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova have only been incorporated cities for a decade or so. This meant that planning decisions were made in conjunction with Sacramento County, not a city.

Many fully developed and occupied parts of Sacramento County are still unincorporated, even though they are fully built out: Carmichael, North Highlands, Arden/Arcade, Orangevale, Rosemont. If you add up these neighborhoods, sometimes called "The Uncity," they add up to a population about the same size as Sacramento--if we were to incorporate the census-designated places near Sacramento into the city (say, Antelope, Arden, Fair Oaks, Florin, La Riviera, Laguna, North Highlands, Parkway/South, Rosemont, Arden/Arcade, Vineyard, Carmichael, Rio Linda/Elverta and Orangevale) it would push Sacramento's population up over a million!

Most of this growth was postwar growth. Again similar to Los Angeles, our postwar suburbs were driven by federally funded highways, military/aerospace jobs far out from city centers, and the purchase of our streetcar system by National City Lines, who stopped running streetcars four years later and replaced them with buses. The suburbs were all white because California still recognized "racial covenants" (deed restrictions prohibiting sale of a property to non-whites, and in some cases, non-Protestants) until 1967. The city of Sacramento was diverse from its beginnings, due to gold-seekers from around the world followed by generations of immigrants looking for work, but they found settling outside the old city very difficult, aside from small exceptions like the town of Locke.

[Phil Minor]

Cities can pull above their weight or below their weight. Orlando, Las Vegas are two cities that pull above their weight. They both have a lot more activities to do than their population size should suggest.

In Vegas, all of the Casinos have brought in a lot of shows and shopping that you just wouldn't expect for city of its size. The Orlando region is roughly the size of Sacramento, yet it has more and bigger versions of the amusement parks than you will find in Southern California.

Kansas City is roughly the same size as Sacramento, but it has the Chiefs, it has the Royals. It also has big time college athletics at the U. of Kansas. New Orleans is much smaller and poorer than Sacramento, but it has the Saints and Hornets as well as Tulane. Charlotte NC has the Bobcats and the Panthers. Pittsburgh has the Pirates, the Steelers and several major univiersities (Pitt, CMU).

In many respects Sacramento acts much smaller than other regions of its size. If you want to see big time college athletics, the closest is Berkeley or UOP for division 1 basketball.

For professional sports, outside of the Kings, basically you have to go to the Bay Area.

Tourism in this area is really underdeveloped. If you look at postcards from this region, they will show you either the State Capitol, Sutter's Fort ,Old Town or the Railroad Museum. As far as tourists are concerned that is basically it. But given the difference in land values, I really don't understand why this area hasn't been able to lure away some of the amusement parks away from the bay area or attract new ones. It would diversify the economy away from State government, it would bring new money into the region and it would give locals more things to do.

In other states, being the state Capitol, allows the region more perks for Cultural tourism. In California the California Science Museum is in Los Angeles, and the California Academy of Sciences in SF. Yet this area can't get the state to spring for an aquarium nor planetarium locally. The state has some local museums that very small, like the state archives or the state indian museum, but outside of the Railroad Museum the region hasn't been very successful in getting the state to pay for bigger cultural tourism projects. I would love to see a California Natural History Museum, a California Museum of Modern Art, or a California Center for Performing Arts.

In terms of that type of tourism, again its mostly happening in the bay area or Southern California. Some might argue that the legislature wants to deliver pork to their own districts, but that didn't keep the National Archives, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress out of DC. Since the state is funding this stuff, why isn't it happening in Sacramento?

Given the size of the region, I think this area acts like a community much smaller than its size. It pulls below its weight. Some of it is a function of the bay area snatching some of the regional prizes because it got bigger earlier than the Sacramento region. Some of it is because there just aren't enough big companies headquartered here to fund/subsidize it.

UNLV and Fresno State are located in much smaller regions than Sacramento. I really don't understand why these regions can support their universities enough to establish big time college sports and why neither CSUS nor UCD has managed to pull it off yet.

[wburg]

Cultural tourism is very important, and we have the groundwork, the main problem is that Sacramento has historically lacked wealthy benefactors willing to contribute money to create those institutions. We have the Stanford Mansion, but Leland Stanford founded his university in Palo Alto--his old house here became an orphanage. The other folks who made their money in Sacramento followed suit--they packed up and moved to San Francisco when they could afford it, and built lavish public things there instead of here. It is an effect that we have faced for a century and a half, from Albert Gallatin to John McCrea.

