As the three of us stop to gaze west, across Wildcat Marsh, I ask Butt why, just when it seemed we had finally understood beyond a doubt that it’s best not to fill the bay or trash its wetlands, the city of Richmond wants to plop a deep container port down on top of Wildcat Marsh (and likely other marshes along the North Richmond shoreline as well).

Butt shakes his head. “You’re asking the wrong person,” he says. “It’s insane.”

Richmond boasts the longest stretch of shoreline of any East Bay city—32 miles—and an even longer history of citizen environmental activism. The north shoreline is one of the few places around the bay where you can still see expanses of untrammeled salt marsh unframed by housing or industry or watch white-tailed kites conducting aerial maneuvers. You might even catch a glimpse of an endangered California clapper rail lurking in the cordgrass.

Yet city leaders seem determined to ruin this ecological treasure. Citizen activists only recently fought off—with the help of the East Bay Regional Park District—a proposal to build a huge housing complex on Breuner Marsh, one of the bay’s most intact marshes and habitat of several endangered species (see Terrain, Fall 2005). But the “city of pride and purpose” doesn’t give up easily.

On July 25, during a city council meeting, city staff announced its intention to “study”—in partnership with Long Beach port design firm Moffat and Nichol Engineers—building a deep water container port on the north shoreline—despite the fact that Richmond already has a container port on its south shoreline. While the exact configuration of the port was left unspecified, City Manager Bill Lindsay suggested that the areas in question are parts of the Chevron refinery (south of Wildcat Marsh) and the West Contra Costa landfill to the north of the marsh. To make use of those sites, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s Will Travis, who met with Lindsay to discuss the port idea, concluded, “They would have to dredge two ship channels, two turning basins, two berthing areas, and build two connections to the rail and road system.” The cost of such an undertaking, says Travis, would be prohibitive.

In an August 28 letter to Lindsay, Travis suggested that the city reexamine its existing port, pointing out that the Richmond Harbor navigation channel is 45 feet deep and “requires considerably less deepening and maintenance dredging than would be required in developing access to a north Richmond port site.” Jeff Inglis, a member of the North Richmond Shoreline Open Space Alliance, agrees. “What is the current status of that port, what is its potential, and how much of that potential is being utilized?” he asks. “Rather than putting money into studying developing these protected areas, shouldn’t the city be looking what it can do to maximize existing resources?”

Another lifelong Richmond resident worries that the entire shoreline is in jeopardy—and not just from Richmond’s current development-idea-of-the-week. Environmental activist Whitney Dotson says that the port study “will cover everything from Wildcat Marsh all the way to Breuner Marsh. One of my fears is that they’re planning to take over the whole shoreline.” Dotson adds that on a recent boat tour given to local business councils, Port Director Jim Metzorkis announced that the city hopes to develop the entire shoreline. “They’re determined to make some money off of the shoreline one way or another,” says Dotson. Neither Lindsay nor Metzorkis returned my calls.

Dotson is conducting his own feasibility study—of turning the shoreline into a state park. Dotson is one of the leaders of the North Richmond Open Space Shoreline Alliance, and he has been in discussion with the California State Parks Foundation. His group recently convened a community meeting, to which it invited regulators, city staff, and anyone interested in discussing the future of the shoreline, and it is coming up with its own vision. It is in large part due to this group keeping an eye on the city and insisting on protecting the shoreline that several prominent environmental organizations weighed in on the proposed port.

One of those, 21-year-old Wildcat-San Pablo Creeks Watershed Council, which has fought for decades to restore and preserve both creeks and the marshes they flow into, points out in a letter to Lindsay that over $21 million of public money—from the State Lands Commission, the California Department of Water Resources, CALFED, the East Bay Regional Park District, Contra Costa County, the federal government, and the California Coastal Conservancy—has been funneled into an environmentally healthy flood control project for these two creeks, including restoring the marshes and floodplains, making them accessible to the public, and creating regional trails to connect regional parks with the shoreline. In its letter, the council also calls to Lindsay’s attention the fact that the original flood control project to dredge a channel through Wildcat Marsh had to be abandoned because of contamination in the marsh. Any current-day dredging would reawaken those long-buried contaminants that have leached or been drained into the marsh from the landfill, the wastewater treatment plant, and numerous nearby industries, such as the Chevron refinery.

In addition to toxics—and the question of where contaminated dredge spoils could be deposited—the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, and the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture, a voluntary coalition of 27 agencies, businesses, and private organizations whose members are working to “protect, restore, increase, and enhance” wetlands and riparian habitats throughout the Bay Area, raise the issue of impacts on endangered species like the California clapper rail, and the salt marsh harvest mouse, as well as on species of concern such as long-billed curlews and ospreys, which nest and forage in and around Wildcat Marsh and the Richmond shoreline, as well as over 100 other bird species. Dredging would also harm nearby eelgrass beds, some of the most intact and extensive subtidal habitat existing in the bay, these agencies point out.

In its September 6, 2006 letter to the city, the Joint Venture offered to “work with the city of Richmond as we have done with other municipalities to help bring about the economic and recreational benefits of protected and restored natural areas.” The Venture’s coordinator, Beth Huning, says her organization worked with the city of Petaluma as it debated building a traditional sewage treatment plant that would have harmed nearby marshes. Petaluma instead created a natural treatment marsh that provided additional habitat—and earned the city good public relations. “A whole series of projects has lined up because of that one,” says Huning. Huning attended the North Richmond Shoreline Open Space Alliance’s meeting and has offered to make a presentation to the city council.

What’s with this manic energy to develop the shoreline? “There’s this mantra in Richmond that too many people buy into,” says Butt. “It’s that Richmond needs jobs and the only way to address that is to build more stuff and get more tax dollars—that that will solve all of our problems. But it won’t. The Port of Oakland hasn’t solved West Oakland’s crime problems—and it’s bigger than what’s being proposed here.”

Butt has his own vision for the shoreline. “I think that all undeveloped green space on the north shoreline should be protected. The city could bolster its image and attract visitors that way; we need to get more people to use the Bay Trail. Maybe there would be trail-related businesses, cafes, an environmental ed center. Maybe we could expand the Eastshore State Park—in the end that would have more economic value to Richmond than any type of development.” Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin, who is running for mayor this year, says she also wants to “keep Richmond’s shorelines open, accessible, clean, and public,” and would like to see restoration efforts using Richmond’s youth. “The developers, always anxious for a quick return, push irresponsible plans, and certain city staff act as if they are employed by the developers,” she says. “Before we know it, a bad project has been developed, rubber-stamped, and approved by a majority on the council. Not too long ago we had city staff promoting 1,300 housing units on the toxic Zeneca site on the South Richmond shoreline. Thankfully the people of Richmond, from the south to the north shoreline, are standing against irresponsible development.”

Mayor Irma Anderson and the other council-members were asked for their visions for the shoreline but did not respond. Councilmember Jim Rogers seems to be listening to enviros’ and citizens’ concerns. He tried to pass a resolution that would have convened a “blue-ribbon taskforce” of citizens, businesses, and environmental groups to study the shoreline in lieu of a container port study. In typical Richmond fashion, the resolution failed in a split vote.

Meanwhile, Chevron developed a case of mild schizophrenia. At the July 25 city council meeting, Chevron representative Jim Brumfield waxed eloquent about the container ship plan and lauded city staffers who were pushing the idea. Yet Chevron spokesperson Camille Priselac says Chevron supports the idea of a study but would “prefer that the port not be situated” on its property: “We believe in buffer zones around our property. The city hasn’t even talked with us or met with us about this.”

