Crazifornia exodus: People fleeing dense cities, regulations
By Laer Pearce
In The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look, the Manhattan Institute has chronicled California’s fall from “the state with more jobs, more space, more sunlight, and more opportunity” to, well, the state with more sunlight.
In documenting the 3.4 million people who left the state in recent years — that’s just about enough to double the population of Oregon — the study identifies three reasons why California has been transformed from a “pull in” state to a “push out” state. Of course, one reason is the state’s pathologically unfriendly treatment of business. The second is the related collapse of its state and municipal finances. The third reason is less familiar to most, and shows just how good California has become at inflicting economic wounds upon itself.
It’s the state’s high density. While less than 6 percent of the state’s landmass is developed — about 50 percent is government-owned and about 45 percent is agricultural — to most Californians, it feels like a very crowded state.
In my home of Orange County and neighboring Los Angeles County, the density is hovering just below 7,000 people per square mile. That makes the LA/OC megalopolis the most densely populated metro area in the country. San Francisco/Oakland is second, and San Jose is third. New York City is fourth, with a meager 5,319 people per square mile. Chicago is 25th. Of the 50 densest metro areas in the country, 20 are in California.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, when places get too crowded, people (including business owners) move if they have the chance. In the late 19th century, America’s largest cities had densities of 50,000 or even 100,000 people per square mile. When streetcars and trains, then cars, opened the door to suburbia, urban densities plummeted. Philadelphia is a case in point; its density fell from 56,000 people per square mile to 12,000 during those years.
As California’s expensive coastal counties started getting uncomfortably crowded in the 1990s, many moved one or two counties to the east to get more room for less. Of course, those are the very areas that were the hardest hit by the housing and job market collapse. So now they are the California counties losing the most people to other states.
Higher density
What is progressive California doing about this? It should come as a surprise to no one that it’s doing exactly what it shouldn’t be doing: Crusading Sacramento bureaucrats are forcing higher density on everyone.
The tool of this latest round of madness is 2008’s California Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, or SB 375, authored by Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, now the Senate president pro-tem. SB 375 stepped up California’s regulatory game from just controlling every aspect of how houses are built to dictating where they can be built.
The law mandates regional sustainable growth plans, and definitely doesn’t include suburbia in the “sustainable” column. The Brown administration is using it like a hammer in its Quixotic campaign to single-handedly free the world of global warming. For example, Attorney General Kamala Harris recently sued San Diego under SB 375 because its long-range plan did too much for highways, the transportation system that supports suburbia, and not enough for mass transit.
More to the administration’s liking is the Bay Area’s “Initial Vision Scenario for 2035,” which proclaims that, by 2035, the Bay Area’s population will grow by 2 million people, yet there will be fewer cars there than there are today. That will only happen if yards, tree-lined streets and a car commute to work are traded in for lofts by the train station.
But, as the Manhattan Institute study illustrates, when faced with a choice between already too-dense cities and less dense (demographically and politically) places like Arizona, Texas, Oregon or Utah, more and more Californians are opting out of the craziness.
A number of years ago, New Republic senior editor Gregg Easterbook wrote, “Sprawl is caused by affluence and population growth, and which of these, exactly, do we propose to prohibit?” California’s Progressive leadership has apparently chosen both, firing one more shot into its suffering economy in the process.
Laer Pearce is the author of the new book, “Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State.” Portions of this column are excerpted from the book.
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I am watching First Street in San Jose become “stack and rack” territory to force folks to use transit outside their door.
If you build it, and force people to use it, they will acquiesce. That means surrender for the highly educated libs on this site.
GGs California.
YES People are leaving in droves!!!!!! It’s a Ghost town!!!!!!! The sky is falling!!!!!! Buy GOLD !!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH Noooooooooooooooooooooooo
These green wackos are doing their best to stop growth in Kali while at the same time supporting unlimited immigration of dirt poor people into the state. Victor Davis Hanson has documented the horrific violations of building codes at these makeshift trailer parks in the central valley. His complaints to the county has found deaf ears.
These green wackos can’t have it both ways. Oh, that’s right, yes they can. It’s Kalifornia.
Hondo………
I thought they were leaving in U-Hauls!
Now you’re just confusing me.
Hondo is right– the Green crew wants us to live in health and safety— sheeeeesh!
Lots of misfits, bruskie swillers and teabaggers calling for trailers…..CWD posters are posers with big mouths…no moves.
The whole country is going in this direction thanks to Agenda 21.
Lot’s o bruskie swillers for certain!
I am sooooooooooooooooooo over regulated!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ted needs a pet to soothe him from rigors of over regulation…..maybe a dusty Trona apricot toy poodle!
The only pet wimp Teddy could handle is a tea cup Chihuahua 🙂
I need a service animal, the over regulation is creating uncertainty so I can’t create jobs for the unwashed 47%!
Hmmmm
next vacation
Coarsegold or Trona?
The Mojave Narrows are nice this time of year!
I see the Heckle and Jeckle of CWD trolls are at it again.
