Air District’s Effort to Support Healthy Development Could Have Unintended Consequences
In January of this year the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) released a draft publication called “Planning Healthy Places: A Guidebook for Addressing Local Sources of Air Pollutants in Community Planning.” This guidebook establishes "best practices" that cities and developers of new residential projects can implement to mitigate and/or minimize new residents’ exposure to existing air pollution and maps the areas -- mostly near freeways and major roads -- where those best practices should be implemented. We are overall very pleased with the direction of the Guidebook and believe that it could be a powerful tool to assist communities in building sustainable infill and transit-oriented developments that are fully health-protective. However, we are strongly concerned that BAAQMD’s support of local and regional efforts to promote “focused growth” (i.e. infill, transit-oriented, and mixed-use development) throughout the region may be severely undercut by the Guidebook’s recommendation that cities use their zoning authority to prohibit all future residential development within the identified areas.