Newspointer January 9—15, 1991

The 10 commandments of land use

Dwayne Hunn

Community Contributor

I know I’m very fortunate to live in Marin.

It is like living in God’s country where, probably like the Garden of Eden 88 percent of the land is set aside in open spaces. If God were running the county, He would do right by this Garden of Eden as well as by his other wondrous creations. But since He has left us to run the county, and as humans and voters we still suffer in our communications from the Tower of Babeling tongues, the land use answers don’t always seem clear. Thus, I figure God must be considering a Moses-type behind some parched, burning Marin bush and giving him a Tablet of Commandments, with a few well-chiseled side comments, to help direct our land use. The 10 Commandments would tell us to develop land uses that would:

1. Get people out of cars and into more environmentally sensitive transit—like electric rail or magnetic levitation or whatever resource conserving propellant that does not emit ozone depleting carbon dioxide and sulfur oxide.

2. Provide the most affordable housing possible—so that good servants like clerks, teachers, police officers and single parents can live in their Marin workplace and not commute in stop-and-go gridlock and further damage the environment.

3. Use less water in and outside of the homes and offices built than the other land use patterns considered.

4. Use less concrete, steel, plastic (as used in infrastructure development for sprawling suburban streets, sewers, electrical and plumbing lines) on a per-unit-built basis than other considered land use alternatives.

5. Bring Marin closer to bearing its regional share of affordable housing—not shunt that responsibility off onto other surrounding counties who are beginning to consider you a greedy neighbor.

6. provide open space, property equity to the owners and tax revenues to cities which developments are undertaken.

7. Stop suburban sprawl—which forces the unneeded development and spoiling of wine and agriculture lands in surrounding counties while disgorging air pollutants into the atmosphere.

8. Use and develop the God-given gift of rail-line bequeathed to you as an alternative to the polluting combustion driven engine and the single occupant vehicles it spawns.

9. Use the first-right-of refusal concept in developments so that people who work on the developed site would have first option to rent or purchase homes on that site—thereby further reducing the need to commute to work.

10. Provide the best mix of uses of all the considered land use alternatives—so that child care, movies, and shopping, which most Marinites seem to spend most of their time doing, can be done by merely walking on the developed side that is surrounded by designed-in open space.

I figure the Big Watch Maker in the Sky has answered our Marin desire to have it all now. His heavenly land

use planning principles do all that without once mentioning Pedestrian Pockets.

Dwayne Hunn works for Novato Ecumenical Housing, went to church a lot as a kid and means no religious offense by this essay.