What would Chevron’s interest be? Some speculate that if a deep ship channel were dredged next to its facility, Chevron could import liquefied natural gas. When I pose this theory to Bruce Beyaert, former manager of environmental planning with Chevron, who has submitted a letter questioning the economic and regulatory hurdles of the proposed port, he confirms that Chevron has major natural gas reserves abroad—in Australia, in particular— and has expressed interest in bringing LNG into the United States. The infrastructure for a container ship port would not be suitable without major modifications, points out Beyaert. Yet, he adds, having a deep ship channel dredged right next to its refinery would overcome a major hurdle.

By mid-October, the container port idea was dead. According to the city manager’s report, “investment groups are no longer interested in pursuing the new north shore port concept.” These groups, which include J.P. Morgan, may wish to redevelop terminals along the south shore. The city manager’s report stresses that new port investment “will be related to existing land and facilities rather than to a new facility.” The demise of the north shore container port gives environmental groups a window of opportunity—before the city advances a new scheme.

Over a decade ago, the California Coastal Conservancy funded a specific plan for the north Richmond shoreline, with input from businesses, city staff, and enviros. The document tried to balance preservation of natural areas with development. There is more science just 15 years later about the bay and its wildlife, and after Katrina, a lot more understanding about why wetlands are so important ecologically and as natural flood control “sponges.”

San Francisco-based nonprofit Natural Heritage Institute’s Rich Walkling, who has been involved for several years in the North Richmond area, in particular on Rheem Creek and Breuner Marsh, has a CALFED grant (yet more state/federal money) to develop a grassroots vision. Walkling, working closely with Dotson’s shoreline alliance, hopes to hold a series of workshops in early 2007 for people to get out in the field. “At the end of all of this, when we have this core group of people informed, we’ll go through another planning and conservation process,” he says. “We need to come up with examples of where cities have integrated economic development in a sustainable way that protects their natural resources—a giant container port doesn’t do that. We’ll come up with a vision for what the shoreline should look like—maybe a North Richmond Shoreline National Park.”

Developer dollars are easier to come by than state and federal funding for parks these days. I ask Butt what he thinks it will take to save the shoreline. Shirley Butt jumps in. “Richmond always talks about being business-friendly,” she says. “We need to tell developers we are seeking environmentally friendly businesses and start from there instead of always putting the environment second.”

Tom Butt speaks of Richmond activists like Lucretia Edwards, who recently passed away in her nineties. He seems to be hoping for Edwards’ reincarnation. “They were persistent, courted public opinion, used the media, and even litigated,” he says of Edwards and her cohort of citizen activists. “They outlasted and outlived the opposition.” If that legacy persists—and it seems likely to, with folks like Dotson and the shoreline alliance, the grassroots vision may, in the long run, prevail over ports, condos—and the City of Richmond’s Development-a-Week.

Yet NOAA Fisheries is now considering a rollback of restrictions along the California and Oregon coast on fishing practices that catch and kill leatherbacks—drift gillnet and long-line fishing. Says Steele, “The reasons given are that there aren’t as many sea turtles there as they thought, and that the restrictions affect the fishing industry adversely by limiting their catch.” Many scientists—including Steele—vehemently oppose any rollback, pointing out that the small number of turtles now in residence simply reflects their dwindling numbers globally. They say that the fishing industry has declined so much along the coast that it would gain next to nothing from the rollback, but the change could push the turtles over the edge to extinction.

Known as “the dinosaurs of the sea,” leatherbacks have been around for 100 million years, since before the time of Tyrannosaurus rex and friends. Picture a turtle the size of a table for eight swimming 22 mph and capable of diving down to 3,900 feet. The only shell-less turtle, they’re named for their tough, leathery skin, which forms seven ridges along their backs. Because of their body’s low surface area to volume and thick, insulating fat, they are the only warm-blooded reptiles. “They are amazing animals,” concludes Steele.

Leatherbacks have been spotted as far north as Alaska and as far south as Chile, says Steele. It’s not uncommon for them to migrate 10,000 miles in a year or to cross an entire ocean basin, searching for nesting beaches and foraging for jellyfish. Moon jellyfish, with bells the size of dinner plates, are the turtles’ favorites, and it takes about 50 a day to satisfy a leatherback.

“They spend their entire lives—and they can live to be 100—in the water,” says Steele. “Nesting is the only activity that draws them out.” The eastern leatherback population nests on beaches in Costa Rica, Mexico, and Nicaragua, while the western population nests in Indonesia, New Guinea, and Malaysia. Mating every two to three years, leatherbacks may lay up to 12 times at 10-day intervals in one season, for a total of 450 to 600 eggs. The nesting female clears a site using her front flippers like shovels, then digs a few feet down into the moist sand with her rear flippers before depositing her eggs and carefully filling in the hole. Hatchlings tunnel up through the sand, usually emerging after dusk, then scramble towards the water, attracted by moonlight reflected in the waves.

In late summer and fall, leatherbacks in search of jellyfish are spotted off the California coast between Monterey Bay and Oregon, says Steele. Satellite tracking shows that they migrate in from western Pacific nesting beaches, like those of Papua Indonesia. “This year turtles have been seen north of the Golden Gate in the waters off Marin County—but in much smaller numbers than two decades ago,” she says.

Leatherbacks face many threats, but chief among them are humans harvesting the eggs from nesting beaches and drift gillnet and long-line fishing. Drift gillnets, often a million square feet in size, are placed vertically like curtains to drift with the current and ensnare large fish. Long-line fisheries catch fish and sometimes turtles with 60-mile lines of baited hooks. Other hazards are plastic bottles and bags that leatherbacks may confuse with jellyfish, and developments near nesting beaches which, when lit up at night, draw hatchlings away from the water. Development of major nesting beaches around the Pacific has forced the population out to fewer, more far-flung areas.

“Conservationists have worked with western Pacific villagers to protect the turtle eggs, but that’s hard,” says Steele, “because the eggs have been important in the local economies, as well as a diet staple.” Steele says the approach in the US has been to set up a Leatherback Conservation Area in the 200-mile-wide Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Monterey Bay and the mid-Oregon coast and to restrict drift gillnet fishing there from August 15 to November 15, when the leatherbacks tend to show up. This restriction was implemented in 2001 after a biological opinion was issued by NOAA Fisheries Service. In 2004, long-line fishing was restricted in the same way.

“These measures have been effective,” notes Steele. “There has not been one sea turtle capture since 2001.” If the restrictions are rolled back, drift gillnet vessels might be allowed in the EEZ during the critical period but would be required to have an observer on board at all times who would report any sea turtle captures. The vessels would have to move out of the critical area after two sea turtle captures in one season.

Some fear that this measure could lead to elimination of the Leatherback Conservation Area, with the result that only 20 percent of drift gillnet vessels would be required to carry an observer. Says Steele, “For now, we are urging the public to contact NOAA Fisheries Service and ask them to keep the existing restrictions in place.” With leatherbacks near the brink, this is no time to give up.

Write letters to William Hogarth, Director, NOAA Fisheries Service, 1315 East West Highway, SMC3; Silver Springs, MD 20910

Or call or email (301) 713-2379; Bill.hogarth@noaa.gov

In 2004, California’s Public Energy Commission linked with institutions such as Scripps, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, to form the state Climate Change Center, charged with investigating what will happen as the temperature rises over the next century. In a new report, “Our Changing Climate: Assessing the Risks to California,” scientists speculate on the impacts of three different emissions scenarios. In a best-case low emissions scenario, we would shift immediately to more efficient technologies to lower our use of fossil fuels. But even in this version, atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doubles by 2100. Climate models predict a 3-5.5¡F temperature increase as a result. In the medium emissions scenario, emissions grow over the next century but as other energies come online, the rate slows. In this version, atmospheric carbon dioxide triples by 2100, with a predicted 5.5 to 8¡F increase in temperature. If we persist in denial and continue with “business as usual,” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere more than triples, resulting in temperatures 8-10¡F higher.