We do have the Crocker, in mid-expansion (largely because its builder E B Crocker died before he could move to San Francisco) which with its new expansion is well-suited to take more of a role as a California museum of modern art--it is already the oldest continuially operating art museum in the state. But we could certainly use more than one. We have dozens of little galleries, mostly pretty quiet except for Second Saturday, but in order for some of them to turn into full-sized actual art museums, they will need some kind of serious patronage. We have the talent, and the organizational ability, just not the money.

While some still contend that Davis is an entirely separate and distinct place from Sacramento, it has functioned as our local university town for a century, and if you're talking about amenities like the Mondavi Center or KDVS Radio, most of the audience that comes is from the Sacramento region. But the Causeway makes Davis feel like a separate place, even though it really isn't.

Since the state is funding this stuff, why isn't it happening in Sacramento?

Not sure if you have been keeping up with current events, but the state is broke, broke, broke, and the loudest folks in town are the ones insisting that the state not pay for anything under any circumstances (except for highways and pet projects in their district.) The Legislature is overwhelmingly not from Sacramento, so there is little impetus (if any) to build cultural amenities here on the state dime (especially when it could go to their district in the Bay Area or southern California.)

In the long run, there are plans for a regional Indian Museum that will be located in West Sacramento, primarily in an area of relatively undeveloped land in order to place the museum in a naturalistic setting. There are also plans in the works for a science museum at the old powerhouse on Jibboom Street, and the Railroad Technology Museum in the Shops complex that will focus on railroading's present and future (likely to be more prominent in our kids' lives than the past few decades) as much as its past.

There is tremendous potential for cultural tourism at the level of local history, but many of the powers that be (including the mayor) simply don't think of Sacramento as a place (in its current form) that anyone could give a damn about in terms of historical or cultural interest. There is plenty here that is interesting, from both perspectives, we are just tremendously under-marketed. People simply don't know what is here, even people who live here, and often don't believe it when they are told otherwise. I have been contacted by folks who were looking for some kind of local history tour program, and found nothing at all. If people assume that there is no history to Sacramento outside of Old Sacramento and Sutter's Fort, the city government has done very little to shift that opinion. In part, I think it is because the developers who elect the Mayor covet the historic neighborhoods and old buildings that would become the tourist districts. They want to convert these places to more office and condo high-rises, following the hoary old tradition of Capitol Mall, K Street Mall and environs that leveled so many of our old neighborhoods in the name of progress (see how well that turned out.) Cultural/heritage tourism would mean more public outcry when they want to knock something down.

Amusement parks require large chunks of open land, which is pretty difficult to accommodate in a place that is relatively fully built out--where would Sacramento put such a part, and what would you have to purchase and demolish in order to put it? In my mind, a permanent amusement park (and maybe an arena too) at the Cal Expo site might be a better use of the land than selling it to a developer, but the question again becomes--who is going to pay for it? The state is broke, and developers won't kick in unless there is something in it for them--ideally, everything.

I'm not a sports fan so I can't speak too much to the sports thing--although what I think we really need is a pro baseball team. The Rivercats games are well-attended and they actually win games. We used to have a farm team called the Solons, and Sacramento is in many ways very much a baseball town. But, again, who is going to invest the money?

tl;dr: All your ideas sound swell but the state has neither the money nor the interest. Without very rich private benefactors, who will pay for all this great stuff?

[x15]

The problem isn't that the region didn't plan well for growth, but rather that it didn't follow through on the plans.

Look at this map of planned but unbuilt freeways in the area.

IndyRoads.com --- California's independent roads website

In the 70's, activists argued for the induced theory of traffic. Essentially they claimed that building freeways caused traffic and if you didn't build the freeways, then you wouldn't have traffic.

But growth in the area creates the need to get around. Because developers fund political campaigns the growth happened anyways, but the area didn't fully build out the freeway network to support the growth. Because highway 14, 244, 102 and a large part of 65 were never built, that traffic got displaced onto Watt, Sunrise, Hazel, Douglas and Madison. People still need to get around, killing freeways didn't kill the traffic, it just pushed it somewhere else. If you want to stop the traffic, then you really need strong growth controls (like Carmel, Monterrey and Marin).

The other big lesson from that era is that infrastructure needs to come in before the housing. There is no bridge across the American River between Sunrise and Watt for the same reason there is no bridge between Broadway and West Sac, the locals killed the project because they fear the consequences of bridge construction on property values. Between the large costs and nimby opposition, any effort at building a bridge at either location gets killed.

Save the American River Association doesn't want anymore auto bridges across the American River, (although it has left open the possibility of future pedestrian or transit bridges) and my understanding is the the Land Park Neighborhood association has taken pretty much the same position as SARA regarding a bridge across Broadway.