Teddy and UU, you guys are to intellectual discourse what Trona is to a heavenly vacation spot, except Trona smells better. Why don’t you two children go play on the freeway? Alternatively, you could climb into your little tiny, overpriced, subsidized electric clown cars and drive out to Trona, stand out in the sun a few hours and get heat stroke. It could only improve your diminished capacity for rational thought 🙂
“In my home of Orange County and neighboring Los Angeles County, the density is hovering just below 7,000 people per square mile. That makes the LA/OC megalopolis the most densely populated metro area in the country. San Francisco/Oakland is second, and San Jose is third. New York City is fourth, with a meager 5,319 people per square mile. Chicago is 25th. Of the 50 densest metro areas in the country, 20 are in California.”
My, my, my. Altogether too many rats in the cage and not enough cheese to go around.
Teddy, Queegy, UU. Have you stocked up on your ration of free Obama cheese? I hear it washes down passably well with a cheap Chilean chardonnay.
Voted with my feet. Took my company and 10 jobs with me to both Washington State (No income tax), and across the border to Canada.
Have a nice life, Kali!
Dyz. YOU CRACKED
Do you want the white wagon to come by with your meds?
Africanized Teddy and UU…….Dyspeptic put it perfectly.
Do you ever tire of trolling?
Here – do something worthwhile with this: You mentioned “Health and Safety”…..
But look at the record. For every legislative action that actually resulted in a cleaner environment (say, catalytic converters) there are hundreds that have proven to be either inert or downright damaging. Take Prop 65. Whatever benefits it was intended to provide are outweighed by the ambulance chasers and its laughable overreach.
Africanized Teddy and UU…….Dyspeptic put it perfectly.
Do you ever tire of trolling?
Teddy and his two gimmick accounts are pictured under TROLL at Dictionary.com 😉
I’m not giving investment advice. But in 2001, gold was $270 an ounce. As I write, it’s $1,773.
That’s a 557 percent increase in 12 years.
If CalSTRS and CalPERS had bought gold in 2001, the state wouldn’t have a pension crisis, but a massive pension surplus.
— John Seiler
Dysclepic– I don’t own an electric car– oh— that’s a joke. I get it. I am liberal and so I must drive one. Hey, great joke….clever! Cause we both know that there is no man/carbon piece to global warming, huh?
Enjoy the debates patriot!
Sorry Rex– you’re a troll too little poodle!
0 for 13 ™ !
Hey Poodle– How did the county do in that lawsuit against the cops? Oh, yeah, they lost even though you predicted wins for a year!
Afro-Swarm, you float like a butterfly and sting like a….. butterfly.
So you don’t like electric cars? How terribly retrograde and backward of you.
If you’re really concerned about global warming, climate change, climate instability or whatever you leftwing hysterics are calling it today, I have some advice – Stop exhaling all that carbon dioxide, you’re killing the planet!
I’m not giving investment advice. But in 2001, gold was $270 an ounce. As I write, it’s $1,773.
traded in the $300 range for 20 years…..I would not buy it at the current spot price, it will go down before it goes up again.
Gold pay dividends.
DOESNT pay dividends.
Dys and Poodle must be constipated or something….
Illogical beat ups on two sane and balanced lefties are truly unjust. Could you just imagine how CWD would be with truck stop and trailer dwellers spewing unfiltered nor challenged hate into cyberspace…Big Sis would shut down the site!
Teddy, Skipping Dog, Douglas, Uhaul are bringing content and levity to the site balancing out some really disturbing content.
I left out Queeg, for he works for me part time and is pretty radical and unpredictable…so…who knows what he brings to the table…..by the way his left eye twitches when he is on the net….odd!
CWD does not have to thank us. We bring balance just to help out the low information voters ™ around here!
The Ted
I left out Queeg, for he works for me part time and is pretty radical and unpredictable…
==
Teddy, pipe down.
Queeg is a legend Mr U. !!!!!
Teddy
I’ll pass on the kudos to Queeg…dang…. have cover the office this week. Queeg going to some fund raiser up in Deadwood in the Dakotas…bunch of his comrades want to put Obama on Mt. Rushmore
well said comrade!
Teddy, bring Queeg back 😉
Good morning comrades! Man– these regulations are killing me…….
Poodle– any thoughts on your predictions about the cops winning their lawsuit to stop the roll back of pensions?
bwahahaha 0 for 13 ™ !
99-0 😉
Teddy. He says he is educated….who screwed up?
He lives by a river Mr. U— de-nial. These guys are all buffoonish clowns…….light work.
Teddy, a GED is not “edcuated”, and your GED is showing again 😉
Ask for foregiveness
Teddy….they kicked him out of Parker,Az. He was on one of the party barges on the Colorado River yipping and yapping….they did a 14th century style river dunking on him!
Hi Teddy!
LOL Parker! He may live there!!!!!!!!!!!
Next time he comes back to his flop house rented room in Parker they will be waiting to Singapore cane him!
He got to be warned!
Hi teddy! 🙂
yes– he must be caned! At once!
It’s probably not a coincidence that Obama has criticized spending too much on roads in suburbia and not enough on inner city mass transit.