The results were less conclusive about rainfall, but the models suggest that while the amount might remain the same, the location and form of precipitation could change. Sea level will rise due to melting ice and thermal expansion of water. Between 1900 and 2003, sea level at the Golden Gate Bridge rose 8.15 inches, and that level is predicted to increase 22 to 35 more inches over the next hundred years. And yes, expect more severe weather, including droughts, heat waves, and massive storms. Big surprise—the forecasted rise in state population from 37 million to 55 million won’t help our plight.

Dr. Michael Hanemann, head of the California Climate Change Center at UC Berkeley, says that in terms of the state’s water resources, “the crucial thing is timing and location.” Hanemann explains that 80 percent of precipitation falls between October and March, but 75 percent of that is used between April and September, primarily for agricultural irrigation. The state’s snow pack helps cope with the timing difference by acting as a natural reservoir.

The current system relies heavily on the Sierra Nevada snow pack to supply water during spring and summer months. Significant snow packs also form in the Cascades north of the Central Valley. Snow packs form a third of California’s water storage, and melt accounts for more than a third of the state’s usable surface water supply. But the snow pack could diminish by as much as 70 to 90 percent by the end of the century due to changes in precipitation and temperature. Precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow when temperatures increase, and what snow there is could melt earlier. Unless another form of storage is developed, less water will be available during the summer.

More water can be stored in existing reservoirs, but current policy is to leave reservoirs partially empty to provide space for snow melt and protect against winter and spring flooding. More reservoirs could be built but at prohibitively high economic and environmental costs.

Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten California’s drinking water quality. Higher sea levels increase the chances of sea water intrusion into coastal groundwater basins. In an average year, 30 percent of urban and agricultural water needs are met with groundwater. In drought years, this figure increases to 40 percent. And as more people move to the state, the demands on groundwater will grow.

Freshwater injections into coastal aquifers to prevent ocean water moving farther inland can act as hydraulic barriers, and California Department of Water Resources officials can develop policies that restrict well construction and other activities that use groundwater. Seawalls could protect the coast from rising sea levels. These measures also come at a cost and are often unpopular, so they’re less likely to be championed by politicians and policymakers.

Another threat to California’s water is the likelihood of flooding in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley. The State Water Project relies heavily on water from the Delta to supply two-thirds of California’s population and 600,000 acres of farmland. Most of the Delta is at or below sea level, and the bottoms of all Delta waterways are below sea level. The Delta is protected from breaching by 1,100 miles of levees, some already on the verge of collapse. As the sea level rises, levees are likely to fail. Many Californians get their drinking water from the Delta, which will also be subject to seawater intrusion if levees fail. Salinity could increase to unacceptable levels, taking weeks or even months to return to normal.

Not only does sea level rise threaten water quality, all coastal areas will face higher risks of flooding. Rising sea levels puts more pressure on levees and seawalls while more severe storms will damage them further. Areas most at risk include Santa Cruz and the Delta. The Climate Change Center predicts that billions of dollars will be spent for flood control and to repair damage.

Along with rising seas and changing rainfall patterns, our state is likely to get hotter. Assuming that all else remains constant, the temperature increase of 5.5 to 8¡F predicted by the medium emissions scenario will lead to a 3-6 percent increase in energy consumption: hot people turn on air conditioners. California spent about $26 billion on electricity in 2003. If the cost remains constant, expenditures on electricity could increase by $780 million to $1.56 billion. However, because 15 percent of state-generated electricity comes from hydropower generated from the snowmelt, electricity will probably become more expensive. Increased development in California’s interior will also increase energy use, so these estimates are extremely conservative.

A hotter climate will also affect the state’s agricultural bonanza. California produces over half the fruits, nuts, and vegetables in the nation. As of this June, 374,600 people were employed as farm workers. When you count people processing and selling food, the number of Californians employed in agriculture is considerably higher. In 2003, the value of the crops produced totaled almost $30 billion. Most of this production occurs in the Central Valley, where hotter weather will make already bad working conditions less tolerable.

Warming increases the length of the growing season. A longer growing season can increase the quantity of some produce, such as wine grapes. But warmer temperatures will decrease quality. For example, if temperatures rise by 6¡F, grapes will have higher sugar content and less acidity, making them unsuitable for winemaking. Warmer temperatures during the growing season will also increase fruit development rates. Fruit will ripen at a smaller size.

And change in timing of the growing season affects plant pollination. An early spring could throw off the timing between plants flowering and the emergence of their pollinators, decreasing the chances that flowers will become fruit. Pollen itself is extremely sensitive to warm temperatures, so earlier, warmer springs will result in lower pollen viability. As if all this isn’t enough, consider pests. Higher temperatures and growth seasons mean that pests and weeds multiply faster—and they can expand their range. For example, pink bollworms are a problem for cotton farmers in the south, but winter frosts in the north kill them off. An increase of 3 to 4.5¡F in winter temperatures would allow the pink bollworm’s range to expand northward.

Warmer temperatures during the winter will also affect fruit yield. Fruit trees need from 200 to 1,200 hours of winter chill during which temperatures are below 45¡F in order to flower, but climate models predict that there will not be sufficient winter chill by 2100 for many fruits.

Finally, warmer temperatures promote the release of volatile hydrocarbons from plants. These compounds react with nitrous oxides in the atmosphere to produce ozone that is toxic to plants.

Agriculture will also make increasing demands of California’s water resources. Higher temperatures mean that plants need more water to sustain themselves, but farmers have less storage than urban users so agriculture will be more heavily affected by shortages. The predicted increase in intensity and frequency of severe weather events adds even more complexity to the situation. In an average year, agriculture will be able to cope with global warming, but Hanemann says that in the worst cases, which could be a third of the time, there may not be enough water to go around. The number of dry years is expected to double.

Models predict not only an increase in average temperature, but an increased duration and frequency of heat waves, which will in turn increase air pollution. California already has the poorest air quality in the nation—and it will probably worsen because high temperatures promote the formation of air pollutants. If temperatures rise from 5.5 to 80 F, the number of days with weather conducive to ozone formation in the San Joaquin Valley will increase by 75 percent. Also, scientists predict that large wildfires, which release fine particulates and increase air pollution, could be up to 55 percent more frequent due to increased temperature. Air pollution exacerbates a wide variety of health problems, including asthma and other acute respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

In addition to worsening preexisting health conditions, high temperatures increase the risk of death from dehydration, heat stroke, heart attack, stroke, and respiratory distress. By 2050, heat-related mortality in urban centers, such as Sacramento, could double or triple. Most affected will be the elderly, young, ill, and poor.

With these scary scenarios lurking just around the corner, the next few years will make a critical difference in just how dire things will be. Hanemann says California has the resources to cope with global warming, but we need to act now. We need to start preparing because some consequences are now inevitable. “There will be effects early in the century that require action now,” Hanemann says. “We need to start actively planning for adaptation to water supply problems and increased heat waves. We need to plan because we’ll experience these things in the next decade or so.”

Hanemann believes the state needs to participate in the international efforts to reduce heat-trapping emissions. The point of the impact studies performed by the California Climate Change Center is to illustrate that reducing emissions is both significant and doable. “Comparing impacts associated with business-as-usual and preventing a more than doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sheds light on why it’s important to moderate growth and emissions,” he says.

Consider that California is the fourth largest economy in the world and the twelfth highest emitter of greenhouse gases. We have the power to change global emissions standards and affect not only our own future but also that of those Greenlanders and penguins—in fact, the future of the earth.