Lastly when you retrofit infrastructure into an area its really expensive. Why the activists were successful in killing a lot of these freeways is that there was some housing in the path of the freeways. To build the freeways or bridges would mean emminent domain purchase of that housing which is really expensive. If the housing arrives before the infrastructure, generally the high cost of building the infrastructure plus the neighborhood activists protesting it, generally means the infrastructure doesn't get built.

I think a bigger factor for white flight was busing. The Sacramento City School District was successfully sued for racial discrimination in how it set up school attendance boundaries. As a remedy the courts mandated busing and then magnet schools to integrate the schools in the district after busing failed to integrate the schools.

The problem was that in the early 70's when this was going on, minority members didn't have many employment options, they were poor and a lot of their kids were joining gangs. The schools they were trying to integrate were failing schools like Grant is today, lots of gang members not a lot of education going on. You didn't have to be Archie Bunker to not want your kids to attend these schools. But unless you put your kids in private schools or moved to the out of the district, your kids would get stuck in a fairly non functional public school.

The San Juan School District at that time had and still has an open enrollment policy. Any student could attend any school in the district if there was an space available for that student.

As a practical matter this created a strong reason for people to move out of Sac City schools to San Juan Schools were they could avoid busing.

If you look at the better performing schools today in the Sac City District, they are a consequences of the busing era. The best performing high school in the Sac City district is West Campus. In the busing era, West Campus was then the West Campus of Hiram Johnson School. It was the magnet program for Hiram Johnson High School that was located in a different location than the main campus because they could get enough white kids to attend it when the magnet program was located on the main Hiram Johnson campus. So the district maintained the legal fiction that the West Campus was part of Hiram Johnson in order to technically comply with the terms of the desegregation order.

Because busing just wasn't working at desegregating schools but was successful at destroying neighborhoods, finally the excesses of busing got the Supreme Ct to step in and kill it in the same state where they started it, Kansas.

One of the interesting things is that once, the district was released from the desegregation order (it never technically fully complied with it and probably never could have), a lot of neighborhoods in the city of Sacramento had somewhat of a revival.

If you look today, a lot of the suburban schools are very diverse but for different reasons. Some of it is because some of the older suburban neighborhoods aren't what they once were and the neighborhoods have become more diverse as the poorer minority members move into the location. (think Rancho Cordova or Foothills Farms that have gone from working class white to working class minority).

But you also have Elk Grove which is very diverse, but also has pretty high levels of parental educational attainment. This is a neighborhood filled by the people who succeeded under desegregation.

Right now a little more than half the hispanic kids are graduating from high school. The Hmong are doing even worse. Its unreasonable to expect that the wealthy parts of the region are going to be very diverse when the region is doing a pretty poor job of educating the poorly educated immigrants and when the region is failing to attract the better educated immigrants (the way LA and SF do).

[Majin]

Yeah they really screwed up big time on that freeway system. The east part of sac county is going to be screwed after we add another million and rancho/citrus heights densifies. Our chances of building more N/S freeways are pretty much gone.

You guys think Sunrise and Watt are parking lots during rush hour now? Wait 10 years.

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by Majin

Yeah they really screwed up big time on that freeway system. The east part of sac county is going to be screwed after we add another million and rancho/citrus heights densifies. Our chances of building more N/S freeways are pretty much gone.

You guys think Sunrise and Watt are parking lots during rush hour now? Wait 10 years.

Funny thing is that outside of this area, other places similar in size that I'm familiar with have parkways throughout the city. These are really good roads, often 4 or 6 lanes across with a turn lane, and limited access points. Really helps move the traffic, without the "scars" associated with highways.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by NewToCA

Funny thing is that outside of this area, other places similar in size that I'm familiar with have parkways throughout the city. These are really good roads, often 4 or 6 lanes across with a turn lane, and limited access points. Really helps move the traffic, without the "scars" associated with highways.

Most of the places being discussed (Watt, Madison, Greenback, Madison etc.) aren't in cities, but in the unincorporated county. That's part of the problem: unincorporated areas are dependent on county planning departments, which are very uncoordinated things.

Originally Posted by Majin

The east part of sac county is going to be screwed after we add another million and rancho/citrus heights densifies.

Citrus Heights won't "densify" unless it gets fixed-rail transit to drive it, like a light-rail line running along Sunrise and Madison to meet up with the Watt/I-80 line, and feeder streetcar lines into the neighborhoods. Car-centric cities don't "densify," because car-centric planning requires big horizontal things like parking lots and driveways and wide, wide streets. Unless something seriously changes (gas prices, national priorities, etc) the suburbs will continue to metastasize into the foothills.

Rancho Cordova, on the other hand, is at least planning for density by building along the light rail line and making plans for streetcars. They won't need streets that are much wider if the transit system can keep pace--although that's a big "if" these days.