“Sixty one percent of all development in the Valley is taking place on high quality farmland, primarily along the Highway 99 corridor. This development is consuming an acre of land for every 6.4 new residents, the lowest density of any region in California except the remote mountains and deserts. At this rate, by 2050 the San Joaquin will lose another 570 thousand acres of farmland, which could drain between $100 and $190 billion from the region’s agricultural economy over the period.”
—A new UC Davis study, here. Stockton, one of the kings of Valley sprawl, is going back to the drawing board to revise its General Plan 2035.
“So tear up the model,” Steve Chase, Stockton’s new community development director, said in this column. ”As a group of people that are looking at revitalizing communities, you’ve got to tear up the model that we’ve lived under.”
Tear away.