As California’s population grows, and more people move to the Central Valley or to below-sea-level subdivisions in the Delta, because they can’t afford to live in a city or don’t want to—this grim scene may become even more common. As farmland continues to be converted to megaburbs and more people move to hotter places—and live in bigger houses—an ever-increasing load will be put on California’s energy grid, says John Landis, city and regional planning professor at UC Berkeley. If it weren’t for these new developments in hot places, the state’s energy use would actually be going down, due to overall improvements the state has made in energy efficiency, according to the California Energy Commission’s Arthur Rosenfeld. But California’ peak energy demand today is about 50,000 megawatts, compared with 37,000 megawatts during the 2001 energy crisis. (One megawatt powers about 750 homes.)

And because many of these new subdivisions have lawns, water will be another resource in great demand, says the Public Policy Institute’s Ellen Hanak, who predicts that the amount of water used by outdoor landscapes could increase by as much as 1.2 million acre-feet a year as a result of new developments in the valley. Those acre-feet are enough to serve about 4.8 million people—or to “restore the San Joaquin River twice,” as Ronnie Cohen with the Natural Resources Defense Council puts it. In other words, water that could be flowing in our rivers for fish is instead keeping mini-oases alive in the middle of the desert.

Alrie Middlebrook, who runs a landscaping firm in the South Bay, has begun a “lose the lawn” campaign to show people how attractive native and drought-tolerant landscapes can be. Middlebrook hopes the valley will not be covered with turf: “When you think that 60 percent of household water use goes to landscaping&it’s intractable, it just can’t happen.” She points out that as the price of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and gas for mowers goes up, the attraction of an English manor style lawn may go down.

But it isn’t just the environment that will be strained as a result of our current development patterns. Dr. Richard Jackson, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that if we continue to build ill-planned subdivisions far from transit or real communities with a “there there,” we are building “recipes for depression.” Jackson acknowledges that affordability is an enormous driver for the influx of folks into hotter inland areas. “I understand that people have got to live somewhere, ” he says. “And I know that very few people pick a place 100 miles from where they work because they like to drive.”

Jackson says one of the most fundamental problems with the kind of suburbs being built in California today is that developers come in, build the subdivision, and say they’ll worry about things like water drainage, public transit, and access to larger services like schools and health care later. “We decide after we put people in place—oh, how can we retrofit these things into our communities? You’d think we hadn’t discovered planning 100 years ago.” And in a place like the valley, he adds, the heat exacerbates many of the problems. “Here is this basin with all of the natural heat challenges it has. It has astonishingly bad air quality, and we’re putting more and more people with huge demands for cars and fuel—and more air pollution—into it.” Many children in the valley can’t play outside because air quality is so bad, says Jackson. “We’re going to have to start thinking more clearly about where we are putting people,” says Jackson. “We’ve got to start providing adequate housing in our cities.”

Children in these suburbs far from wild places or even a vacant, weedy field often have a lack of “self-directed, autonomous” time—the kind many of us had growing up, says Jackson. “We’re turning to televisions and computers as babysitters by creating home settings that are too cosseted and too protected,” he says. “We don’t feel comfortable enough for children to roam and explore and grow in their own autonomy.”

It’s a myth that kids can’t be healthy in cities, says Jackson—they need stimulation: “We don’t want to put them in the path of danger, but they need to be able to explore, they need physical challenges.” Jackson says he increasingly sees suburban parks in which all of the trees have been limbed up so kids can’t climb—and possibly fall.

But even if we buy the idea that cities might not be all bad for kids—and built more affordable family housing and better schools in our cities—can we let go of that American goal of the nice, big house and requisite car and lawn? It seems—in the Central Valley at least—the the dream is still selling.

“It doesn’t make sense given the demographic changes we’re seeing overall,” says Judy Corbett with the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento nonprofit that researches land use, transportation, and water issues for local governments. “[Moving to the suburbs] probably still is the American dream for a certain percentage of the population, but today only about 23 percent of the population is a family with kids. We’ve got all kinds of single or married people without kids these days.”

Corbett sees other models. Reedley, a small city near Fresno, drew up a specific plan with smaller houses and lots. “The idea was to have housing connected to downtown and other destinations, mixed-use, less dependency on cars, a less energy-consuming lifestyle.” But to find better models, Corbett looks to Vancouver. “There are great places for kids there, and it continues to densify,” she says. “They have required developers to offer open space and put in certain amounts of low-income housing and community buildings. It’s been designed so sensitively.”

So if most of the potential home-buying population is singles, people without children, or empty-nesters, why are we still seeing the same old McMansions? How can we change this trend? From the inside-out, says developer John Anderson of New Urban Builders, a firm building infill housing in places like Redding and Chico. Anderson says that part of the problem is that even though demographics have changed, much of the market is based on what is already out there. “The problem is that the market doesn’t offer people enough options,” says Anderson. Single women are talked into buying three bedroom/two bath houses for the resale value. People buy the giant beige 3,000-square-foot “snout-nose ranchburger” (ranch style home with huge garage bulging out in front) with four bedrooms, three baths, and a “café room” because that’s what’s offered, and because if there is a choice between living in something too small or too large, people would rather have too much room than not enough, says Anderson.

A café room? “It’s this extra room off the kitchen where you can feel like you’re in a café,” he explains. “There’s this concept in suburban development that unpleasantness in life can be avoided through the purchase of the right real estate—that media rooms and exotic, gourmet kitchens will compensate whatever other loneliness you have in your life.”

Anderson says he would rather deal with life’s unpleasantness within the social context of a town or city. His firm is trying to build in areas where there is “something going on,” and they are building smaller homes—most between 1,100 and 1,500 square feet—using greener materials, and basing their designs on older neighborhoods. The homes range from lofts to bungalows to rowhouses, have tiny front lawns (if any), garages in the rear, and front porches—and they aren’t made of beige stucco. “When we first started, people told us we were crazy to have someone living over a garage or a front porch and an alley in the back or a three-story rowhouse in Chico. They said, ‘Oh well, you’re in a granola-crunching Birkenstock-wearing hippie town, they’ll buy anything.’” But, says Anderson, everyone from nurses to teachers to firefighters is living in the new, old-style houses. “Some of the empty nesters are giddy at the prospect at not having to mow a huge lawn, not to mention the environmental benefits,” says Anderson. One resident told Anderson with the money she is saving on lawn care (she has a patio with potted plants), she can afford to travel to Europe every year.

How can Anderson compete with the big homebuilding companies who dominate the market? One way is by building in places where there is already a “there there.” Another is building what he thinks people appreciate versus patterning his developments after what already exists and building as cheaply as possible. Anderson thinks that the “isolated monocultures of cute little houses off the interchange, generic places with the congestion of a central city and culture of a cow pasture” will soon go the way of the dinosaurs. “It’ll happen through forces bigger than smart people thinking it through,” he says. “You’ve got folks at the peak of their earning years making choices about how to spend their remaining years, people with both the resources and motivation to do things differently. They’ll start looking around at choices, and most often, they’ll want to be where there is some culture. The café room will be the first thing to go.”

The other big catalyst for change, he says, “will be the fact that we have reached peak oil and can no longer live in a place where you have to get in a car to go buy a pencil. I think there will be lots of choices made about things like whether we can still afford to live in a place when gas becomes even more expensive, or whether we’ll live in a place where we’ll be able to shed the second car.”

But the biggest motivator, say both Jackson and Anderson, will be the human need for community and social contact. Says Jackson, “We’ve lost our deep communitarian sense. The most prevalent disease in America today is depression—and the antidotes are being with other people, having social support, social engagement, exercise—people have to be able to get out and do things without driving for miles.”

