[mwattsun]

I'm not aware of any such plan. The plan was always to preserve open space such as Lighthouse Field and the green belt around Santa Cruz. I'm grateful for both of those. Property values would have risen even if they had built on Lighthouse field and the green belt. It just occured to me that I could think of them as the equivalent of NYC's Central Park or SF's Golden Gate Park.

[epistasis]

I love the green belt! But talk to the Greenbelt's original proponents, like Primack, and you will find that the city left out the other part of the green belt proposal that was necessary for environmental protection: allow apartments to be built up.

So instead of building taller, we have decades of people living further out, building into the urban wild land interface outside of the greenbelt. That results in massive ecosystem destruction, more car pollution, and of course tons of traffic everywhere.

The solution is to merely allow apartments and 3-4 story buildings. It only takes three four story buildings to equal that 12 story building, for example.

[mwattsun]

They're doing that outside the city limits, in Live Oak for example, but inside the city limits, the Beach Flats is the only place I can think of until recently, when they started building downtown Santa Cruz. As unsightly as the downtown buildings are, if they revitalize downtown it won't be so bad. Maybe Logo's used books will come back.