San Jose’s population is officially 1,006,892!
1,006,892—confirmed by the State Department of Finance on April 30th of this year. I thought it would be interesting to share how San Jose has grown since 1950. Take a look:
1950 95,000 residents
1955 112,000 residents
1960 204,000 residents
1965 328,000 residents
1970 459,000 residents
1980 629,000 residents
1985 782,000 residents
1990 894,000 residents
2000 950,000 residents
The General Plan 2040 Task Force is discussing land use and how that plays a part with San Jose’s growth through 2040. There are members of the task force and interest groups that would like to see San Jose grow to a population of 1,500,000 by 2040. I do not share this opinion and feel 1,200,000 is a more sensible number. I blogged about this in the past, advocating for “stage gates” and/or triggers so that we get more jobs and not just more housing.
The General Plan Task Force Meetings are public. We generally meet the last Monday evening of the month through 2011. I encourage you to attend.
This link to the Planning Department’s General Plan update provides more information.
On Sept. 28, the General Plan Task force will be taking up the topic of water supply. In past blogs I have written about the importance of recycled water to our city.
This discussion on future water supply coincides with a documentary film that I am showing at the City Hall Council Chambers in partnership with the Sierra Club and the Santa Clara Valley Water District. The film is called FLOW, and I am showing it on Monday, Sept. 21 at 6:45pm. FLOW was also an Official Selection for the Sundance Film Festival, and Wired Magazine called it “the scariest film in the festival.”
Please RSVP with me if you would like to attend since seating is limited. Cost is free. [email protected].
Is this the same Sierra Club that is anti-nuclear power forcing us to burn filthy, polluting fossil fuels, and the same Sierra Club that is against any thinning of the forest thus causing devestating forest fires such as one at Lake Tahoe last year? Maybe you can also bring in Michael Moore as a guest speaker.
Good to have your words of wisdom on this site. I assume at some point you will have some to replace the silliness of your current post. Do you believe we don’t have a water problem? Do you really think the Sierra Club does not support alternative clean fuels? Tell us, please since you seem so wise. Thank you.
I think the Sierra Club has some very sincere members but is led by a bunch of lawsuit seeking lawyers. Solar and wind are a fraction of the power needed and nuclear is the only green technology we have that can replace fossil fuels. The Sierra Club has filed endless lawsuits stopping nuclear forcing us to burn filthy fossil fuels. Nuclear is also the only way to make large scale desalinization plants to make fresh water. Also, how about if we build a few more dams which the Sierra Club opposes. The leaders of the Sierra Club are a bunch of hypocrites, not necessarily all the members.
The Water District is one of the most political organizations in the Bay Area. Like the Ottoman Beys, the Water Board members sit as potentates with years of tenure and years of non action hiring council members from other cities and political activists to pick up a check for doing nothing, while people wander up and down Santa Clara Street with swollen tongues seeking water from mudholes. Sooner or later, we will see San Jose as another Arrakis with sandworms going through the dusty valleys. Imagine Chuck Reed as a Baron Harkonnen with his trusty Mentat, Peter de Vries-Campbell (of course you have to have a mind in order to calculate and Pete’s nose gets a little scrunched when he does simple math), finding Baron Reed a companion to wrestle with, while Pierluigi comes upon us as Pierluigi Muad’Dib with Stilgar Warner of the Berreyssa Fremen assessing staffers like Armando for their water fatness. AG would serve measure out to a lake.
Investment idea – buy all the farm land you can in the central valley with water rights. It could turn out to be very valuable
Glad you are raising awareness on finite resources like water
why does our council always approve new housing development when long term there are no new sources for water.
Are the new arrivals moving into San Jose and the rest of CA bringing there own water with them?
No need to talk about schools,prisons, hospitals and infrastructure it all comes down to water.
San Jose like other cities just doesn’t get it. High rise buildings, wiping out parks, and building on hills driving out wild life, all for the sake of the all mighty buck. If we keep polluting this planet, and draining our earth’s resources we’ll all die so it won’t matter.
P.S.
Doesn’t any one use birth control any more?
I am a mother of two so I am not sure what you mean by the statement on birth control?
Does being a mother of two somehow destroy your ability to understand others?
This is a silly string. Most people have kids thus the cycle of life.
So you advocate limiting the number of children people have like China?
There should not be any tax breaks for more than 2 children.
If you have 1 child then the current tax credit is wothwhile, have 2 children then no tax credit is allowed. Two children are population neutral. Have more than 2 children, then a tax penalty needs to apply on each child.
Don’t misunderstand me. I love kids, but if you take an honest look around you, you will have to admit that people are having more than two children. Many can’t afford them!
I advocate for common sense and behaving responsibly. What kind of planet do you think we are leaving our little ones? Do you know how many children need a good home? Why is adopting a needy child such a repulsive idea?