Says Jackson, “I think [the solution] has to be bottom-up and top-down—bottom-up is that the community has to demand other options—and academics and experts need to give them the tools and data and the power to demand something different. Top-down—there ultimately has to be political leadership instead of local, state, and federal bureaucracies fighting over diminishing resources.” While we may not have that kind of leadership in California right now, Jackson is instilling the next generation of planners with a different ethic. “I tell my graduate students that we need to do better multidisciplinary planning. We’ve got to approach [development] from all angles, in a ‘transvisionary’ kind of way, not in this piecemeal fashion. The environment and human health are directly related. The more we build places that isolate and fragment people’s lives, the worse our health problems will become. We need quality dense developments with bike routes, green cover, daylighted creeks, and shade, places that don’t require the constant use of vehicles, places that are sustainable in both the environmental and human sense.”

That’s why a number of environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed suit in August against the state’s Reclamation Board. The board issued a permit in June that would allow the construction of 224 luxury homes atop a 300-foot-wide “super levee” on a Delta island in the city of Lathrop. The suit contends that the board did not consider the effects global warming will have on the ability of the earthen barriers to protect future residents. The environmental groups charge that the board’s failure to look into this nasty scenario puts the project in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act.

“We hope to get the Reclamation Board to address these issues in a rational and considered way, and to draw the public’s attention to the failure of the board to do its flood protection job,” writes NRDC’s Kate Poole in an email.

Agencies such as the Department of Water Resources—following the Governor’s June 2005 order—have looked at how the Delta and other parts of the state will fare as temperatures rise. They’ve generated computer models and what they’re finding is not encouraging. (See article on page 11 for more on the state’s modeling.)

Poole notes that the flood threat to the Delta is “on a scale of Hurricane Katrina.” Climate experts have generated computer models demonstrating that higher temperatures could raise sea levels by more than two feet by the end of this century. This will affect not just coast dwellers but also residents in and around the Delta and its 1,100 miles of levees.

The report by the Department of Water Resources estimated that as little as a one-foot rise in sea level would likely flood the three westernmost Delta islands—Jersey, Twitchell, and Sherman. To guard against flooding, levees will have to be built higher—something the Reclamation Board did not take into account when it approved the plans for the Lathrop development, known as River Islands, writes Poole. Eventually, plans call for as many as 11,000 homes to be built on the Delta island.

Scott Morgan of California’s Reclamation Board challenges Poole’s assertion. Morgan, who could not comment directly on the suit, did say that the board lacked the authority to stop a housing project. It does have the authority to ask a developer to fix a flood control plan that, upon the board’s review, doesn’t adequately contain the water that’s projected to flow by. “Is the board concerned about flooding—yes,” says Morgan. “But it’s not the responsibility of the board to control what goes on behind a levee.”

“Well, it’s no secret that when I was on the board, I advocated strongly for worrying about what happens behind the levees,” counters UC Davis geologist Jeff Mount upon hearing Morgan’s comment.

Mount was dismissed from the Reclamation Board along with all other members when Schwarzenegger knocked out Gray Davis in the 2003 recall election. At the time, Mount and that Reclamation Board had pledged to use its authority spelled out in the California Environmental Quality Act to assess development projects in flood zones.

Mount says that priorities change when the equivalent of cities are built on levees—tasks such as repairs and future flood control projects must take into consideration the needs of the human population. “For this reason alone, it is an inescapable fact that what goes on behind the levees impacts the state’s plan of flood control,” says Mount.

Unfortunately, he notes, the changing of the guard at the Reclamation Board came before standard protocols could be developed for incorporating climate change into hydrologic analysis. Absent these protocols, “it’s not considered standard practice to require projects to take climate change into account.”

While this suit may be the first of its kind, Poole hopes it will start a new trend of state flood control officials taking the effects of global warming into account. And while the klieg lights have dimmed on the bipartisan Climate Change Cha-Cha-Cha for the moment, Mount believes that these efforts—and willingness of the state’s Climate Change team to address the issue head-on—may eventually bubble to the surface of flood management thinking. “But we’ve got a long way to go on this,” he says.

Adina Merendender, a conservation biologist at UC Berkeley, believes that the areas at high-risk for development are not the most distressing. “What I worry about is the medium-risk category because I suspect that these areas are actually at high-risk of low-density development,” he says. “The impacts of low-density development are sometimes under-appreciated.” He cites habitat fragmentation, facilitating exotic species invasion, and increasing environmental costs associated with roads and fire protection.

Low-density residential development outside urban boundary services, also known as “exurbia,” is the nation’s fastest growing type of development. Exurbia is usually a result of land division, when undeveloped land is subdivided into smaller pieces and individual owners construct houses. Sonoma County is now the most “parcelized.” Though it appears to have a lesser impact on the environment than high-density sprawl, the overall footprint of exurbia is surprisingly extensive. And as more families become attracted to the tranquil promise of countryside living, exurbia’s impacts on plants and wildlife worsens.

Real estate agent Crystal Broch admits that she is often conflicted by development. “Owning a home seems to be an integral part of the American dream, and the home itself isn’t enough; we want decent-sized yards, open floor plans, walk-in closets,” she says. She believes that the housing industry is not doing much to create a more sustainable solution: “Building up as opposed to building out in sprawl is more expensive and requires a more complex design plan. Plus, buyers aren’t keen on climbing stairs.” Until the housing industry has more of an incentive to build sustainable designs, Broch is not optimistic about major changes.

Putting restrictions on development without creating other housing has unintended effects. Popular areas for tourism such as Napa and Healdsburg risk losing their local workforces as housing becomes increasingly pricey. “Workers in lower wage brackets, necessary to business and local economy, can’t afford to live locally due to the inflated housing market,” says Broch.

Solano County has more at-risk land than other Bay Area counties. Greenbelt Alliance speculates that Solano’s difficulty is that it lies along I-80 and lacked growth policies that protected land in neighboring counties. The county’s Orderly Growth initiative, which prohibits residential development on county land, must be renewed in 2010 to protect half a million acres of land from sprawl. The second largest area of at-risk land is in Sonoma County, where securing a greenbelt depends on voters.

With a million new people expected to arrive in the Bay Area by 2020, it’s more important than ever to focus on issues of land conservation and planning. Designating land at risk is a good start, but the real test is whether Bay Area counties will take the leap to imagine a future with open space, biodiversity—and housing not at odds with the natural world.

Is it true that developers are offering farmers $1 million per acre?

There was only one instance where it was that high, near Sacramento. It depends on how close the land is to development. One hundred thousand, $200,000, $300,000 per acre is more common.

What is the Great Valley Center’s role in the future of the valley?

We want to see a more sustainable community, but we don’t prejudge what the results should be. We ask, in all planning efforts, “Is everybody at the table, do we have the best available data and information, are we taking a long-term view?” If those three things are generally there, people get good results.

Is anyone taking a long-term view?

Right now, there’s an extraordinary thing going on. In June 2005, the governor recognized that the San Joaquin Valley was not only a place of high incoming growth but also a place where employment and per capita income was pretty bad. He created the California Partnership—with eight cabinet secretaries, eight civic sector appointees, and eight local county reps. The idea is to come up with strategic actions to begin to prepare the region for development—including recommendations for land use and transportation. We’re actually just starting a conversation about what and how the region will look with three million new people in the San Joaquin Valley alone.

Do you think the California Partnership will work or will this be another plan that sits on a shelf?

I’m always optimistic at the beginning of a process. Regionalism works when you add something new. When you take something away from people, it’s hard. Getting people to think and understand things on a regional basis is daunting. The challenge for the plan will be, “How good is it, or is it a reaffirmation of what’s going on now?” The fundamental question in my mind for the region is having a big enough vision—many people who live in the valley treasure it as a rural agricultural community that maintains its small town qualities. When you think about a region of six million people, it’s hard to think about maintaining those qualities.

What worries you the most about the future of the San Joaquin Valley?

