Editorial: Community separators – nature’s bulwark against the next San Jose

Take heed, Sonoma. Don’t let our quirky little community character cross-pollinate with our, how shall we say, “less desirable” neighbors of the North Bay. You know the ones: Napa to the east, Santa Rosa to the west.

Heaven forbid, the land Hap Arnold called home is ever diluted by encroachment from our southern friends in, egad, Novato.

But that’s what’s at stake if the 20-year-old “community separator” designations are allowed to expire in 2016.

Community separators are just that: areas that separate communities. They’re lands zoned to act as open space buffers between neighboring communities – to prevent the type of overdevelopment that, when not held in check, can create suburban sprawl which results in, as Teri Shore of the Greenbelt Alliance describes, “city running into city running into city – like you (see) in San Jose.”

Of course, with all-do respect to our friends in the “Capital of Silicon Valley” it would take a lot of horrific city planning decisions for Sonoma to wind up with anything like San Jose’s 25-plus “neighborhoods,” former towns that the city annexed mid-20th century to increase its tax base. (1960s-ers City Manager “Dutch” Hamann vowed to turn San Jose into “another Los Angeles.”)

Now, Sonoma is nowhere near that level of suburban hegemony (though some have had their eye on a tasty little morsel called the Springs over the years). But that doesn’t mean community separators aren’t still important.

Historically, the villages, neighborhoods and towns of the world tended to develop geographically – provincial borders would be, say, the river to the west and the hills to the east. But with the advent of the industrial revolution and American expansion west, that nature-determined process began to shift, and the new paradigm was no longer to build near the mountain – but near the money. In 1870, that meant buying land where they were putting in a train station; by 1970 it meant buying land where they were putting in a mall.

It was in that latter era where the concept of “community character” first emerged; prior to then the term wasn’t needed – not because it didn’t exist, but because every community had it. But when prefab neighborhoods were birthed through the couplings of commerce kings and the shopping hordes, the idea of community identity became its own commodity – one that could drop in value if that identity became indistinguishable from the zip code five miles up the highway. Ask yourself: what’s Vacaville’s identity outside its borders? Well, it’s got the retail outlet mall and a good choice of diners to stop on the way to Tahoe. Novato (where I grew up)? Costco! San Pablo, Albany, El Cerrito – all communities with culture and engaged citizenry, but towns with that certain je ne sais quoi? Not so sure.

Sonoma County will face renewal of community separators on the November 2016 ballot; county Supervisors will be making the rounds to promote them in the coming year – and possibly push for expansion (Shore and Caitlin Cornwall of the Ecology Center were slated to address the matter at the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission meeting earlier this week.)

Sonoma Valley, by the way, has 1,400 acres of community-separator-designated lands between Glen Ellen and Agua Caliente, two cool and quirky communities – as well as two neighborhoods upon which few visitors would ever mistake one for the other.

The very nature of “community character” is subjective, elusive and transitional. But in certain places it is also unmistakable.

Sonoma – the county and the Valley – would be wise to keep it that way.

Email jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.