Highlighted Tenet: Mixed Land Uses - In the common language of planners, "land use" is a reflection of the community's vision for development. Graphically, it is manifested by color patches on land maps exhibited in city hall documents to guide people relative to what is allowed to go where. One color may be for single family residential uses, another for apartments and condos, while yet another may be for commercial uses. Other colors would be for various industrial uses, hospitals, schools, etc. Partially in reaction to the industrial revolution of the 19th century, the original reason for land use segregation was to keep the living environment a safe distance from potentially detrimental commerce and polluting industries. However, application of these land use principles over many decades has created the unintended consequence of over-reliance on private automobiles to provide the most basic connections. It is now the norm to drive a circuitous route to buy a quart of milk at a store only a quarter mile away, because there is no direct way to walk there. Schools, work places, and many other urban activity centers have similarly suffered the same disconnection: we have created ubiquitous suburban sprawl. With regulations and technologies markedly reducing the risks of traditionally "dirty" industry byproducts while society is moving more toward service industries, one should expect less land use segregation in today's planning. The reasons for placing the colors or uses on a map are now not always clear, and in many cases can seem rather vague and arbitrary. Designated uses seldom account for compatible adjacency, for interconnectivity, or for the context of the larger surrounding. Each use is simply and neatly separated from the others. Translated into real world applications, this piecemeal approach to development typically manifests itself with homogeneous buildings surrounded by a vast sea of parking lots, or with property boundary walls facing each other across wide streets. Today, the term "land use" evokes images of homes along shady streets, office buildings bustling with activities, or parks echoing with children's laughter. Interestingly enough, most people don't envision these images mixed together in any fashion. This past decade has seen a reemergence of the concept of mixed land use. We now see efforts to return to the traditional way of planning and building communities that has been around for millennia, where residential areas are allowed to intermix in much closer proximity to places of work, learning, and commerce. Present day cities such as Paris, London and New York still display this type of land use, where vertical mixed-use structures abound with people living above commercial activity that is thriving at street level. This model of the built environment is a lot less friendly to the private automobile, but much friendlier to the pedestrian and public modes of transportation. In addition to making it convenient for residents to walk to centers of need, this model also makes less demand on natural resources. Perhaps the time is overdue for the people of Ventura County to consider whether we can afford to continue using sprawl as the model for building our environment, or whether we should seriously start looking at encouraging more compact neighborhoods and mixed land uses in the very near future.

This quarter's livable communities focus is on the City of Fillmore as it develops two areas of its small community: Central Park and North Fillmore. Central Park is a one acre space in the center of downtown Fillmore being framed by landmark buildings, and it is rapidly becoming a county model for proper mixed use planning and development. In 1995, the City doubled the size of the park and made it more accessible to pedestrians. Framing Central Park to the North of City Hall is the Santa Barbara Bank building. It is this county historical landmark that heavily influenced the neoclassical design of the new City Hall building that fronts Central Park. The building is often thought to be a restored historical building even though it was just constructed in 1996. It became an instant landmark from the day it has opened, and it has become the benchmark for the quality of architecture expected downtown. All buildings that frame Central Park are required to be consistent in design with City Hall. The Rudkin Building on the corner to the south of City Hall is an original mixed use retail/residential building that has fronted Central Park for many decades. The building has had 6 units on the second floor that have been one of the best kept secrets in Fillmore over the years. The building is a case study of how proper mixed-use buildings have been, and can continue to be, compatible to the surrounding neighborhood. The newest addition to the park frontage is the Parkview Apartments building that was completed in April 2007. It is a mixed use 3-story building with 50 residential units for low-income seniors and 3 retail tenant spaces along Central Ave. and Main Street. This building is across Central Street from the Santa Barbara Bank and helps form Central Park on the north side. The building style was heavily influenced by the architecture of City Hall and the Santa Barbara Bank. The project exceeds 50 units per acre and was given a density bonus based upon affordability and senior housing. Within one month of opening, all but 3 units have been filled. The project is designed with a central courtyard and a garden in order to provide some privacy away from the street scene. Every unit has a balcony that overlooks either the street or the Fillmore and Western Railway.

In a continuing effort to reach out and engage the larger community, members of the Livable Communities Working group of the Ventura County Civic Alliance have spoken to the city councils of Port Hueneme, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Simi Valley. This engagement is part of the VCCA strategy to educate the community about its role in helping promote the tenets of "livable" and "sustainable" communities. Each presentation featured selected local projects within the community that were deemed to embody the tenets of livable communities. Because Fillmore has seen a boom in new housing developments this last 5-6 years, it has been an important community to engage. Of special note is the Specific Plan prepared for the North Fillmore neighborhood. Despite some late controversies, the Specific Plan was finally adopted by the City Council in September 2006. It is a blueprint for the creation of a 100-acre compact and pedestrian-friendly neighborhood with diverse housing types to accommodate various economic and social needs. The Plan also incorporates several small parks and a large sports field that are strategically dispersed throughout the neighborhood to give most residents equal and walkable access to intimate, yet fully functional, sites for recreation. All neighborhood street blocks are short (less than 650 feet on the long dimension), and all streets are narrow (34' max curb- to-curb) and interconnected. Private garages are accessible from rear alleys, freeing the block front for plenty of on-street parking. This feature is an integral part of the strategy to slow down inter-neighborhood traffic. A small neighborhood commercial center is planned to provide retail and commercial services within easy walking distance to all in the area. In many ways the new Specific Plan succeeds in emulating the existing East Fillmore neighborhood. Many of the attributes incorporated in the plan already in existence in East Fillmore include: alley loaded garages, small blocks, generous sidewalks and parkways. In addition, the new neighborhood adds some key ingredients of livable communities that are missing in the existing neighborhood such as alleys with landscaping and livable spaces fronting on them, and granny flats on top of garages to help provide the "eyes on the street" effect that promotes a feeling of increased security. While the planning process was fraught with challenges, this plan is a rare example of a proposed new development that includes all of the tenets of livable communities. Its eventual full implementation will be a test of the community's willingness to move beyond the conventional way of building sprawl-patterned and unsustainable neighborhoods.

Downtown Los Angeles battles over industrial property that has been providing jobs for decades as developers purchase it for mixed use applications.

The Ventura County Star reports that Oxnard is on the road to considering several more high rise towers to deal with population growth in the post-SOAR era.