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The Almanac So much has changed in 40 years. The San Mateo County Master Plan for 1990, adopted by the county Board of Supervisors at its last meeting
in 1960, gives a comparison. The vision then for the county's future differs startlingly from the vision embodied in today's official plans. George Mader and Marty Boat of Ladera both worked on the pioneering
master plan for the county, developed under the leadership of the late Bill Spangle, also of Ladera. In those booming years after World War II, the county was preparing to accommodate 800,000 people by 1990. "We
had the population projections and built the plans to meet them. The growth seemed to be unstoppable," says Mr. Mader, who has been town planner for Portola Valley since it incorporated in 1964.
Some highlights from the master plan: ** Four freeways would carry traffic north and south, and three, east and west. The plan included a Bayfront Freeway extending into the Bay, passing east of the San Francisco
International Airport; a Coast Freeway slashing through the mountains to connect to Santa Cruz; and a Willow Freeway connecting a new barrier across the South Bay to Skyline and San Gregorio. ** BART is shown
extending down the Peninsula and crossing the Bay at the San Mateo Bridge and the new Dumbarton dike. There would be heliports every seven or eight miles. ** Residential communities would overflow the Bayside,
and extend urban development down the coast as far as San Gregorio. ** The plan envisions several new lakes: a freshwater lake replacing the tidal Bay south of the Dumbarton Barrier; a lake in the mountains above
Pescadero to provide recreation and a water supply for new development on the coast; and the Ladera Dam on Stanford's Webb Ranch to provide recreation and flood control. ** Major roads included the Alpine Parkway
connecting the Bayside to the lake at Pescadero; Skyline Parkway extended north through the watershed; and a continuation of Edgewood road wound over Skyline to Half Moon Bay. For many reasons -- not least the
environmental movement and the new laws it spawned -- the growth driving the county's 1960 master plan was lower than projected. Instead of 800,000 people, San Mateo County had a population of 650,000 in 1990, and
just over 700,000 in 2000. Now, the county's general plan (no longer called a master plan) shows much of the unincorporated Coastside as open space, with zoning for large lots. It is massively constrained by federal
and state laws, as well as commissions protecting the Coastside and Bay. The plan follows the strategy known as smart growth, which calls for concentrating urban growth in populated areas served by mass
transportation. "Other regions struggle to rein in sprawl and draw the greenbelt around themselves," Supervisor Rich Gordon said at a 30th anniversary celebration of the Midpeninsula Regional Open
Space District. "On this Peninsula we did smart growth before it was smart." |
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