Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 7

146 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7 was approved last year and has recently hit the market. Gillison notes, “If you look at Rancho Cucamonga on the map, it looks a little like a horseshoe because there’s a missing piece in the center. We annexed the missing piece, which was about 4,000-plus acres and approved a 900- acre, almost 3,000-unit housing development along with some commercial businesses in that area. That will push our population up over 200,000.” The city is also in discussions to locate some mixed-use housing projects in their Civic Center and Metrolink districts. These new projects would add between 1500 to 2000 units of housing in those areas. “We are seeing a big surge, especially on the residential side of things,” says Gillison. With all Rancho Cucamonga’s housing options comes a newfound push to make the city more walkable. The city was incorporated in the 1970s and largely planned between the 1980s to early 2000s, when there was a focus on conventional suburban development. That meant there was a separation between residential areas where people lived and commercial areas where people worked and shopped. “You’d use your car to go between them because they were several miles apart,” explains Gillison. “So, we’ve been moving away from that paradigm in the last half-dozen years and the new general plan takes that a quantum leap further. We’re really focusing now on what we call a district scale of development. We have a Civic Center district, a Metrolink district, a Town Center district, and within those districts, which are roughly a mile or so in diameter, things will be much more bicycle and pedestrian friendly.” The idea is to focus population growth into those areas so people can be in close proximity to where they live, work and play. Gillison adds, “That way, they won’t need to use the car to get everywhere.”