Northern California Tour: Checking on Suisun City

For those readers who don’t live in Northern California and don’t follow the news from my part of the world, it has been a historically dry year for the northern half of the Golden State.  Depending on the metric used, it may be drier than any previous year in this century or the last.  (Next week, I’ll attend a meeting on the relationship between land use and drought.  I hope that much of the information is worth sharing.)

Once one adjusts to brown lawns, shorter showers, and higher produce prices, living in a drought can be rather pleasant.  Day after day of blue skies, no roof leaks, and no umbrella shopping.  It’s not the kind of weather that leads to cabin fever.

Nonetheless, I found myself antsy about a week back.  I’d been without a reason to go out and visit interesting communities since the fall.  The absence of on-the-ground ah-hah moments was wearing on me.  So I scheduled a family lunch at the far end of a daytrip, made an itinerary of good and bad urban spots between home and lunch, packed up my camera and notepad, and hit the road early in the morning.

I’ll share my observations and insights over the next few weeks.

The first stop on my Northern California tour was Suisun City, immediately south of and tucked against Fairfield.  I hadn’t visited the community in more than a year, but regretted every time I drove I-80 without stopping in.  This was a day when I would absolutely make time for one of my favorite evolving urbanist communities.

I’ve written about Suisun City several times previously, noting first my surprise at how much urban redevelopment had taken place in the small town and then my comfort in the community.

Both emotions resurfaced immediately upon my drive into town.  I can’t help smiling at the tidiness and sense of rightness that Suisun City exudes.  It’s not a perfect little town, but it’s on a good path, with newer and older residential neighborhoods within a short walk of an increasingly vibrant downtown and a stock of interesting, if under-utilized, downtown buildings that can be gradually put to better use as the community continues to mature.

 But there was something else that struck me this time.  It lurked beneath the other emotions, but was always there.  It was a shiver of fear that the community had begun to drift.

The signs on vacant downtown lots that advised of coming development had sun-faded since I last visited, with nary a piece of construction equipment in sight.

The vacant land on the east side of the channel, for which I though retail was essential for the walkability of the eastside housing, continued to lay fallow.

And when I took a short drive through the eastside, I came across a neighborhood where ill-maintained cars and inept home improvements were beginning to accumulate along a street that had been sparkling and new only a few years ago.

 What I saw wasn’t the beginning of an inevitable and fatal slide.  But it was a warning sign about the need to nurture urbanism.

The analogy that popped into my mind was that drivable suburbanism and walkable urbanism are both gardens.  Drivable suburbanism, with its gasoline pricing that doesn’t reflect all the real costs and its subsidized streets and parking, gets constant attention, watering, and fertilization.  It produces a crop that I find tasteless and bland, but the production is consistent and dependable.

On the other hand, walkable urbanism gets infrequent attention.  When the all the pieces fall into place, including good redevelopment laws and a city staff with a great vision, progress can be made quickly.  That’s what happened in Suisun City a decade ago.  But when that attention is withdrawn, nature begins to gather at the perimeter of the garden, ready to reclaim its former domain.

Right now, Suisun City seems a lovely fledgling garden, with hearty young fruit trees and raised beds filled with healthy vegetables, providing goodness to the community.  But the gardeners have been withdrawn and the garden is at risk.

The problem isn’t that urbanism needs excessive care.  Every garden needs a little tending and I suspect that walkable urbanism needs less than drivable suburbanism.  The problem is that we provide constant care to drivable suburbanism and only sporadic care to walkable urbanism, a situation that is completely backwards.

I’ll continue to check in on Suisun City, hoping to see a little more garden-tending in future years.

For those who’ve remember my previous posts on urban dining, it should be obvious that I had breakfast at Bab’s Delta Diner, in the heart of the redeveloping west side.  The Delta Diner is a magnet to me.  As always, it provided a warm and welcoming atmosphere on the morning of my visit.  The staff was attentive and fun, perhaps responding to the felicitous environment of Suisun City.

