Aw, gee, I hate going negative again, but I really think the Dublin City Council let a golden opportunity slip through their wide open fingers at the 1/6/2009 council meeting when they extended the Wallis Ranch development agreement for an additional 10 years in exchange for a $1M Benefit Payment. The development as planned is a terrible idea for the Wallis Ranch property and for all of Dublin.

Wallis Ranch may be the most egregious example so far of Dublin’s haphazard and illogical density concentrations away from the city core and transit centers. The project violates almost every principle of smart urban design. The medium and medium-high density housing planned for Wallis Ranch exemplifies the worst aspects of sprawl, being located far from jobs, transit, shopping, the civic center and public schools. That may be fine for low-density estate homes and ranchettes, but not for medium-high density multi-family housing. With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan, it is the very model of the modern major general plan mistake. In fact, every time the future Wallis Ranch residents want to do just about anything, they will have to get in their cars and drive. The concomitant traffic, pollution, energy consumption, expense, safety risk and wasted time will be multiplied by the density factor.

Read the rest of this article »