I guess overpopulation and draining the earth’s resources is a difficult thing to comprehend these days.
Cycle of life, I don’t think so. That type of tunnel vision frightens me. There is nothing silly about overpopulation and draining the planet’s resources. All you have to do is look overseas and see for yourself the devastating affects this type of carelessness creates. If we keep overpopulating this planet, over building, and using water with the same irresponsibility we are now, we won’t have plant life, food to eat, nor oceans to fish in, nor land to plant in.
The availability of water puts a definite limit on how large San Jose & surrounding municipalities can grow, but we rarely hear about this natural limit when the city council approves new residential & commercial construction. The state supreme court has spoken out on this relationship, and you may read its 2007 ruling here:
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/links/S132972.pdf
San Jose often boasts about being a “leader”. This usually happens just after we’ve jumped on some bandwagon or another.
Well here’s a chance for San Jose to show some true leadership. Let’s plan our City to limit population growth and the resulting pressure that is placed on the environment, particularly in the area of needing to import water.
This compulsion we seem to have to provide “affordable housing” has not only been unfair to taxpayers but has also been destructive to the natural environment.
Our predecessors provided us with a pretty efficient and eco-friendly system of reservoirs and percolation ponds designed to continually recharge the underground aquifer. This system utilizes the resources that exist locally. We ought to figure out how to get by on this water only. Otherwise, all San Jose’s talk about being a “green” city is just that. Talk.
Limiting housing would increase statewide water usage. Most of the new families would move to the central valley, where they would use a lot more water.
Unless you’re willing to adopt China’s policy, you aren’t changing the size of the population. You’re changing the location of the population. And shifting people to a desert is foolish.
Eventually, there will be enough people in the desert to outvote you and take your water.
Greg,
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t play out the way you describe.
San Jose is a magnet. The desert is not. Many would-be immigrants would probably choose to stay in their home country or home state if an affordable San Jose was not an option. Why would they feel their only other choice was to move to the desert?
Furthermore, economic pressure does have a dramatic influence on the number of children that people choose to have. Let people pay the full cost of raising their kids- and that includes the full market rate price of their housing, and we’ll soon find that, contrary to your assumption, we ARE changing the size of the population. We would all benefit.
It’s already playing out that way. The Central Valley is a desert, and there are tens of thousands of people who commute from there.
We’ve also pretty much filled Fremont and Livermore Valley with Silicon Valley commuters.
You can argue that no one would ever want to commute. But they do it anyway. 200,000 people commute here every morning. And almost all of them live in drier places where they use more water.
Water and basic infrastructure is one of my favorite topics that rarely gets more than lip service when major and minor developments are pushed through. I always wondered in all the talk about coyote valley and job triggers why new reservoirs and water supply weren’t equally important.
Basically, the area receives moderate rainfall, and does not do a good job of getting maximum use out of our natural water supply. When the Central Valley Water Project and State Water Project became available it was cheaper to subsidize our development with imported water rather than invest in local infrastructure (additional reservoirs, recycling runoff and wasterwater, etc.) The term limits and district election system for the council members encourages short to medium term thinking which basically means lots of bad planning decisions were made because it looked good enough at the time but made poor long term financial and environmental sense in the long term. Importing water is like always being a renter subject to the whims of the market place rather than finding property you can own and invest in.
On the other hand, I have to be honest, American cities have exceeded the carrying capacity of their land areas long ago, going back as far as the 1890s. You’re never going to have enough rain water and ground water for the densities that urban living promote. Roman engineers solved this for their cities with well designed aqueducts and gravity powered water systems that served rich and poor alike (although in times of drought, water was diverted from the middle class homes but kept flowing to the rich and poor, and the middle class romans had to use the public fountains like the rest of the plebs.
I don’t know, do you see parallels with our current system where the wealthy can ignore rationing or just use imported water by the tanker load and the poor can learn to like the taste of SJ tap water?
Orange County is far and away the most progressive water district in the country with major investments first in desalination (and when that didn’t make economic sense) then waste-water treatment and recycling. We could recharge the aquifer with treated wastewater on an industrial scale and reduce our dependence on imported water. We can also look to capturing more of our runoff with additional reservoirs and permeable paving surfaces mandated for ALL new driveways and such.
Greg Perry (from several comments above),
There will always be a “commute radius” within which people will find the drive distance acceptable. This circle will inevitably be saturated with whatever population the various jurisdictions within decide by their planning strategy. We’re kidding ourselves if we think that our local planning decisions will have a significant impact on the character of the outlying areas.
San Jose can choose to be a crowded, squalid, third-world hellhole or not. Either way, inbound long-distance commutes will always exist.
By the way, if we want to increase the size of the “commute radius” and REALLY fill up your desert with thirsty people, we need only build a high speed rail system. But that’s another story. Or is it?