[wburg]

Meh, there is plenty of room for highrises downtown and plenty of spots zoned for it, economic pressure (or rather, lack of it) is the real problem--take your pick of skyscrapers vs. landscrapers. The suburbs would, to some extent, "urbanize" a bit more, because developable land would be more limited and thus there would be more incentive to build things taller and with smaller parking lots. Zoning places for high-rises isn't what gets them built--much of downtown has been zoned for high-rises for years, it didn't happen because it was so much easier and cheaper to build low-rises and office parks in the suburbs instead. It wasn't the Old City Association that siphoned away the market for condos downtown during the boom, it was sprawlburbs in Natomas and Lincoln and Elk Grove that sucked away the potential downtown population. So instead of 50,000 people in condos in the Railyards, Docks, R Street Corridor and River District, we have 50,000 people in North Natomas waiting for the next heavy flood year to wash them downstream--or folks farther up the hill living in the only occupied house in a half-built subdivision in Lincoln, above the floodplain but deep underwater on their mortgage.

If someone wants to garden in Midtown, there are plenty of community gardens in the central city that you don't have to walk to, and more on the way, so there's no shortage of places to put your hands in the dirt. Lots of people in the central city have room in front or in back of their houses for small gardens, even those in apartments, and some folks put rogue gardens on vacant lots in their neighborhoods, or the mow strip between the sidewalk and street. It's silly to drive from downtown to Natomas just to participate in a community garden. Part of being "green" is keeping sight of human needs--which includes things like recreational amenities you can walk or bike to, instead of the kind you need a car to reach. Those amenities don't need to be anything fancy--and walking or biking there is half the fun!

Natomas still has a building moratorium. Mayor Johnson and Councilmember Ashby keep begging the feds to lift the moratorium for economic reasons, but the feds are more concerned with the flood risk than economics.