How do you take this larger vision and make it into one that is sustainable and healthy? We have two models. One is the low-density suburban development to which we’ve lost a lot of agricultural and open space. You have the feeling of being in a suburban community, but you are still dependent on coastal areas for financial and cultural centers. The alternative is to bite the bullet and say, “With this many people we’re going to have to build great cities, start thinking now about where we build transit and how to make neighborhoods strong.” Those cities could exist in an agricultural area and be less dependent on the coast.

I can’t picture a big city in the middle of the valley.

Almost every city and small town in the region is growing. In the northern San Joaquin Valley people are moving from the coast; in the southern San Joaquin people are moving in from Southern California and just immigrating from other places.

What about the high energy costs and water demands of suburban developments?

The assumption in the valley is that 98 percent of the people want a big house with a small lot. That’s not true any more. We’ve got empty-nesters, young people, single people looking for something different. But we build more of the traditional development than not—that’s been the historic pattern. We’re trying to get people to think long-term and not repeat those patterns of development, to realize that it doesn’t get them where they want to be. In the valley like everywhere else, people are beginning to look at higher-density and bigger houses on small lots. The California Partnership has work groups on water and energy—in all of those work groups, you’ll find recommendations that the valley be much more aggressive about renewable energy.

What is motivating those recommendations?

There are three reasons: to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, to reduce energy costs, and to reverse some of the adverse impacts on air quality, which is a huge problem in the valley.

At a recent talk, you said that people who live in the valley don’t always appreciate its environmental resources the way outsiders do. What did you mean by that?

When you live in a forest, you don’t always appreciate it. When you live in the midst of abundant open space, you see it as abundant, not something that could disappear. Plus, so much of it has already been tilled, or altered, that people have a hard time appreciating something like vernal pools. But the wetlands in the valley are so important to the Pacific Flyway—I think people are beginning to understand that because they see the birds here in the winter.

You also suggested that environmentalists need to better partner with farmers.

We recently did some outreach on land-use recommendations, to try to get people engaged in the discussions—when do you get a chance to do strategic planning for the next 50 years? We emailed 63 environmental groups in the valley but got zero response. We did the same thing for farm groups, and 11 out of 15 responded. Getting people engaged in that way is very difficult.

Are there other environmental groups engaged?

People in the valley don’t want Bay Area people telling them what to do. But we’re trying to get our affiliates in the eight counties to network with environmental and water-supply groups, with housing advocates, to help engage them. On a statewide level, the Trust for Public Land, Audubon, and Fish and Game developed a generalized map of important natural resources in the area—with recommendations for establishing open space systems. They said, “You don’t have to save everything, but here’s what you should consider at a regional level that would be a resource for all of the counties.”

What about land trusts?

We had a $5 million grant from Packard in ’99-2000 to work in three counties on ag easements—to see if we couldn’t create some models for using easements as a way of redirecting development. We had a hard time getting people interested. The differential cost of land is so great. If people think they have a chance to sell to a developer, a land trust can’t come close. We had started several land trusts—in Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Sacramento, and Merced counties, and we’ve now consolidated them into the Central Valley Land Trust. We’re not going to renew that grant, but we’re going to use the money we have and work with agriculture to encourage and promote sustainability and economic stability in farming. One way to do that is to provide coastal areas with our crops. The valley has always had high value ag. But you can increase that value with branding—for example, Lundberg Rice. It’s smaller scale farming, but it does keep the farmer in the middle in business. Right now you can go to Chez Panisse and they will tell you where the food comes from, the grower’s name, etc. But the mainstream chains and bigger operations aren’t doing it yet. Kaiser is increasingly serving locally acquired fruits and vegetables. We’re trying to figure out a way to take it mainstream.

The valley also has a fledgling ecotourism industry that could help preserve land.

There are the tiniest beginnings—Blossom Trail in Fresno, for example. It’s a trail through the orchards people can take while they are all blooming. People go to southern France to do that, but they can do it right here. Then there’s the birdwatching, the sandhill cranes in Lodi. What we don’t have yet is the elegant small inn—where you can stay in a wonderful bed and eat a fresh meal out of the garden. If we get that part of ecotourism down, people would find it a wonderful place. It’s magnificent in the fall and spring.

If development in the valley continues at this rate, what do you think the quality of life will be like for people who live there?

One way or another, it’s going to have to change. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing forever. You can’t do the same thing and expect to have different results. At some point we need to make a choice thoughtfully and proactively—or just run to the edge of the cliff. It’s like the timber people when they were prevented from logging anymore—they were hurt and furious, but they were close to running out of timber anyway. Air quality is one of those big walls for us. The region is already in severe noncompliance with air quality standards. People are moving away because of it.

You are passionate about the valley. Have you always lived here?

I was born in Chicago, but I’ve lived in the valley for more than 30 years. We ended up here because it was where my husband could find a job and because, in the early 1970s, we lived in the Bay Area and you could not see the San Francisco skyline from the east shore due to bad air. It’s a little ironic, isn’t it?

What led you to found the Great Valley Center?

I was mayor of Modesto from 1987-1991, and I worked for Pete Wilson on growth management. I had an insider’s perspective of what the issues were. While I was in Sacramento, I could see that the valley was still growing but not coming out of its recession. I thought, “We’ve got to deal with these issues; we can’t just let development go on forever.” Our original premise was to reduce the false conflict between the environment and the economy. But then we realized that wasn’t enough—we had to build capacity too.

The group encountered resistance from city planners and had to negotiate over what were at the time very unusual features. The completed homes sold instantly to people seeking an alternative to traditional tract-home design. The Smart Communities Web site lists these benefits:

• A 1990 study found that Village Homes residents use 36 percent less energy for vehicular driving, 47 percent less electricity and 31 percent less natural gas per household than a conventional neighborhood control group.
• Tree-lined streets keep the temperature about 10 percent cooler than surrounding neighborhoods.
• Open space accounts for 25 percent of the development.
• Village Homes residents know 50 percent more of their neighbors than do residents in nearby developments.
• Initially, Village Homes sold for the same price as other homes in Davis. On average, they now sell for $11 per square foot more.

It seemed like a “happily ever after” story, but it turned out to be just the first act of a lifelong saga. Michael and Judith wrote a book about the development, Designing Sustainable Communities: Learning from Village Homes, and Judith still writes about innovative communities. Michael served as city councilmember and mayor of Davis. Hoping to expand upon the success of Village Homes, he designed Covell Village, a much larger development.

Corbett reasoned that Covell offered a chance to expand on the success of Village Homes. The new 1,864-unit development would include solar panels on every home, a retail center, a new fire station, an 82-acre educational organic farm, a community recreation building, an outdoor amphitheater, sites for the school district, a Rotary Hall, Yolo Hospice, Davis Parent Nursery School, a 124-acre wetland habitat, 8 miles of bike paths, and a 776-acre farmland buffer that could never be developed. In addition, 48 percent of the housing units would have had a price restriction, an effort to keep the development affordable for a range of people and occupations.

It required a vote to annex the land to the city of Davis. After a very heated campaign, the measure was voted down last November, with about 60 percent voting against the measure. “It was really hard to see it voted down,” says Corbett, “especially since I’m of an age where I probably won’t get a chance to have such an impact again.”

I caught Michael Corbett at his office in Davis, where he works as a planning consultant.

What lessons do you think planners and developers learned from Village Homes?

I have no indication that most people have learned much at all. It’s still a fight for natural drainage, edible landscaping, and narrow streets. The north-south orientation rule [which required that homes be built on a north-south orientation so that passive solar power was possible] also has been relaxed, so developers aren’t doing north-south orientation any more.

We could make a big jump with photovoltaics, and design closer to the city to minimize auto traffic. In Village Homes, we had a community center, a restaurant, a dance studio, and some offices, but many people still had to use their automobiles daily.

