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Facts & Figures
Marin's minuscule annual population growth of .57%over three decades is not the cause of its grid locking congestion. Poor land use leadership and decision making is the cause.
Marin has become a pricey, exclusive enclave that has no train/transit system. It has no European style pedestrian oriented villages along its existing train tracks that could have provided affordable workplace housing and transit ridership. Developers and builders have wanted to provide such needs but have been stymied by better organized NIMBY oriented political groups who often describe themselves as environmentalist.
The immutable law of supply and demand even applies to Marin County. Marin, however, has had the wherewithal -- with land, skill and finances -- to make the law or supply and demand work for the benefit of people and the environment. Unfortunately, the leadership and foresight has been lacking to provide an adequate supply of family's most essential building block -- an affordable home.
Almost every developer prefers to build homes that are affordable to a large segment of the buying populace. Building homes affordable to many lessens the developer's risk in one of the nation's riskiest businesses -- development. However, in Marin developers are constantly forced by well organized Marin groups portraying concerns for the environment to cut their densities on very expensive land. They are often told to reconfigure their projects from pedestrian friendly mixed used developments to auto dependent suburban sprawl projects. Consequently, Marin's workers leave the area in search of affordable housing and gridlock permeates a much less diverse Marin.
The following 2001 Marin Community Development Agency supplied map shows the less than 5% of Marin land "potentially open to restricted development." This minimal amount of potentially developable land highlights the importance of using it smartly to address pressing workforce housing and transit needs.
Too many citizens see gridlocked Marin and believe the cause is too much development. The truth is that there has not been enough 'smart, logical development.' Smart, logical development would have provided many more units on the same amount of land while reducing housing costs as well as traffic. Marin's narrow minded, politically adept groups, who have forced expensive suburban sprawl on developers, have forced Marin to explode its auto and commute numbers. Unfortunately, these groups then falsely portray the perception that development has cause our increasing gridlock. Citizens need to be better educated and think more deeply and logically on the development/traffic/land use issue.
Population, vehicle growth numbers
How land is used determines how people, critters and the environment is effected. Smart, logical land use can benefit all God's creatures. In time. myopic, selfish land use harms all those creatures.
Probably no populated county in the nation can claim 84+% of its county is set into green space. Now some among those same self-described environmental pressure groups, who oppose trains to reduce pollutants and gridlock and have no concern for seriously addressing workplace housing needs, want to further reduce the minimal remaining developable lands.
Marin Land Use Stats and Charts
Over time most people learn via life's experiences that it is best for the common good that they and others each share in delivering on a fair share of their work and responsibilities. What is the fair share of housing Marin should deliver to address regional housing and transit needs?
ABAG's Housing Projections 2000
Marin Consortium for Housing - Information