Should the Coastside be more like Foster City?

Apparently, hysterical lefties are the only thing keeping the Coastside from being more like Foster City. That’s the conclusion you’d reach if all you had to go on was a pair of articles by Thomas Sowell linked from the Californians for Property Rights website today.

CPR is operated by Coastsider Terry Gossett, who was active in the unsuccessful struggle to keep the Midpeninsula Open Space District off the Coastside and is now fighting the changes to the Local Coastal Programs in both the city of Half Moon Bay and the unincorporated Midcoast.

Today, the CPR site links and quotes approvingly from two articles by Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell. Well, the original version of the post quoted approvingly. The current version merely links.

Both of Sowell’s articles are worth reading for their entertainment value. Who can afford it? claims that open space laws are the reason that Bay Area real estate is so expensive. No, really, I swear that’s what Sowell claims. But I’m going to focus on A relic of the recent past, which declares that Foster City is "something of a triumph":

While Foster City is something of a triumph—a beautifully laid out community of attractive homes and condominiums, with parks and lovely lagoons on which boats sail, and miles of bicycle paths—it is also a reminder of the tragedy that no such community can be created today in many places, including the county in which it is located.

It is not that there is no vacant land left in San Mateo County. On the contrary, more than half the county consists of vacant land on which laws forbid the building of anything. Yet environmentalists there, as elsewhere, conjure up a vision in which the last few patches of greenery are threatened with being paved over.

I’d like to quote the whole thing, which is delightfully entertaining. You should read it for yourself. I recommend it. 

My opinion of Foster City is a matter of record. In a recent column in the Half Moon Bay Review, I said, "If we want a new library, or a new park, or smooth roads we have three alternatives. We can resolve to pay for them ourselves, stop complaining, or move to Foster City, where the roads are well-paved—and so is the coastline."

Foster City is a wonderful community if you don’t like to leave your car.  They have indeed done a lovely job of paving what Sowell calls a "swamp". Its parks are magnificent when viewed through your windshield. Its Chevy’s and its Olive Garden are as fine as any in America.  I’ve cycled along the Bay in Foster City and I can attest the fact that the asphalt bike trail that constitutes their coastside is flat as a Republican income tax. I’m sure its lagoons are lovely, but I don’t own a house on any of them, so I’ve never gotten a very good look.

If Thomas Sowell is asking us to decide whether it’s a "tragedy" that there will be no Foster City on the Coastside, I know where I stand—and I think I know where you stand.