San Luis Obispo can build lower than you, Santa Barbara!

I see the loons in Santa Barbara are at it again with the downtown building height issue, this time threatening to start a ballot measure to reduce the maximum height from 60 feet to 40. I can see their point though – if buildings are too tall, there’s not enough sunshine hitting the sidewalks to warm all the bums (sorry, I guess I am supposed to call them homeless) littering the streets. Pity. My favorite part of visiting Santa Barbara is telling them to get a job.

The crazies in San Luis Obispo never like to see their bretheren down south show them up, so I think we can expect to see a a similar height restriction here. But, we’ll do them one better. We’ll reduce our 50 foot limit (with exceptions for “landmark” buildings to 75 feet) to 39 feet. Yeah, that will show those fancy Santa Barbara liberals we care more about (pick one: the environment, the children, the mom and pops, screwing rich folks) than they do!

As usual, the proponents of a flat downtown contradict themselves. They fight for lower heights, but if you ask them what they think of urban sprawl, they are against that too, wanting more density in urban areas, where people can live and work, where they can ride their bicycle instead of use their car. But, if we cannot build outward, we have to go up unless they want to build an underground city. But it’s not nice to point out such things. Hurts ther brains. Too much thinking involved. Besides, it’s really not about adopting a smart growth urban plan, it’s what it’s always been about: no growth, period.

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