Tipos de Turismo

Sacramento’s finalised plan (more details on the plan are contained in appendix 2) opens with some reflective history of the city and its identity. Originally inhabited by Nisenan and Plains Miwok Indians, the city was officially founded during the California Gold Rush under the guidance of Swiss-German Pioneer John Sutter (Hurtado 2006). In 1859 it became the first fully incorporated city in California and an economic and commercial transit point throughout the rush (City of Sacramento 2009). The initial master plan for the city consisted of a gridded structure, framed and contained by the Sacramento River to both the north and east. The original business district of Sacramento barely exists anymore, the space now comprised of the Old Sacramento tourist attraction described earlier in the chapter and a large but almost always completely empty shopping mall, the two separated by the eight lanes of Interstate 5. The ‘West End’ as it was known during the first half of the 20th _{century was almost completely} redeveloped in the 1960’s, rationalised as clearing an overcrowded slum “exacerbated by waves of foreign and domestic immigrants drawn to the city by World War II employment, [and] sometimes described as the worst skid row west of Chicago” (Dolgushkin 2012). As Dolgushkin explains, this redevelopment only served to further drive processes of ‘white flight’, no doubt facilitated significantly by the fact that Macy’s - the primary tenant of the new Mall built on the site of the former West End - “insisted that it would not locate in downtown Sacramento unless a freeway off ramp was constructed” (ibid.).

Today the city is “one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the country” (City of Sacramento 2009). Like Lusaka, Sacramento finds itself as the capital for governance rather than economic or size reasons (this is something commonplace across the vast majority of US

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states) and at the end of a shifting history with regards to the location of the California state capital. Also like Lusaka, the city has and continues to experience a rapid population increase, particularly due to the cheaper price of living offered in comparison to the, within commutable distance, San Francisco Bay area. Indeed the wider Sacramento metropolitan region has experienced extreme growth since the turn of the century. For example its suburb of Elk Grove saw a population increase between July 2004 and 2005 that was higher than any other location in the United States with a particularly diverse population moving into the region (Gledhill 2006). The Sacramento region’s heavily suburbanised space is not simply a crisis in sustainability because of its sprawling nature however. The city’s peripheral growth areas are particularly notable for the high concentration of sub-prime mortgage lending prior to the 2008-09 financial crisis (Farrar 2008).

The city’s economic instability, as Roithmayr (2014) explains, is both deeply historical and has significant racial and ethnic dimensions to it - a microcosm of a problem seen across many US cities, particularly those in the South-West region. Here, segregated pockets of low income and low wealth minorities offered the perfect markets for high risk lending that would eventually unravel at ‘global’ scales. This was the outcome of the city’s “long and sordid history of racial segregation in residential housing markets” (ibid.153), in which cartel style conduct from the city’s white developers and homeowner groups sought to establish white suburban tract enclaves, as described in depth by Hernandez (2009). Meanwhile, minority communities from the aforementioned West-End were relocated to much poorer white neighbourhoods and a significant disparity in the flow of capital between almost exclusively white neighbourhoods and those containing people of colour, developed. The 2008 crisis created a “self-reinforcing feedback loop that further locks in the historical disadvantage for people of colour” (Roithmayr 2014: 156). As Hernandez (2009) notes, the subprime mortgage lending map for the city fits almost perfectly onto the map of 1980’s racial and class segregation.

It is a requirement in California law for all cities to have adopted general plans at some point, and a recommendation that these are updated every 5 to 10 years. This however is not something that has been done historically, with Sacramento last producing a general plan in 1988. The role of preparing these plans falls on the local planning agency with final adoption then resting with the ‘legislative body of the city council’ (California Government Code,

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Section 65300). A total of over one hundred Sacramento City staff eventually played some role in the project during the course of its production, ranging from the City managers’ office to architects, engineers and analysts. On the city side the project was overseen by a core group of 18 planners. The primary responsibility for actually creating the plan however, lay with a ‘team’ of external consultants who liaised with the city planners and presented the finalised version to be approved by the city. This consultancy team was assembled by a partnership of two ‘lead’ planning firms - PBSandJ and Mintier Harnish - who added the expertise of a further seven specialist firms into a pre-packaged group of individuals that was ‘pitched’ to the city as being suitable for the job. Upon agreement of the contract, this team set to work on developing the plan alongside and in close dialogue with, the city of Sacramento planning department.