Arden-Arcade consider itself part of Sacto or Carmichael/Citrus Heights area? (San Francisco: hotel, military)

[NickB1967]

Bigger *is* better when the city in question has big ambitions, as the people running Sacramento seem to have. Take the whole Kings fiasco for example. Many in Sacramento do want to keep a major sports team, but they lack to clout to make it stick.

In general, incorporated is empirically better than unincorporated. County only government works for sparsely populated farms and ranches, but is too unwieldy for urbanized areas -- which is why those "un-city" areas wound up having special park and rec districts, water and sewer districts, etc.

It's not that "unlimited horizontal expansion of Sacramento's city limits is a good thing", it *is* that it happened *anyway*, and better to have it under one muncipal jurisdiction.

[Majin]

Originally Posted by wburg

I'm still not seeing the economic justification for incorporation/annexation--you're taking "bigger is better" as a point of faith rather than justifying it somehow.

I think you are missing the point (or at least my point).

Whatever the economic justification is or inst for annexation or incorporation. Sacramento is extremely unique (if not the ONLY example) of a major metro area where they are MORE unincorporated population than incorporated in the anchor city (Sacramento vs Sacramento County in this example).

BTW, you keep saying unincorporated Sacramento County is not even top 10 in California, and you keep citing the San Diego 400k example, but unincorporated Sacramento County is at 554,554, which probably 90% of that is in a urbanized area. And before Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove I think that number was almost 700k.

Do you have ANY example, in the entire United States besides LA county, with these kinda numbers? Where there is a large, urbanized unincorporated area within a major metro area (at least 2 million)? Wburg I think for some reason you have a problem admitting that Sacramento's situation is, by far, the most unusual and dysfunctional system of city-county government in history.

[wburg]

Sacramento County is not in the top ten California counties for percentage of population outside of incorporated areas--second to Los Angeles for quantity of population outside of incorporated areas.
From: Caring for Unincorporated Communities

Table 1. California counties with the largest or most dominant unincorporated populations (1999 estimated populations).

Top Ten Counties in Number of Unincorporated Area Residents (In thousands)
1. Los Angeles 1,017
2. Sacramento 627
3. San Diego 456
4. Riverside 388
5. San Bernardino 290
6. Kern 271
7. Orange 208
8. Fresno 179
9. Contra Costa 178
10. Santa Barbara 172

Top Ten Counties in Percent of Total Population in Unincorporated Areas
1. Alpine 100.0 percent
2. Mariposa 100.0
3. Trinity 100.0
4. Calaveras 92.2
5. Tuolumne 92.0
6. Plumas 89.7
7. Inyo 81.0
8. El Dorado 78.6
9. Yuba 76.7
10. Sierra 74.1

Source: Department of Finance, Demographic Research Unit

But no, I don't think this constitutes dysfunction--it is actually a pretty common pattern in western cities with a lot of post-WWII growth. It's tough to draw comparisons across state lines, because there are so many ways that states delegate local government: Hawaii has NO local governments smaller than counties, there are no city governments, so every "city" in Hawaii is actually just a census-designated place, while in other states, there is no county government but there are township governments. In some states there are more than one type of chartered place--cities, towns and villages are distinct entities with different status.

But just with a little Wikipedia-fu, I found a couple of analogies: Washington County, part of Portland's metropolitan area (more than 2 million) has a population of 511,000. Its biggest city is Hillsboro, with 88,300 people, and an unincorporated population of 208,000. Salt Lake City's population is 190,000 but there are also 143,000 people in unincorporated Salt Lake County. Tucson has 525,000 people, with 353,000 in unincorporated Pima County--and apparently there, as here, there is strong resistance to incorporation--not because Tucson doesn't want to incorporate them (they tried) but because the folks in the county don't want to be part of Tucson.

Not big enough? Seattle is 620,000 people, with 352,000 in unincorporated King County--the unincorporated part of the county is 82% of county land.

Still not big enough? Houston is just over 2 million people--but an additional 1.56 million live in unincorporated Harris County, outside the city limits of Houston and other Harris County cities (which add up to 473,000 people.)

