Specific plans

After five years, a planning effort for a new growth area in south San Jose has halted because a coalition of developers has ceased funding the effort. Coyote Housing Group, which includes Shapell Homes, Citation Homes and other developers, announced in mid-March that it would suspend funding for work on the Coyote Valley specific plan. The group cited the “extremely complex planning process” and complications with existing industrial entitlements in North Coyote Valley. » read more | add to cart

The city of Dublin in Alameda County bears little resemblance to the English countryside of the late 1800s. The scene is not sylvan, to put it mildly. Instead of a landscape of mills, farms and contented cows, we see one of the Bay Area’s fastest growing cities, proliferating with enormous apartment blocks and office buildings. Although there are easily accessible, undeveloped hills rising just beyond the west and east sides of Dublin, it’s doubtable that Constable, the painter of lowing herds and hayricks, would have memorialized the town on canvas.

What Dublin and the English countryside of 100 years ago have in common, however, are carefully planned villages that attempt to combine city living, including factory work and shopping, with the healthfulness of open space and farms. » read more | add to cart

A specific plan for a slice of northern Monterey County that has long been seen as a potential growth area could be released this summer. However, the second version of a Rancho San Juan specific plan is unlikely to settle long-running disputes over how the area between the City of Salinas and the unincorporated community of Prunedale should develop.

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One of the largest housing developments ever proposed for the Central Valley received approval from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in July. After about a decade of planning, environmental reviews and public hearings, supervisors backed the 2,600-acre, 10,000-unit Sunridge Specific Plan — a detailed subset of the 6,000-acre Sunrise-Douglas Community Plan, which supervisors also approved in July.

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Determined to maintain its identity as a "nice valley town," the City of Reedley has adopted a specific plan that contains many of the precepts of traditional neighborhood design. The plan, adopted in January, covers Reedley’s future growth areas — about 1,200 acres outside the city limits but inside the sphere of influence.

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