Outside
Magazine, August 2005
The Best Towns in the U.S.
The New American Dream Towns
Davis, California
By Mike Grudowski
POPULATION: 65,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 25 // MEDIAN
HOME PRICE: $333,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 20.6 min.
If more developments resembled Davis's Village Homes
project, subdivision might not be such a dirty word.
Trees shade the narrow streets, keeping the asphalt
(and air) cooler during the hot Central Valley summers
than in less enlightened housing tracts. Nearly 75
percent of the community's 225 houses use solar power,
reducing furnace heat in the winter. And it's all
linked by broad common spaces, winding pathways, and—here's
a term you don't hear enough—"edible landscaping":
community vineyards and orchards yielding grapes,
persimmons, cherries, almonds, and peaches. No town
gives more leeway to bicycles: 51 miles of paths and
50 miles of bike lanes (among the first in the nation);
special bike-traffic signals at intersections; even
BikeTalk on KDRT-FM (K-Dirt). Citizen involvement
is high on the list of civic values: Rush hour in
Davis, goes a local truism, happens just before 7
p.m., when people are scurrying to their committee
meetings.
PROGRESSIVE CRED // If you're tall,
dark, and herbaceous, this is your kind of town. Davis
maintains a Landmark Tree List and a Master Street Tree
List—as well as 31 parks, 20 greenbelts, and a
400-acre man-made wetland. To compensate for every acre
of farmland built upon, developers must preserve two
acres of comparable land in its place. Culture gets
a nod, too: 1 percent of all capital-improvement funds
is set aside for public art such as sculptures. And
Central Park's year-round farmers' market, says Mitch
Sears, Davis's open-space planner, is "a community
touchstone."
LIVABILITY // UC Davis, which employs
one out of every three residents, keeps the local scene
young and diverse. Land trusts, nonprofits, and green
research programs, such as the National Institute for
Global Environmental Change, abound. Davis's proximity
to the Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada means that anything
you can do on water, snow, rock, or dirt is never far
away.
YOU'LL LOVE IT IF // In the standard
American turf wars—bike vs. SUV, farm vs. strip
mall—you always root for the underdog.
Next
Page: Portland, Oregon
Intro | Salt Lake City, Utah | Littleton, New Hampshire
| Fort Collins, Colorado | Charleston, South Carolina
| Davis,
California | Portland, Oregon | Chicago, Illinois
| Madison, Wisconsin | Pasadena, California | Portland,
Maine | Smart Urban Ideas, PT. I | Smart Urban Ideas,
PT. II: Buena Vista, CO | Smart Urban Ideas, PT III:
Tucson, AZ, and NYC |
