Calthorpe questions Bay Area opposition to big projects

While Peter Calthorpe's message in his forthcoming book, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, may seem tailor-made for the environmentally conscious San Francisco Bay Area, "the real-world developments that Mr. Calthorpe has championed here have hardly met with a warm embrace," Jonathan Weber, editor in chief of The Bay Citizen, observes in an article published July 4 in the national edition of The New York Times. 

"That’s because his version of green development favors megaprojects that create the density needed for efficient mass transit," Weber writes here. "But these huge developments are anathema to many environmentalists and community activists — and the divisions reflect a growing split among people usually thought to be on the same side"

An example cited by Weber is disagreement over the Saltworks project in Redwood City, a Calthorpe-planned development that calls for building some 12,000 housing units on San Francisco Bay salt ponds owned by Cargill. Calthorpe says the Saltworks is the kind of high-density project that's needed — close to transit, jobs, and major cities.  The executive director of Save the Bay argues otherwise.