In California, every city and county is required to follow a comprehensive planning framework to guide future development and land use decisions. This framework is codified in the "General Plan", which serves as a blueprint for how a community will grow over time.
A critical part of this process is the "Housing Element", a mandatory component that ensures each jurisdiction plans adequately to meet the housing needs of all residents, regardless of income. The General Plan includes several key elements, each playing a vital role in shaping the future of the community. These elements work in tandem to ensure sustainable growth and address housing needs through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process, which assigns housing production targets for each jurisdiction.
The General Plan is a City’s Roadmap for Development
The General Plan is the foundation of land-use planning in California, acting as a long-term vision that addresses a wide range of community concerns, from environmental protection to economic development. The City of San Mateo recently completed a six year General Planning process for General Plan 2040, replacing the previous General Plan 2020. Under California state law, each city and county is required to adopt a General Plan, which includes seven key elements:
Land Use
The Land Use Element governs how land is allocated for different types of development, including residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational spaces. It provides the framework for zoning, density, and urban design, ensuring that cities develop in a way that balances economic growth with quality of life. A well-crafted land use plan can promote walkable neighborhoods, vibrant business districts, and sustainable infrastructure. When tied to RHNA, land use planning becomes essential in ensuring that there is enough land zoned for housing, particularly affordable housing, to meet regional needs. Cities must demonstrate through their land use policies how they will meet their RHNA targets, particularly for low-income housing.
Circulation
The Circulation Element focuses on how people and goods move throughout the city. This includes roads, public transit, bicycle lanes, pedestrian pathways, and even future technologies like electric vehicle infrastructure. Effective circulation planning is crucial for reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality, and making neighborhoods more accessible. As it relates to RHNA, circulation plays a key role in determining where new housing can be located. Access to transportation hubs and major roads often dictates where high-density housing can be developed. In particular, cities must ensure that new housing developments are accessible by public transit to meet the needs of lower-income residents and reduce reliance on cars.
Housing
The Housing Element is the most directly linked to the RHNA process, as it outlines how a city plans to meet the housing needs of its current and future population. It must identify adequate sites for housing development, specify zoning changes, and outline strategies to encourage affordable housing production. Under state law, jurisdictions are required to update their Housing Element every eight years to reflect their RHNA goals, which are set by regional councils of governments (COGs). Cities must demonstrate that they have enough land zoned for housing and that they are actively working to remove barriers to development, such as restrictive zoning laws or high development fees, to meet their RHNA obligations.
Conservation
The Conservation Element aims to protect natural resources, such as water, air quality, and wildlife habitats, while balancing the needs of development. In relation to RHNA, the Conservation Element becomes particularly important as cities seek to develop housing in environmentally sensitive areas. Cities must balance the need for new housing with environmental protections, such as preserving open space and reducing water consumption. Policies that promote energy-efficient buildings and sustainable land use can help cities meet both their housing and environmental goals. Additionally, cities are encouraged to prioritize infill development, which focuses on building within existing urban areas to reduce environmental impact.
Open Space
The Open Space Element ensures that cities maintain areas for recreation, natural habitats, and agricultural uses. Open spaces provide essential environmental and recreational benefits, contributing to the overall quality of life in a community. However, preserving open space can also limit the availability of land for new housing. Cities must navigate this tension when planning for growth and meeting their RHNA targets. By carefully designating open space and finding opportunities for higher-density housing in developed areas, jurisdictions can accommodate housing needs while maintaining vital green spaces. In some cases, creative solutions such as vertical housing or mixed-use developments can allow for both housing growth and open space preservation.
Together, these elements ensure that cities and counties can meet their RHNA targets while promoting balanced, sustainable growth. For San Mateo, through the balance of these five elements, six years of community engagement to gather input from residents and get feedback on potential plans, Measure T was born as a community aligned plan to carefully balance these five elements while meeting our state-mandated housing targets.
Measure T is elegantly designed for sensible growth in San Mateo with focus on balancing the General Plan and Housing Element with retaining San Mateo's character.
You can see the General Plan elements weaved throughout Measure T:
Land Use that focuses on balancing economic growth and quality of life, while promoting walkable neighborhoods and vibrant business districts, and making necessary buy minor adjustments to existing land use policy in order to effectively deploy smart land-use strategies and ensure enough zoning for our affordable housing targets.
Circulation planning that focuses on building near existing public transit infrastructure so we can enable residents to not depend on vehicles to move around the city.
Housing element definitions that include specifications around removing restrictive zoning laws from 1991 that prevent adequate and smart development in 2024.
The Conservation Element focuses San Mateo on enabling new builds to redevelop existing underutilized lots and infill development which opens the door for sustainable and environmentally forward building.
The Open Space element calls for preservation of open space, and allowing for a slight increase in building heights in 10% of the City enables the community to continue to enjoy the multitudes of open space we have today while creating the potential to add more open space in designing redevelopment projects downtown.
We are proud to put Measure T on the ballot for the San Mateo community to vote YES on, because it is an elegant solution (taking into account the General Plan and Housing Element) to growth that continues to preserve existing open space with the potential to create more, meets our state-mandated housing numbers, and allows for the application of smart land use and circulation planning while enabling San Mateo to retain that wonderful suburban character that we all love so much.
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