1) People are angry that Mayor Lockhart has emphasized higher-density housing, i.e., condominums. People want to see a lot more SFRs built instead.

2) One of the perceived drawbacks to condos and other forms of higher-density housing is that they introduce a criminal element, if I am not mistaken.

3) BART is apparently in some way bad for the city, because it too introduces a criminal element (again, if I am interpreting these comments correctly).

Now, my responses:

1) It's understandable that some people might object to the apparent urbanizing of some parts of Dublin. Higher profiles means views impaired for many people, particularly in single-family residences. However, some factors suggest that this was inevitable. For one, Dublin is situated right at the intersection of two busy freeways. It's kind of hard not to notice the flyover connecting South 680 to East 580, even from a few miles away. The high-density areas aren't significantly taller than that span. Also, BART arrived here a few years back, and some people like the idea of using their cars a little less. Higher-density residential areas and transit villages help make this possible. Being close to BART is a real selling point for many people, and higher-density units near BART means more people can enjoy that flexibility. My wife rode BART to the A's game last night. This is not a bad thing.

2) In the condos where we live (Elan), there isn't any more crime than anywhere else in Dublin. In fact, there is probably a bit less. No one here is getting mugged. Everyone we have met here has been friendly and courteous. We are a couple of teachers who probably would have been priced out of the market if we had wanted a home at any time other than this recession. The biggest problem we have to worry about is people not knowing which way the garage doors open. We've had to replace two so far.

3) As I mentioned before, the presence of BART is not a bad thing. Many cities in the Bay Area have access to BART without attracting the criminal element. Do you hear about crime waves in Orinda and Lafayette? No, not exactly, and yet they've had BART since the beginning. There is no reason why Dublin has to be any different. The bank robberies in fact tend to be committed by people in cars, and from out of town. I recently heard of a drug addict from San Jose who was caught after holding up a bank here in Dublin. Again, not caused by BART.

I will readily agree that this city needs to do a better job of attracting businesses that are not merely retail-based. There is a lot of that space already (though I do think we need a cafe or a pizza place in our neck of the woods). But at the same time, is it really so terrible that some condos have been built here? This is the trend in cities that already have BART stations, and it makes sense on a number of levels. Look at the Pleasant Hill station, for example. There is some huge development going on right next to the station–because the station is already there, and that's a big selling point for businesses and homeowners. It's expensive to expand BART to places like Tracy and Brentwood. It's a lot less expensive to just build up where the existing system already is. Walnut Creek has suffered no loss of prestige because of mass transit; on the contrary, it has probably attracted more shoppers because of it.

I for one would rather live here than in Windemere. My wife and I used to live in the Cornerstone apartments (near Gayle Ranch) which were far from everything, and the area was clearly overbuilt. We can keep digging into hillsides and sprawling our suburbs out over distant horizons, or we can build a little more intelligently within the lines that are already drawn. It's a pretty simple decision.