Regarding the food, I was somewhat less impressed by my omelet this time than last.  The seasoning wasn’t as focused, leaving the flavors muddy, plus an extra slice of cheese on top dampened the character of the seafood.  But the option of fried rice in place of breakfast potatoes will save any breakfast.  Bab’s doesn’t serve exceptional fried rice, but it doesn’t need to be exceptional.  Even a competent fried rice is a fine complement to breakfast.

I expect that there are other good dining options in Suisun City and I should try them someday.  But for now, the Delta Diner is my place.  And I recommend that anyone wandering off I-80 into Suisun City make time for breakfast or lunch there, preferably with the fried rice.

For now, it’s onward with my Northern California tour.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Would Regional Olympics be a Better Urbanist Solution?

The Olympics closing ceremonies are behind us and the City of Sochi is beginning to ponder what to do with $51 billion of streets and stadiums that were built for a now concluded two-week party.

It won’t be an easy task for Sochi.  A report by a South Carolina television station provides a short summary of the fate of past Olympic host cities.  There are a few bright spots, but the overall picture is bleak.

I’ve often suggested that a rotation of Olympic sites might be a reasonable way to control costs and to minimize the civic disruptions of massive Olympic construction.  (The British Open uses a similar “rota” of golf courses and has been an admirable success for more than 150 years.)  Perhaps the four most recent Summer and Winter Olympic host cities, with one site added for geographical balance, could be the start of a conversation.  The quadrennial Olympics would return to each host city every twenty years.

But even that concept seems troublesome.  Perhaps sufficient uses can be found for the athletic venues in the twenty years between Olympics, but what about the other Olympic necessities?  How does one build an Olympic Village that can sit idle for two decades without becoming a wound in the civic fabric?  If the Olympic Villages are converted to housing, how does the host city evict the tenants for two weeks during the Olympics?  Or must new Olympic Villages be built every twenty years, stretching the urban area?

Writing in Next City, Will Doig suggests a possible solution, allowing Olympics to become more regional. 

Olympics have always been somewhat regional, particularly the Winter Games.  The alpine venues for the Sochi Olympics were about an hour from Sochi.  The same hour of travel applied to Vancouver.

But the Summer Games can also have a geographical spread.  I attended the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.  The first event I watched was a soccer game at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto.  The next was rowing on Lake Casitas in Ventura County.  I was well into my Olympic experience before I even reached the Los Angeles Basin.  And once there, I watch water polo in Malibu and basketball in Inglewood.  The only Olympic sport I watched in the City of Los Angeles was baseball at Dodger Stadium.

But Doig takes the concept to a higher level.  Among other ideas, he suggests a possible Ohio Olympics that would include events in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland.

I find great merit in the concept.  The disruption to each of the partial host cities would be reduced.  It would be a shame to lose the concept of the single “Olympic Plaza” in the host city where all can mingle, but sacrificing that element to the long-term health of our cities seems a reasonable tradeoff.

So, what might a Northern California regional Olympics look like?  And could the North Bay participate?

To begin, I would expect to have major pods of activities in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento.

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies could be at the new stadium in Santa Clara.

The last time San Francisco looked at an Olympic bid, the proposed rowing venue was Lake Natomas on the far side of Sacramento.  Perhaps gymnastics could be put in whatever basketball arena eventually results in Sacramento.

San Jose was a long-time site of a professional tennis tournament.  It could presumably host the tennis competition.

And so on throughout Northern California.

And what about the North Bay?  Could we fill a gap?  If memory serves, the Olympics include road racing and velodrome racing for bicycles.  I suspect that a fine road course could be found through the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Counties.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if Napa could also make good use of a velodrome, perhaps complementing the wine and food attractions of the region.

And I would certain hope that a marathon course could begin in southern Marin County before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

A regional Olympics isn’t going to happen for awhile yet, probably not in my lifetime.  The current model still has too many potential host cities happy to willfully harm themselves for two weeks of glory.  But the regional model makes a lot of sense as fiscal and urbanist realities become more evident.  And it’s always good to have a new model to replace a failed model.

Meanwhile, it’s onward to Rio 2016.  Today is the official start of the “Will Rio be ready?”and “Can Brazil financially survive the Olympics?” worry fest.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)