Governor Gavin Newsom has set the goal for encouraging the construction of 3.5 million new housing units in California by 2025. However, a critical element will determine the initiative’s potential for success: transportation. Successfully addressing housing critically depends on the accompanying advances we make in transportation.
In Southern California, historically, new housing was added via sprawl — single-family housing replaced open space, with new houses added at points farther and farther away. It was relatively easy and inexpensive to create new housing. But as the nearby open space disappeared, creating new housing has become more difficult, and the rate of housing creation has fallen.
Southern California’s transportation system was built to accommodate single-family housing. In contrast, cities like New York are built around the subway and light rail, enabling dense housing within the city and allowing large numbers of people to live away from the city and to commute.