Published on April 2, 2010

Politics
Richmond’s New Priority: Taking Health Seriously

By FRANCES DINKELSPIEL

Daniel Weintraub has reported on California politics and policy for more than 20 years.

Richmond has widespread poverty, a high crime rate and a reputation as a tough, gritty city. In a region that has been moving steadily from heavy industry to an economy dominated by information and services, Richmond remains home to a major oil refinery.

So it might come as a surprise that the city is leading the Bay Area into the future of urban planning. Richmond is close to adopting a new vision for itself that makes the health of its residents a top priority. And this is not just some abstract document that will be circulated proudly among planning geeks at conferences while having no real effect on people’s lives. It comes with a plan of action that promises to change life on the streets of Richmond and shape development for years to come.

“We definitely believe we are on the cutting edge of showing how a city can work on this level, in terms of its thinking, its planning, changing its policies to focus on the basic health needs of the community,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said in a recent interview. “We want to really turn around the years of pollution and neglect.” [emphasis added]

The plan lays out 10 goals that will be considered as part of nearly every city policy and be used to evaluate proposed housing, commercial and industrial developments.

The broad hope is to create a walkable city where residents of all income levels have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, parks and open space, and good housing; where people strolling the sidewalks are safe from criminals and cars alike, and where the elderly and the disabled have access to public transportation that will take them to their medical appointments.

These changes, city officials believe, will help reduce disparities between the health of Richmond’s residents and those who live nearby under better conditions, and will even reduce the differences among Richmond’s own neighborhoods.

Richmond’s poverty rate is double the average in Contra Costa County, and the city’s residents have the county’s highest death rate from diabetes, a higher-than-average rate of children with serious asthma, and the second-highest rates for hospitalizations resulting from mental illness and drug abuse. A resident of Richmond is three times more likely to be murdered than someone living across the bay in San Francisco.

Much of this social dysfunction is concentrated in just a handful of the city’s 35 neighborhoods. And two of those troubled neighborhoods — the Northern Iron Triangle and Belding Woods — are already part of a pilot project through which the city hopes to demonstrate how its new strategy will work in practice.

Already, the city is making plans to improve parks, plant more trees along streets, enforce traffic rules more strictly and improve street lighting. Community gardens are popping up along a city greenbelt, the planning department is working on expanding farmers markets, and the city is cooperating with the county to ensure that every resident who is eligible for food stamps gets them.

And when developers apply to build new projects in the city, the review will include an assessment of whether the proposals are consistent with the new goals, which will be part of the city’s general plan.

Mike Ghielmetti, president of Signature Properties and chairman of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, said he did not believe that science had shown a clear connection between housing and afflictions like obesity and asthma.

Suburban neighborhoods of the 1950s were even less walkable than today’s are, Mr. Ghielmetti said, but their residents were fitter. “Why is new housing being tasked with something that is perceived to be a community burden?” he asked.

Mr. Ghielmetti suggested that cars, fast food, television shows and video games had more to do with obesity than housing and neighborhood design. “They’re going after the wrong party,” he said, referring to Richmond officials.

But Mayor McLaughlin said builders and others were going to have to get used to a new way of doing business in the city. “We are moving away from depending on fossil fuels,” she said.

Some day, she said, that Chevron oil refinery on the waterfront will be obsolete. She would love to see it converted to supplying renewable fuels to the region. If not, it would be a “very valuable piece” of real estate. For a park, perhaps. Or a walkable neighborhood, with great views.

“We have come from a hundred years of planning decisions based on a massive and complex freeway system and heavy industry,” the mayor said, “and now we are planning for developments that are livable, walkable, bike-friendly, communities.” [emphasis added]