Becoming a City

Ever wonder why our neck of the woods isn't a city? Curious about whether or downward-spiral of land use and property values can be reversed? Interested in what we can learn from other places? You have come to the right place. As you explore the pages below, keep in mind that our community is what WE who live here say it is, not what the Post Office, the County's administrators, or the Downtown Sacramento Power Elite says it is.

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Incorporation

Arden Arcade is an unincorporated community of nearly 100,000 people. It is also the County's "cash cow" due to the level of economic activity in the community. If it was a city it would rank in the upper 1/3 of all cities in California, would qualify for revenue streams not otherwise available for infrastructure improvements, and - perhaps most importantly - would provide its residents with…

Lessons from elsewhere

When we look outside our hidey-hole we see that not every place follows the unincorporated Sacramento County model. Sometimes we learn from the experiences in other places where things seem to work better than here. Other times, mistakes made somewhere else can be instructive. Things that make you go, "hmmm..."

Facts and Figures

Our community does not exist in a pastoral setting with more cows than people. It's been fully built-out for well over 60 years. The state regards a county with 200,000 people as being "urbanized". Sacramento County has 1,600,000 people, with more than 600,000 of them in the unincorporated UnCity. In round figures, Arden Arcade has 100,000 people packed in at 6000 people per square mile…

Land Use Basics

Land use planning can be a difficult subject. For starters, it's detailed, convoluted public policy stuff that normal people find boring and/or hard to understand. It's also how some people (investors, developers) make a lot of money, how others do business (real estate brokers, construction firms, building materials suppliers and contractors, land use consultants and lawyers) or make a living (…

Why isn't our community a city?

Our community is large and fully developed. It has a robust commercial element that is a cash cow for the County. Yet it remains unincorporated largely thanks mostly to a state policy set that is…

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