Even your critics acknowledged that Covell would have improved the standard of living in Davis. Why do you think it was rejected by the voters?

That development was the best possible model development. It was big enough for jobs and was designed near bus lines, schools, commercial development. It had edible landscaping, permanent agricultural set-asides—everything you could want, really. But Davis has become so anti-growth. It was really sad to work so long on something so positive and have it go down. It was just so short-sighted. A lot of people who consider themselves progressive aren’t. They’re reactive. It’s the nature of the world we live in now, and it really stops creative solutions and the people who want to try them. Society will stall unless progressives come up with real solutions.

Do you think that people’s attitudes have changed?

The world has changed a lot from the one I grew up in, in the 1940s, to the 1960s, when television started having a real impact. When I was little, we had to use our imaginations to play. We made our own toys, our own designs. We didn’t buy them at a toy store, we made them. I think that starting in the 1960s, people started to have more handed to them. The next generation grew up tuning their brains to accept or reject what’s handed to them. They label new ideas good or bad, but they don’t work out new solutions. Meanwhile, much more creativity goes into video games, computers, and entertainment, which just reinforces a corporate mentality.

What do you think the future of community design will be?

The future is probably in some kind of semi-collapsed society. We’ve spent 100 years building for the automobile. We now have urban areas that are very vulnerable to shortages, global warming, and drought. The future could be enormously different from the present. Communities such as Tucson and Palm Springs could get just warm enough or lose their access to water to be virtually unlivable. We’re going to see lots of changes just due to global warming. And as fossil fuels dry up, that will make even more disruption& We might have to live the way we did before cars, with local agriculture and business. But it won’t be so much because of political views, it will be because of the way we’ll have to use energy and resources.

That’s a pretty depressing view of the future. Do you see any promising developments that might offer some hope of a more sustainable future?

Actually, there’s a little bit of hope in the fact that Davis voted down Covell Village. It was trying to take hold of its future. It was good that they took control. But the question is whether they can still extend that control and use it wisely. Local governments can still require energy conservation, buy land, control their own development. Local control increases the diversity of solutions, and problems get solved through diversity and learning from each other. But most of the time, there is such a symbiotic relationship between money, politicians, and development that it’s really hard. Davis, Arcata, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley all want to redo the urban area. All of these cities have succumbed at one time or another to the sheer magnitude of corporate stuctures. So for every step forward, you get beaten back five.

I see some hope in what individuals choose to do with their futures. Biking, living without a car, recycling—these are all good, but the real change happens when the local governments drive change. We’re at a fork here, facing collapse, and the big question is whether society will hobble along for 15-20 years or whether it will be in four or five years. It’s kind of like living under one of the bad emperors in the Roman Empire. We’re destroying our environment, but we’re stuck with the infrastructure we’ve built, and many people can’t figure out what’s a good plan and what’s not.

Building sustainably—including planning for disasters—has been a long-term interest for Tsui. In 1994 he built a 2,000-square-foot, two-story house for his parents in Berkeley. The house is designed to withstand an 8.0 + earthquake, fire, flooding, and lesser plagues such as termites and urban noise. Its constant indoor temperature is maintained with passive solar heating and integrated ventilation. I met with Tsui at his office in Emeryville.

If you could come upon the Bay Area as it was in the early 1800s, how would you plan human habitation to be safe from disasters?

We must first try to understand the natural forces that exist here. We need to understand weather conditions, water conditions, the flora, fauna, winds, and the sunlight. We have a kind of blind spot about how to intelligently respond to disaster. We need to understand how other forms of life deal with these conditions. How does nature use plant life, the patterns of erosion, soil, hills, and natural wetlands to protect from disaster?

Nature is an incredibly intelligent force that’s been around for five billion years. If you put five billion years into one year, human beings would have existed for about a minute and half. Are we so intelligent that a minute and a half could be equivalent to a whole year of nature’s trial and error? It’s absolutely silly to think that we have some intellectual advantage over nature.

What are some of the potential disasters that can occur in the Bay Area?

Earthquake, flooding, fires, and tsunami. The levee system in the Bay Area is sadly outdated. The levees are made out of peat soil that is easily maneuvered and disturbed. In 2004 we had some heavy rains, and 12,000 acres were flooded from just heavy rains. Just think if a tsunami hit the Bay Area. The devastation would be unheard of. One hit could destroy all the Delta’s levees and create a vast wasteland in the entire area. It would be a disaster many, many times greater than Hurricane Katrina. What can we do? First we have to realize the problem exists, and as a first choice, avoid building in areas exposed to these conditions. If you do build there, people who have influence over what we build must start to understand what better forms and structures we can create to respond to disaster.

Would you give an example of how architecture could respond to one of these problems?

Let’s take fire. Given our weather conditions and vegetation, is it intelligent to build wooden structures in the hills? No. Is it intelligent to build in areas susceptible to wind and fire? No, it isn’t. The first thing nature does is build in areas that aren’t as susceptible to fire hazard. That means near the water, in areas that don’t have a prevalence of wind to feed flames. These are the kind of things that we are not using in our decision-making, now dictated by economics and availability of purchasing space.

Another question I’d ask is “How do you develop a building form that lets wind accelerate around it, not trap it?” The ubiquitous box is the worst for a fire-prone building. Fire usually expands and intensifies in the presence of wind. When wind blows fire against a flat surface, a vacuum pocket is formed that draws fire to the flat surface, causing it to burn more readily than any other shape. In the hills, which are dry and have a high prevalence of wind, you only have the box shape. So we are taking the most dangerous approach to architecture by creating wood-frame, box-shape buildings in a high-risk area. We don’t seek out alternatives that are every bit as viable. We can live in something much more aerodynamic. As soon as you introduce the curve or more aerodynamic shapes, you allow wind to blow away from the building, accelerating around it. Fire has the potential to bypass the building. Why don’t we practice these things?

If the architecture of the Bay Area were redesigned for disaster using nature as inspiration, what would we be seeing?

You would be seeing buildings that are curvilinear because of aerodynamics. It’s obvious that anything that has to deal with wind is sculptural and elegant—like a wing, shell, or fish. These shapes and forms are very strong so that in an earthquake, tsunami, or flood they would withstand the stresses of disaster. A snail shell can take nine thousand times its own weight in pressure before it cracks. We tested this at my office. You would have curvilinear forms and forms that are use lightweight materials in very strong ways.

The buildings might be made out of stressed wood in tension, aluminum, recycled styrene, and various forms of concrete. You use materials that are available natively in the most economical and aerodynamic way possible, in a way that will handle the most amount of strain and use the least amount of materials. You end up with buildings that are curvilinear and look as though nature created them.

As I began to study this 25 years ago people said, “You’re just imitating nature. Your buildings look like sea shells, ants, or termites.” When you ask yourself, “What is the ultimate form to withstand stress and strain?” you end up reaching for the same kind of shapes and forms that nature has created, because nature has a five-billion-year head start. All we can do is catch up.

Should planning for disaster be a priority in architecture?

In the Bay Area, we should address safety from disaster as the first level of preparedness in design. We need to start to design buildings that aren’t going to destroy themselves by these extreme forces. After safety has been addressed, we need to ask, “How do we make these buildings beautiful? How do we make them adequately work with these forces and make them beautiful and intelligent to human beings?” To me this means we have to radically rethink the way we approach architecture and have the courage to practice it.

I don’t see people rethinking and practicing architecture. They are simply reiterating and repeating the same old-fashioned images from the past. Why are we building Victorian boxes in this day and age? We know so much more about earthquakes, fire, flooding, and tsunamis. We also have new materials, technology and know-how so our architecture should be expressions appropriate to our time and place. To just replicate Victorian boxes would be an embarrassment to our own intelligence. We should not be just copying what happened 120 years ago—that would be like demanding to take a steamship to Japan instead of a jet or to use telegraph instead of email or telephone. Usually we demand the most advanced technologies possible, and yet when it comes to our own homes and workplaces we’re looking back 120 years. It doesn’t make any sense.

