California Series in Urban Development – serie

From the Introduction: Consider these two places: Walking into Green Acres, you immediately sense that you have entered an oasis-traffic noise left behind, negative urban distractions out of sight, children playing and running on the grass, adults puttering on plant-filled balconies. Signs of life and care for the environment abound. Innumerable social and physical clues communicate to visitors and residents alike a sense of home and neighborhood. This is a place that people are proud of, a place that children will remember in later years with nostalgia and affection, a place that just feels "good." Contrast this with Southside Village. Something does not feel quite right. It is hard to find your way about, to discern which are the fronts and which are the backs of the houses, to determine what is "inside" and what is "outside." Strangers cut across what might be a communal backyard. There are no signs of personalization around doors or on balconies. Few children are around; those who are outside ride their bikes in circles in the parking lot There are few signs of caring; litter, graffiti, and broken light fixtures indicate the opposite.There is no sense of place; it is somewhere to move away from, not somewhere to remember with pride. These are not real locations, but we have all seen places like them. The purpose of this book is to assist in the creation of more places like Green Acres and to aid in the rehabilitation of the many Southside Villages that scar our cities. This book is a collection of guidelines for the site design of low-rise, high-density family housing. It is intended as a reference tool, primarily for housing designers and planners, but also for developers, housing authorities, citizens' groups, and tenants' organizations-anyone involved in planning or rehabilitating housing. It provides guidelines for the layout of buildings, open spaces, community facilities, play areas, walkways, and the myriad components that make up a housing site.

The Suburban Squeeze: Land Conversion and Regulation in the San Francisco Bay Area is a landmark study of how local land use policies and environmental regulations reshaped one of the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions. David E. Dowall traces the historical arc of Bay Area suburbanization after World War II and demonstrates how restrictive zoning, slow-growth ordinances, and fiscal constraints—especially after Proposition 13—contributed to rising housing costs and deepening jobs-housing imbalances. Through detailed case studies of six Bay Area cities and a comprehensive survey of local planning departments, the book reveals how well-intentioned growth controls have produced cumulative regional effects: higher land prices, constrained residential supply, and escalating pressures on industry and infrastructure.Balancing rigorous quantitative analysis with lucid narrative, Dowall situates the Bay Area as both a cautionary tale and a national bellwether. He documents the direct costs of land use controls on new housing, the indirect spillovers in markets, and the broader social consequences of the suburban squeeze. By pairing cities with contrasting land use regimes, the book effectively constructs a “natural experiment” in urban planning, offering rare empirical evidence of how regulations shape metropolitan economies. For planners, policymakers, and scholars of housing and urban development, The Suburban Squeeze remains a vital resource—one that underscores the high costs of inaction while calling for more integrated regional approaches to reconcile environmental quality with the urgent need for affordable homes.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.