Davis, California

During our time in San Francisco, when we mentioned we might be visiting Davis (near Sacramento) later in the week, the common response was, "Davis? Why go there?"

Well, we just spent about 24 hours in Davis, and I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in seeing a city that walks the talk on sustainability. While I knew that it was home to a nice food co-op and many housing co-ops, I had no idea what it would be like.

My first impression was that it has one of the most vital downtowns I have seen in a while (especially for a city with only about 60,000 people). A fairly dense but comfortably sized shopping area spreads over something like 20 square blocks, each with small businesses that appeared to be thriving. There were a lot of trees throughout the city -- I came away with a strong impression of a green place.

We checked out the co-op (of course) and got some dinner there.


Davis is very bike-friendly, and a lot of people seemed to be using bikes as their main mode of transportation. It seemed as though there were bike paths everywhere I looked. The campus of UC Davis, which is adjacent to the city, doesn't allow cars on a big portion of the grounds.

Davis is home to one of the writers on my all-time favorites list, Kim Stanley Robinson. A recurring theme in Robinson's books is an attempt to envision how our society can be made functional for the long term. For instance, his Mars trilogy includes the development of a constitution on Mars based on cooperative models. His alternate history The Years of Rice and Salt finds a workable future in the Iroquois Confederacy. I know this all sounds kind of dry and academic, but it really isn't in the books.

One thing I didn't know was that Robinson lives in an area west of the Davis core city called Village Homes, a planned community where the houses rely on solar panels and other alternative energy sources. The homes have extremely minimal yards, while the common areas are large and inviting, including vegetable gardens and attractive walking and biking paths. It was neat to walk around among the houses and see how it is all interwoven.

Wish we could have stayed longer.