[ltsmotorsport]

Originally Posted by rampant_jwalker

Few cities in the U.S. are blessed like Sacramento is with such a prime location... if you head West it's not too far to the coast and San Francisco bay. Wine country surrounds Sacramento on 3 sides. If you go East the Sierra Nevada mountains are right there, and all the great outdoor activities they offer. A lot of people who live here like to brag about this, and it's true! It's hard to think of another city with so many options nearby.

That said, I think Sacramento has a long way to go before it reaches its potential as a city, a great potential due in part to its favorable location. Although some will bring up Sacramento's urban history, it still feels like a suburb to me. The zoning code has a lot of restrictions written into it that promote low density in the urban core, effectively pushing new residents out to the ever expanding suburbs.

I dream of Sacramento becoming a dense, urban city at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. The stubborn city planners need to take another look at the zoning code , as well as the building code, and ask themselves "what can be changed to allow the city to blossom?". Things like allowing buildings to connect at their sides, and decreasing the required setbacks front and back would encourage denser development so that some neighborhoods could acquire the urban quality that parts of Sacramento had before post-war redevelopment.

That zoning code is currently being updated to better reflect the general plan update. Change is coming.