I can understand why people look to Victorian architecture when a lot of modern architecture is aesthetically cold or alienating. Victorians have a warmth and charm not common in modern architecture.

That’s the fault of the architects. The designers of today are not taking the care, concern for beauty, comfort of living, and the sense of craftsmanship that went into those old homes. It’s the architect’s fault that that same kind of detail and hand workmanship is not present in today’s buildings—it ought to be. I’m the first one to say we must work in that manner and I do. I don’t rely on the computer at all—everything I detail out is done by hand. Let’s bring the care and beauty and timeliness of the Victorian house to the 21st century.

Knowing all of the materials and methods of construction we have now, how can we create the same kind of beauty and character that those homes had? It is the architect’s failings that have made the concrete block, sterile, stark, alienating buildings you see around us. People are going to run for the Victorians, and they have every right to. We have to bring humanity back to architecture. The humane-ness of design has to return. Part of that humane-ness is to design for disaster.

What is the architectural response to overpopulation? We can’t all live in single-family homes, no matter how well designed.

Architecture will not solve the root of the problem. We must educate people and create change on a social level. If we do not start on a social level with this issue, architecture will merely accommodate the problem.

In regards to a city designed to hold large numbers of persons while protecting and preserving the natural environment, my design for the two-mile-high Ultima Tower could house one million people with a small footprint on the landscape. Conceptually, the idea behind such a city is to maximize the density of human development and reduce the impact on the natural environment. The Ultima Tower is a structure that allows nature to grow upwards. The supporting structure of the city is a giant tensegrity mast about 100 meters in diameter and two miles high. The tensegrity mast is the strongest, lightest support structure known to humanity and it is the only sensible way to support weight reaching two miles in the air. It is like a giant maypole with a vast number of overlapping, intersecting cables that are connected to each other so that any force placed on the cables is transferred and shared throughout the entire structure. This allows the building to have flexibility and to dissipate weight and forces—like wind, earthquakes, tsunamis, and even 747 jets. If a plane were to crash against the Ultima Tower, the plane would break apart, but the tower would flex and absorb the shock—like a giant spider web hit by a fly.

In order to be sustainable, the city must produce its own energy and climate control. The surface of the tower is a combination of photovoltaic solar panels, glass, and specially designed wind cowls that produce electricity and allow air and heat to ventilate throughout the structure—the same way a termite nest “breathes” and maintains its interior temperature to within two degrees year-round—with no mechanical parts.

The base of Ultima Tower is one mile in diameter and it forms a shape like a trumpet bell that dissipates and directs forces along its surface in all directions so the entire structure shares any loads placed upon it. The building’s surface area produces more than enough renewable energy to power the entire city pollution-free. This project is proposed for an area outside Beijing, China where population growth is very high. Given our present-day understanding of materials, technology, and methods of construction, the Ultima Tower stands at the apex of our capabilties.

What could prevent the disastrous debacle you fear?

We need to learn how to get a sense of proportion and how to prioritize. We have been building with no sense of proportion. Take a human body: if your eyes were hooked to the bottom of your feet, you won’t be able to see. If you attempt to build a community with the pieces scattered all over, it won’t work.

And if you can’t prioritize and you have no sense of proportion, you’re lost in a swirl of detail that goes nowhere. We end up making bad decisions or pursuing things that are not helpful. For instance, energy-efficient cars are bad when you look at them closely. The Prius is not a very good car, but even if it were, it contributes to sprawl.

In New Orleans, people are building new houses with some green features. But they’re still single-family homes out where they’re dependent on cars—and where they’re below sea level and need levees to protect them. Everything points to the fact that we’re very, very late in the game. We don’t have time to keep doing it wrong, yet we continue to do things that are really bad. We don’t rezone cities for pedestrian zones or to prevent sprawl.

Since I came to Berkeley in 1974, there’s been very little change in land-use policy. We have not rezoned Berkeley in the critical way that would shift density into city and neighborhood centers.

If you were monarch of the Bay Area, what would you do?

I wouldn’t want to be a monarch. But if I were providing some basic thinking that people were adopting, I would find centers of towns and cities that are the most lively already and develop them to be very pedestrian-friendly and close to transit. On these new, dense structures, I would include lots of terracing and rooftop gardens. So about a third of the Bay Area would be growing in population, and about two-thirds would see buildings disappearing along creeks, next door to community gardens, on ridgetops. Ridgetops are important because wildlife moves along ridges; they help maintain a high level of biodiversity, as do creeks. So you’d take that investment and shift it to town: expand gardens throughout the city and restore ridgetops and marshes and shorelines.

Oakland has already identified its lively neighborhood centers: there are about a dozen scattered around town. There’s a strong residual from the days when our cities were pedestrian and we had transit from neighborhood to neighborhood. We could modernize to run on building materials we have now.

There used to be a logic inherent in our building policies. In New Orleans, the old sections are built on higher ground. In Berkeley we grew along Strawberry Creek. But our logic became contaminated by very cheap energy. Gasoline is incredibly powerful stuff. And after peak oil it’s liable to become unavailable.

I’ve been involved in creek restoration since 1980. Since then there’s been almost zero progress in Berkeley in terms of creeks. People are afraid to deal with shifting population densities or engaging in battles with so-called NIMBYs. The assumption is that people like the way Berkeley looks and want to keep it that way.

What can change this picture?

A really crucial thing that is a positive is climate change. In Al Gore’s movie (An Inconvenient Truth), he’s showing us weak things to do about it. Driving less is good. But you need to drive a whole lot less. He wants people to actually do something, and he has this attitude that Americans won’t do much of anything. But if people get the attitude that changing light bulbs is doing something, they’ll stick with that. We need to do difficult things.

We need smaller, taller cities. Eventually four-fifths of the land area around the bay could be opened up. We’d live in an environment that looks more like European cities but is a lot more interesting, with bright neighborhood centers coming to life.

How would these centers be supported?

It’s all a matter of proportion. Areas or towns might specialize in value-added technology and ship it off in energy-efficient trains. Gardens and farms can cover a fair fraction of your needs, and then you might import in another 40 percent. My vision for the Central Valley is that half goes back to natural swamp and half to agriculture. We should start evacuating some cities that are there. You want to consider proximity and get the heaviest stuff locally, like building materials. Except for steel. Instead of putting steel in cars and freeway off-ramps, we should be building steel structures. If you keep it from rusting, it’ll last for hundreds of years. That way you really are investing in a long-term, energy-efficient future.

In Berkeley, we had a vision for transfer of development rights. For instance, people who owned properties along Strawberry Creek could sell to a land trust. Developers pay into the trust in order to build a higher building downtown. We got a grant to show what we’d need to open up Strawberry Creek one or two buildings wide from downtown to the bay. In 2002, it was $26-$31 million. These things are doable.

It’s not a mitigation, it’s a win-win strategy: the creek wins, downtown wins. We brought this to the City Council, backed by 103 organizations, and Kris Worthington, Donna Spring, and Linda Maio voted against it anyway.

Linda Maio’s answer is to get federal funding to put in subsidized housing. So then you have a token number of low-income housing. Why not allow higher density downtown and near Ashby? Both ways make sense, but you get more housing the other way. And along with it you bring in transfer development: creeks, community gardens.

Human beings constitute 100 times the biomass of anything in our size category in the history of the planet. When you factor in all our development and our things, we probably account for 1,000 to 10,000 times the impact of anything that’s ever been on our planet. We need to structure the city so it doesn’t demand so much.