California has a current population of 35 million people and has added over 6 million new persons each decade. This rate of growth is equivalent to adding the entire population of Illinois every two decades. There will be 44 million people in California by 2020.

Grass Valley is located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento, 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, and 70 miles west of Lake Tahoe. Home to approximately 12,000 people, Grass Valley is valued for its small-town, rural character, pervasive history and strong sense of community. Despite this small-town feel, the City serves as a regional economic and cultural hub for Western Nevada County and much of the surrounding area, providing a large employment base for many business uses, as well as expanding medical community and a growing educational center in Sierra College.

The Sierra Nevada is the third fastest growing region of California. Nevada County is the fifth fastest growing county in the state and is mostly composed of immigrants (94% of adults were not born here). In the last decade, the City of Grass Valley grew 17% while the population in the sphere of influence, but outside the city limits, grew even faster. Growth is inevitable… but sprawl is not.

Options for Growth

Two ways in which the city can grow are “Conventional” growth and “Traditional Neighborhood” growth, but there are distinct and critical differences between the two. Traditional Neighborhood growth is compact, creates a pedestrian-friendly environment and has mixed-uses.

Conventional Growth, also referred to as “sprawl”, is low-density, automobile-oriented development remote from daily services and a creator of pollution and traffic congestion. Sprawl is not a sustainable planning practice, and creates significant environmental harm to cities and towns.

The basic problem is that sprawl consumes tremendous quantities of land with low-density development. The land is consumed at a disproportionate rate as compared to the population increase. For example, between 1970 and 1990, the population of Los Angeles increased by 45 percent, but the amount of land developed increased by 300 percent. Unfortunately, this is also true in more local places like Roseville which has become a case study for placeless, suburban growth in Northern California.

Additional problems created by sprawl are excessive parcel splits and monolithically-zoned subdivisions. In low-density subdivisions, people live far from basic services, such as public water and sewer. There are no integrated, pedestrian-accessible stores, schools or other services within these subdivisions. Every trip requires an automobile and the ratio of asphalt to house is excessively high. Children must be bused to school. Average daily trips (ADT) and the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are exceptionally high and create congestion, traffic failure, pollution and the consequent need for more roads, wider roads and more parking lots.