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BACKGROUND The Draft Land Use Element functions as a guide to City staff, the general public and decision-makers as to the desired pattern of development for the city at build-out. This Element plays a central role in correlating all land use issues into a set of coherent development policies and designates property as to categories of land use. By State law, the Land Use Element is required to designate the proposed general distribution, location and extent of the uses of land for housing, business, industry, open space including agriculture, natural resources, public buildings, and other categories of land use; and to include a statement of standards of population density and building intensity for the various districts. Some goals, policies and programs in the Draft General Plan Land Use Element are carried forward from the 1996 General Plan; others are based on discussions which have taken place with both the Planning Commission and City Council in multiple Joint Workshops and other meetings since the inception of the General Plan update. The Draft Land Use Element is provided as both a clean and red-lined text (Attachments 1 and 2, respectively) and the Draft Land Use Map (Attachment 3). DISCUSSION The text of the Draft General Plan Land Use Element reflects several broad objectives, including: ^ The overarching General Plan theme of sustainable development; ^ Providing some flexibility in determining the location of the remaining units under the 29,000 unit residential cap; ^ Providing additional opportunities for the development of affordable housing; and, ^ Contemplating future Specific Plans in the East Pleasanton area and in Hacienda. Remaining Residential Development Potential: As noted in the Draft General Plan, residential holding capacity or the number of units at build-out is calculated using the mid-point of the density range and the number of acres of the designation remaining. In Specific Plan areas, the adopted plan usually provides a summary or a lot by lot description of the residential development potential. When the 1996 General Plan was adopted, it was assumed based on the holding capacity that at build-out there would be 29,000 residential units. In fact, during the period 1996 through 2006, a majority of projects were approved at lower than the mid-point density, thus leaving additional units to be planned for under the 29,000 cap in the General Plan update. As part of an upgrade of our land development data system, staff has been consolidating several data bases used to track residential projects from unentitled land, through planning approval and construction. The consolidation of these data bases has Page 2 of 10