Share your feedback online!
Join one of the most important conversations we can have about San Mateo’s future. It all starts with your ideas and input! The City invites you to share your feedback online to help identify what areas of the City should be evaluated for change, preservation and improvements.
This online exercise is an opportunity to use a map of San Mateo to help identify what areas of the City could accommodate future growth or stay the same. Your input will help inform what areas will undergo a more robust analysis on the impacts of possible changes in the future.
In addition you are invited to attend the General Plan Subcommittee Meeting #6
Date/Time: 6:30 pm, June 26, 2019
Location: Main Library (Oak Room), 55 W 3rd Avenue, San Mateo
Background:
This is part of Strive San Mateo – a multi-year process to update the City’s General Plan, the guiding planning document that oversees City policy development and land use planning.
To learn more, we encourage you to review the following background material:
- Study Areas Community Workshop Presentation
- Study Areas Workshop Video
- San Mateo – An Analysis of Local Land Use Planning and Regional Growth
The community’s input is integral to this process and everyone is encouraged to participate via workshops, online at StriveSanMateo.org, by email, and through other feedback channels.
North Central Neighborhood 
We are almost 2 decades into the 21st Century, but most of our city ordinances/laws/plans/etc were drafted in the 20th Century
Society has also changed…a lot and will continue to metamorphize as we continue into the 21st Century
Growth is a key ingredient to most all human society’s…as is change. Every measure of our society has a ‘growth’ metric. Inflation, GDP, cost of money, population, etc
We have moved away from R1 ownership and quickly moving into a renters society. Home ownership was accelerated at the end of WWII. The GI bills created a whole economy that could then afford home ownership, higher wages due to higher education, etc. Within that period, right after WWII, our highway system was built. All LOS based designs of our society
Most of the Millennials and younger are moving away from automobile ownership. Most are no longer stigmatized by walking, bicycling or taking public transit….vs most Boomers
Our city is laid out for the convenience of automobile travel. Even short shopping distances. This is is a LOS city (Level of Service…for automobile travel). We need to move away from that old 20th Century architecture and move towards a VMT architecture of our city. VMT: Vehicle Miles Traveled and the metric is to design the city/area to REDUCE the vehicle miles traveled to do anything
It took over 100 years to get where we are now and hoping it will take only decades to change.
The almost impossible task of rewriting, reviewing, presentations to the community, re-reviews through the various city committees, commissions , council and finally voted in by the citizen will take too much time…all the while development will continue based on those old ordinances (AKA 20th Century metrics)
Form Based Codes is one of the fastest growing metrics throughout the USA. It uses most of the existing planning ordinances with the purpose of applying VMT and Vision Zero metrics
Info site for “Form Based Codes” : https://smartgrowthamerica.org/
Local info site for “Vision Zero” : https://www.visionzerosf.org/whos-involved/vision-zero-sf-coalition/
San Mateo City’s “Sustainable Streets Plan” is a Vision Zero plan, recognized by San Francisco, copied by San Jose and also recognized & awarded by The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. Info link to San Mateo “Sustainable Streets Plan” : https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/DocumentCenter/View/63265/Sustainable-Streets-Plan-Appendices?bidId= (note…this is a 447 page PDF…very large, but should be a reference for anything SM Public Works)
This is our PW’s Sustainable Streets Plan, Phase I, which will turn San Mateo Drive into a Vision Zero street from Tilton to Peninsula : https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/3195/San-Mateo-Drive
The “Cycle of Life” for San Mateo citizens is NOT in the cards using the old ordinances. Where will the aged/old live. Where will the masses of young, who are mostly renters going to live? Does our San Mateo System ignore them and assume they will NOT live here?