General Plans

The state of California requires every county and incorporated city to produce a General Plan. As part of the General Plan, an open space element along with a conservation element must be included. Also in the General Plan process, communities can opt to include an agricultural element and/or an economic development element. The two non-required elements are strongly recommended if a community has extensive agricultural and timberlands or if a community has underutilized or nonexistent industries and businesses. By law, the General Plan document must contain vision statements and guiding principles along with an "action program" identifying specific techniques that the county or city intends to use to implement its goals. Therefore, the General Plan process is both regulatory and non-regulatory (visionary) at the same time.

In most cases, the two required elements are combined to promote the management, preservation and conservation of natural resources and open space. The goal is to assure the availability of those resources for future generations and allow the realization of their full economic potential. The open space element allows local planning policies to focus on the use of unimproved land or water for:

        -Preservation or managed production of natural resources
        -Outdoor recreation
        -Promotion of public health and safety

The conservation element focuses on the policies designed to recognize the limited availability of natural resources and develop means for their protection and appropriate use. Communities with strong General Plan elements can focus on increasing quality of life indicators they desire through a managed approach to the use of the surrounding landscape.

Counties with significant agricultural production may include an Agriculture Element closely linked to its Land Use, Conservation and Open Space Elements. An Agriculture Element provides guidelines for policies intended to sustain and protect needs of the agricultural industry. For example, the El Dorado County General Plan includes an Agricultural and Forestry Element identifying four major goals: agricultural land conservation, agricultural production, forest land protection and sustainable and efficient forest production.

The 1907 Subdivision Map Act established the procedures local governments must use when considering the subdivision of land. The act evolved into a powerful tool for local governments to exact concessions from developers such as public services, sidewalks, roads and other public amenities. In part, the Subdivision Map Act seeks to ensure that adequate public services are provided in new subdivisions.

The act only applies to landowners who wish to subdivide their land. Any land that is subdivided to be sold, leased or financed must be approved by the appropriate local governing agency to ensure compliance with state law and correlation with the general plan.These two planning tools provide counties and incorporated cities with powerful methods to establish growth patterns within their jurisdiction. But in order for a General Plan to remain practical and effective updates need to occur. If not already included in the General Plan, community members and especially agriculturalists need to advocate for an agricultural element. Agricultural elements need to be revisited as well to ensure adopted methods are accomplishing stated goals.

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Regional Planning

Bob Johnston and his students at UC Davis GIS lab researched all the countywide general plans for the state of California and created a county planning GIS coverage and Optional Policies and Tools for Farmland and Open Space Protection. Since much of the available private land base outside of urban areas is simply designated as “Agricultural” land, Johnston and his students combined this coverage with census 1990 and census 2000 population and family size trends data to create housing density within the “agricultural” lands. The resulting index of suburban growth and land use in the state, California Land Use Plans and Potential Resource Conflicts, and comprehensive GIS map, the first of its kind, is available to the public.

We obtained the Johnston data and intersected it with the SOSA regions in California to obtain the following planning use map and acreage summary.

Apparently Lassen County has zoned its public lands as agricultural and so the histogram is somewhat skewed in the northwest region. However, the attached map and chart show substantial amounts of “Very Low Density” Residential land acreage along the western Sierra foothills in Butte, Yuba, El Dorado, Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa and Madera counties. These lands represent current or potential ranchette developments.