Prominent urban designer and planner Peter Calthorpe recently sat for an interview around his upcoming book on Ending Global Sprawl and to discuss newly passed California legislation he helped craft. Calthorpe contributed to the formation of California AB 2011, the “Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022,” legislation intended to significantly increase housing production by allowing construction on commercially zoned property. It will go into effect on July 1 of this year.
Calthorpe believes the bill represents a systemic solution to the housing crisis. His plan to build housing on underutilized commercial land began with an experiment that looked at a 43-mile stretch of road in Silicon Valley. His analysis of that land identified 250,000 potential units of infill housing on that one strip and the connecting 700 miles of arterials could produce up to 1.3 million multifamily units at reasonable densities. This would effectively transform the worst place in a community, the arterial strip, into a livable, mixed-use boulevard that is easy to justify transit investments. Calthorpe also discusses what local codes typically say about these types of schemes.