The Town-Gown Shoving Match

Big front page headlines today in the Davis Enterprise reading “LRDP workshop turns ugly—UCD officials pack up and leave after fracas”. The UC Davis Long Range Development Plan has proved controversial, especially a plan to build 1,600 housing units for faculty, staff and students on UCD-owned agricultural research land just south of West Davis neighborhoods. At last night’s meeting UCD planners and their consultants intended to break the crowd up into small discussion groups to look at how to connect the proposed development with Russell Boulevard, the main artery fronting West Davis. The crowd, several hundred strong, many with protest signs, most believing that on account of the added traffic volume there should be no connection at all between the development and Russell, had other ideas, the meeting ending when the UCD planners walked out after one of the West Davis residents shoved a consultant.

Davis politics is entertainingly contentious. The other major town-gown dispute these days is over the proposed UCD biolab, but I’ll leave that one for later. The answer to the proposed UCD neighborhood seems clear to me though: let the university build the development, but disallow cars from it!