For whatever reason, maybe having to do with very dramatic post-WWII growth (Houston and Tucson, like Sacramento, grew the fastest in the 1950s and 60s, sometimes over 100% per decade, faster growth rates than Los Angeles or the Bay Area), maybe because the expansion was into unoccupied/unsettled land instead of small, often already-incorporated farming communities, and maybe because of a certain amount of Southwestern/Midwestern distaste for big cities. Cities and counties on the urbanized coast filled up more quickly and earlier, ran out of room faster, and there was more pressure to define city boundaries quickly. So if you assume that every place works like the Bay Area, it might seem "dysfunctional" until you realize that most places don't work like the Bay Area.

If you really want to torture the numbers about Sacramento having an unusually high unincorporated area for a major city of high population and high level of development, kind of a "tallest left-handed Eskimo" type of qualifier, sure. But it's hardly an unusual situation.

Does it imply dysfunction? I don't think it does in Sacramento, or even in the county government (there is no "city-county government")--nor is it even particularly unique, especially among western cities. Sacramento went to great lengths to annex nearby land, sometimes faster and farther than it probably should have, as our ongoing difficulties with North Sacramento shows. I'd put more of the blame for "dysfunction" on the developers and residents of the suburban areas, since they are the ones resisting incorporation, the ones that insisted on growing outward away from the city instead of infill, and the ones that still resist efforts to create a persistent urban growth boundary. Although in many ways, the current model of building within Sacramento city limits (building new developments on recently annexed farmland, like North Natomas and coming up at Delta Shores, aka Natomas Part II) isn't that much better.

And I'm still not convinced that more population is better simply because it is, no matter how much NickB1967 insists on it. Plenty of smaller cities have built arenas, and larger cities have had plans fall through. The latest arena plan failed because it was stupid, corrupt and unrealistic in almost every aspect. City population, "vision" etcetera had nothing to do with it. But that's a whole other thread...and yeah, we should annex Arden-Arcade and the "Finger." 'Nuff said.

[NickB1967]

Originally Posted by wburg

For whatever reason, maybe having to do with very dramatic post-WWII growth (Houston and Tucson, like Sacramento, grew the fastest in the 1950s and 60s, sometimes over 100% per decade, faster growth rates than Los Angeles or the Bay Area)

Sorry, during that time the Bay and LA areas were growing much faster. San Jose was *the* fastest growing US city for two decades or more. Places like Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights and Folsom really didn't get going until the 1970's.

To quote journalist and local scholar Dan Walters, in his book "The New California": "....leaving the {Sacramento} area with the highest proportion of unincorporated urban development in the state." {Bold emphasis added, your counting of unincorporated rural areas simply *isn't* honest}. This was written back in 1986, but things haven't changed that much.

Walters goes on: "A distinct unwillingness of city officials and the civic leadership to expand the city's boundaries into then vacant land north and east of Sacramento after World War II laid the groundwork for the suburban expansion under a pro-development county government. And ultimately, it weakened the city's ability to affect critical land-use decisions for the region. Ironically, the very urbanization that the civic gentry wanted to prevent was increased by its head-in-the-sand attitude."

Originally Posted by wburg

Sacramento went to great lengths to annex nearby land, sometimes faster and farther than it probably should have, as our ongoing difficulties with North Sacramento shows.

Sorry, but no, it didn't. For the eastern city boundaries to stop abruptly at Ethan Way reveals this. Gobbling up the encircled former City of North Sacramento made a logical sense, even if it was annexing a slum, but for the city officials to just let a Fulton Avenue Auto Row and a Town and Country Village and a Country Club Plaza sprout up in the 1950's and 1960's without making the bid to annex the area just reveals terrible short-sightedness.

Not that county officials have been better--the incredibly stupid decision by stuporvisors like Sandy Smoley and others in the early 1970's to cancel and then sell off the right of ways for freeway routes 143, 148, 244, and 65 leaves us with a horrid congested mess and no American River crossings between Watt and Sunrise. And for those of you dupes who think "freeways cause sprawl", try looking at the old planning maps--the sprawl came anyway.

Originally Posted by wburg

I'd put more of the blame for "dysfunction" on the developers and residents of the suburban areas, since they are the ones resisting incorporation, the ones that insisted on growing outward away from the city instead of infill, and the ones that still resist efforts to create a persistent urban growth boundary. Although in many ways, the current model of building within Sacramento city limits (building new developments on recently annexed farmland, like North Natomas and coming up at Delta Shores, aka Natomas Part II) isn't that much better.

How dare those people not have packed themselves into the tenement slums where Old Sacramento and downtown office buildings now stand, as William Burg envisions, or into the slums of Del Paso Heights.

