Our Valley. Our Choice. Building a Livable Future for the San Joaquin Valley
Great Valley Center, 2007, Heyday Books.
OK, you want to tell 3.8 million people who live in a 275-mile long valley including eight counties that they need to wake up and carpe diem. You have a clear message, you have funding, and you have a ticking clock—and a new planning process—the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint. The Great Valley Center, the nonprofit organization that could, has written and printed a small volume that shows the way to the future. In its colorful, 112 pages in a comfortable, softbound, seven-inch by nine-inch volume, the past, present, and future are clearly laid out. But who is the audience for this volume, and will those who need to get the message receive and understand it? Local and state government, development interests, and more sophisticated policy wonks have already come to the party; it’s the larger populous that now needs to be informed and engaged.
The Great Valley Center has done a yeoman’s job finding funding, developing data, and convening annual conferences to inform a broader audience about the array of issues facing the San Joaquin Valley today. The Center’s efforts were kick-started in 2001 with a $6 million grant from the James Irvine Foundation. The Great Valley Center’s efforts resulted in the Governor’s June 2005 Executive Order creating the San Joaquin Partnership: a task force of state cabinet members, agency heads, local government officials, and private sector members to develop a Strategic Action Proposal by Halloween 2006.
To obtain this commitment from the governor, however, the Great Valley Center had to set forth the facts on the region dubbed a future “Appalachia of the West” by the California Senate’s May 2003 Ending Poverty in California committee. San Joaquin Valley has a higher growth rate, high unemployment (8.2% versus the statewide 5.3%) and high levels of poverty (one in five Valley residents lives in poverty). Other studies identify high dropout rates from high school and high teen pregnancy rates. Growth of towns has spiraled, resulting in zero rental vacancy rates and schools made largely of modular buildings.
The October 2006 Strategic Action Proposal—The San Joaquin Valley: California’s 21st Century Opportunity—further defines the challenges to the San Joaquin Valley: average per capita income 32.2% lower than the state average; college attendance 50% below state average; violent crime 24% higher than state average; access to healthcare 31% lower than state average; and air quality among the worst in the nation. And the Strategic Action Proposal sets out an admirable suite of initiatives for the next decade: grow a diversified, globally-competitive economy supported by a highly skilled workforce, create a model K-12 public education system, implement an integrated framework for sustainable growth, build a 21st century transportation mobility system, attain clean air standards, and develop high-quality health and human services. For the next two years, the drive would be overseen by a board of 36+ civic leaders and local, state, and federal officials and will be funded from July 2006 through June 2007 by $5 million included in the current state budget.
Our Valley. Our Choice. is easy and fun to “read”: the book is largely photos and charts illustrating the past, present, and future of the Valley. It includes a pithy message from Great Valley Center founder and president, Carol Whiteside, and short essays on “People and Geography” by Gerald Haslam, “The Valley Farmer” by Tom Gallo, and “Building for the Future” by Reza Assemi. Whiteside leads with ten very valuable thoughts: have a big vision, consider the earth, make great plans, protect the edges, add value with good design, build communities that work together, start now, create strong neighborhoods, provide incentives, and keep focused.
But the release of this book can only be one of several ways to reach out to a population of many, diverse ethnic groups, many of them recent immigrants. The Valley has a high percentage of illiterate adults (the state average is 25%) and non-English speakers. And in an age when the Internet is replacing the printed word for many, the San Joaquin Valley has less access to computers and the Internet than other parts of the state. The challenge to the Great Valley Center will be to take the message clearly and succinctly captured by Our Valley. Our Choice. and translate it to its 3.8 million-member audience. The message will have to be on multiple media—radio, television, Internet, and newsprint as well as in book form. And the message will have to reach difficult-to-access folks—perhaps through local community meetings in different languages, or through churches, clubs, or other community gathering spots. Let us hope a creative and thoughtful outreach program is part of the process to guide a San Joaquin Valley-driven vision of its future. The professionals can plan and plan, but not until the community as a whole buys in will any plan on paper become a concrete reality.
Reviewer Margit Aramburu has a BA in geography from Humboldt State and an MLA from UCB’s environmental planning program. She has worked in regional land use planning agencies in the Bay Area and the Delta for 25 years and is currently the director of the Natural Resources Institute at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.2, “Design Review.”
