Palo Alto's downtown plan would focus on housing

We do not need more development in Palo Alto. Earth Day will be with us on April 22nd. The biggest driver of habitat loss, massive extinction, pollution of air, water and land and climate change is massive human overpopulation. In the past century the population of humans has gone from 2 billion to 8 billion people. This has driven all of the above crises.

If we as a society want to save other species, slow global warming and attempt to provide a better world for our own species - we have to stop the development mantra. It doesn't matter where you build more stuff - it is still more stuff with the associated negative impact on the environment. Buildings use resources that require expenditures of fossils fuels to make cement, provide timber, girders and wires and then ongoing resources to light and heat and keep the building functional. It is never a good idea to tear something down and build something new and it is an especially bad idea to build bigger and more.

We need to set limits and discuss how to get to fewer humans thus enabling a return to more land, air and water for the rest of the species on this planet. Fewer people allows for a better quality of life for those here. Less impact from our way of life, our farms, better schools with fewer students, more open space and better care for the smaller numbers of inhabitants of every area. We need to be mindful and stop worshipping at the feet of the development cartel that seems to control government in this area.

Think about Earth Day and how to stop human growth and overpopulation, not how to cram more buildings into downtown.

How about converting the President Hotel into housing? Can I get $5,000 of that grant for my input?

Oh wait....never mind.

@Nancy the real Nancy, What a good idea! However did you think of it!

I DO wonder what happened to the 80 middle-income longtime residents of the President Hotel we brilliantly displaced only a few years ago and did nothing to help in spite of all the hearings and protests.

Great idea. Check out Menlo Park and Redwood City - all new high rise housing next to El Camino and the train tracks. Good architecture. As to the President Hotel - what is happening there? they are trying to make that back into a hotel but taking a long time. to do it.

Funny how the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Valley Transportation Authority have money to give cities for reconfiguring neighborhoods and rail-crossings (not to mention freeway toll lanes and bike lanes), but balk at providing regular public transit that covers all of Santa Clara County, or a particular city. Why not use this $800,000 to restore the free shuttle program that was cut in 2020, and enhance city-wide transit immediately rather than spend years drafting a plan to enhance just downtown in some currently undefined way?

If you like this, you'll love Monday night's City Council meeting *(Agenda 8) on whatwas supposed to be the Business Tax but which was morphed into of "Revenue Generating Measures" -- what I call the "residential utility tax" and what city staff and their polling consultants call "Measure to Affirm Gas Transfer Tax" -- ie the continued practice of overcharging utilities customers aka residents,

Thanks to their polling, the only way to restore residential city services is to approve the Gas Transfer Tax since a Business Tax -- if it ever passes after all the stakeholder lobbying -- is slated for other purposes.

How wonderful that we're paying a consultant to craft the ballot language which at least one speaker noted was heavily weighted and deceptive after discussing the proposals with the only stakeholders that matter -- and they're not residents.

We may not need as much new housing as some have predicted!

“California’s population shrinks for second year in a row”

“About 280,000 more people left California for other states than moved here in 2021”

“California lost 117,552 people in 2021”

“Of the state’s 10 largest cities, half of them lost population: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland and Anaheim.”

Source: Web Link

I second Paly Grad's post above.

California is losing its population rise. I would imagine that Palo Alto is no longer the desirable place to live that it was even 5 years ago. Hybrid working means that people may only go into offices once or twice a week so a longer commute doesn't necessarily seem so bad.

Less people working in Palo Alto means that we should expect less restaurants due to less customers, etc.

It is time to put our present residents first when looking at plans for the next decade.