You want infill development? Then stop getting in the way of anyone who tries to do any. Anything from a 3 story or more building in Midtown, to a fast food restaurant in slummy Oak Park, to condos on a vacant lot that became a downtown community garden, runs into furious opposition. Small wonder developers go where they are welcome.

Originally Posted by wburg

And I'm still not convinced that more population is better simply because it is, no matter how much NickB1967 insists on it.

Sorry, but no. More population clout means a greater ability to have stadium like goodies. Do the math. Anaheim pulls off big city ambitions because it doesn't bash developers.

[CeJeH]

I agree with Nicks point of higher population = more power. Even if we just annex Parkway/South Sacramento, Fruitridge/Florin, Rosemont/La Riviera and Arden Arcade, which are the main "uncity" areas, we would be around ~700k people! Including the other surrounding unincorporated areas and we would be right around the size of San Jose.

[CeJeH]

Why do the cities in Sac county always incorporate around the military bases and exclude them from the cities? Is this common practice?

[wburg]

Originally Posted by CeJeH

Why do the cities in Sac county always incorporate around the military bases and exclude them from the cities? Is this common practice?

Sacramento Army Depot was incorporated into the city limits by annexation twice (once when it was on Richards, once when it was in its last location) and there wasn't a city of Rancho Cordova until after Mather AFB closed. McClellan was well outside the city limits. But generally military bases want to run themselves rather than be subject to city government. I think even in very urbanized places (like San Francisco) the military bases were not considered part of the city for purposes of government and administration--Treasure Island didn't become part of San Francisco until a few years ago.

I'm not sure I get Nick's argument about Anaheim--they're smaller than Sacramento, which seems like it contradicts the suggestion that more people=more power. And looking at downtown Anaheim, which seems to consist of a really ugly City Hall building, a megachurch, a couple of mid-rise hotel towers for Disneyland, and a bunch of parking lots, I'm not very impressed by their "big-city ambition."

[CeJeH]

They have an NHL team, a World Series Champion MLB team and were really close to stealing our NBA team a year ago. Not to mention the whole Disney thing.

[wburg]

All while being considerably smaller than Sacramento (Anaheim had about 15,000 people before Disneyland was built and about 100,000 when the Angels were moved there), which kind of flies in the face of the "Sacramento has to have a bigger population to get big-city toys" argument. Their viability as a sports market has a lot more to do with the 20 million people in their TV market area than the 350,000 people within their city limits (and the other two NBA teams' contracts regarding that media market is why the rumors about an Anaheim move were nothing more than a distraction to scare the timid here in Sacramento into giving the Malooves more free stuff.)

My wife showed me this article about Anaheim (she was born there, and has a fairly dim view of the place):
On Harbor Boulevard, a pretense of business as usual - latimes.com

Harbor's architecture, largely anonymous and inward-looking, is marked by a studied blandness. Perhaps to make up for its shortage of impressive civic landmarks, the boulevard features a number of private spaces, including Disneyland, that look public but are in fact tightly controlled. That recipe has produced on Harbor a feeling of unnatural civility — the architectural equivalent of a forced smile.

Their #1 employer is Disneyland, followed by a few hospitals and hotels, it seems like their economy is largely based on how well the big mouse is doing. They're the biggest city in Orange County, but their major employer is a theme park and its ancillary industries. Their metro area lists them second (Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine) as it seems Orange County is the embodiment of NickB's idea about a county's "big city" being just one among several major players. So if you want to hold up Anaheim as a shining example of what Sacramento should do, then it seems Sacramento's plan should be to let the areas outside its city limits balkanize into their own cities, as Anaheim did, and somehow manage to go back in time to let Walt Disney put a theme park here back when we had 15,000 people (which, as I recall, was during the Gold Rush.) I'm not so sure how well that will work out.

[carmichael mike]

It is fair to say that unifying the unincorporated communities of NE Sac county would be logical from a political and land use perspective. Say Arden-arcade and Carmichael, along with Fair Oaks and Old Foothill Farms joined to be a city. The city could contract with CHP or Sac Sheriffs to be its police and still use Sac Metro Fire as its FD. Land use could help keep the small farms found in Carmichael and Fair Oaks. There are always possibilities. Annexation into Sac city would mean the loss of some of the identity of the suburban feel we enjoy.