OK, so everybody's bought into the idea that Sacramento's Blueprint process is a national model of regional smart growth planning. But what happens next in this cooler-than-we-ever-imagined metropolis? Depending on who you talk to the answer is:

• Continue to play the "carbon card" for all its worth – while resisting the idea of city carbon budgets.
• Try to create an "enlivened democracy" to match the regional vision.
• Use public dialogue to have a more "real" discussion about the risks involved in daily life.
• Identify the emerging "walkable urban neighborhoods" and get ahead of the curve in investing in them.
• And, hey – how about building more stuff around those light-rail stations?

These were but a few of the many ideas kicked around Friday at a forum on "the sustainable region" sponsored by the Sacramento section of the American Planning Association's California Chapter. (I was also one of the panelists at this event.)

Blueprint mastermind Mike McKeever, executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, said flat-out: "We're certainly going to continue to play offense." And he said the organization would continue to use reduced carbon emissions as a policy lever to promote implementation of the Blueprint.

Asked by architect Bruce Race to envision how life in 2050 would be different than now – when, under AB 32, Californians will have to live with a carbon footprint only 5% the size of today's – McKeever responded by talking about democracy rather than the built environment. He said the Blueprint succeeded because "ordinary folks" participated in shaping the smart growth vision underlying the Blueprint and he predicted that a lively democracy will be required to implement it.

West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon said that local governments don't do a good job of truly discussing the relative risk of different development patterns and, as a result, often oppose smart growth because of people's fears.

"We need to be able to assess whether somebody's more likely to get in an accident driving their daughter to school than the daughter is likely to be abducted walking three blocks to the school," he said. (Cabaldon is currently running for the Assembly.)

In a keynote lunch speech promoting his new book, The Option of Urbanism, developer and real estate analyst Christopher Leinberger said Sacramento needs to be more aggressive in promoting "walkable urban neighborhoods," especially around light-rail stops.

Leinberger recently came out with a Brookings paper that tries to identify the "walkable urban neighborhoods" in the 30 largest metro areas in the nation. Practically everybody – including bloggers on this web site – has criticized Leinberger's methodology. But he made some good points in his talk. He said the region should be especially aggressive in predicting and planning for where the new "walkable urban neighborhoods" will emerge over the next 10 to 20 years.

"You've got three right now," he said.. "You'll have 10 in the future. Where are the others going to be?" He didn't say what the three are, but his paper seems to indicate that they are Downtown-Midtown, Roseville, and Arden – which, if true, really does call his methodology into question!-

However, his point – a good one – is that based on national real estate research it is possible to identify where the next "WUs," as he calls them, will emerge. Cities can then plan their future, invest in necessarily infrastructure, and set up management structures such as business improvement districts. And while they are at it, the cities can pick up land in these areas on the cheap at the front end, in order to create a land supply for affordable housing later on.

On Friday night, after the event, I tested out the sustainable metropolis by going to the River Cats baseball game at Raley Field in West Sacramento. My companion and I walked the four miles or so from East Sacramento to the ballpark – it was a lovely evening – but decided to transit back. The shuttle bus from Raley dumped us off at the 8th and Capitol station on Capitol Mall a few minutes after 10 – unfortunately just a minute or two after the 10:04 had left. (If only that second-to-last Tucson batter had taken the third strike instead of getting a hit!) With 30-minute headways, we had time to kill, so we walked over to the Archives Plaza station in front of the Secretary of State's office. Still nothing much going on – hardly anything open, nobody around. The 10:34 showed up on time, and we were back at the 39th Street station, near UC Davis Medical Center, in less than 10 minutes. But it looks like Leinberger was right on one thing: Build more stuff around the light-rail stations that are already built.


— Bill Fulton