William Fulton (or Bill Fulton) (born September 26, 1955) is an American author, urban planner, and politician. He served as Mayor of the City of Ventura, California from 2009 to 2011. He is considered a leading advocate of the "Smart Growth" movement in urban planning. In 2009, he was named to Planetizen's list of "Top 100 Urban Thinkers".[1]
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Bill Fulton was raised in Auburn, New York, located in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, and received journalism degrees from St. Bonaventure University and The American University in Washington, D.C. His family moved to Auburn from Scotland after the Civil War to work in textile mills there.
In 1981, after attending university in Washington, D.C., he moved to Los Angeles and worked as a journalist. He subsequently earned a master's degree in urban planning at UCLA [2]
Fulton is best known as a commentator and expert on urban planning in California.[3], writing hundreds of articles on the topic, including more than 40 Sunday Opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times between 1982 and 2009. He is the author of several books, including Guide To California Planning, the standard textbook on urban planning in California. His book The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles was a Los Angeles Times best-seller upon its publication in 1997.[4] Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, calling it "a surprisingly lively case study of the battles and alliances of politics, business and people that formed -- or deformed -- a great American city." [5] Almost 15 years later, Christopher Hawthorne, the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, writing in the newspaper's "Culture Monster" blog, called The Reluctant Metropolis "highly relevant" and said Fulton is "one of the most level-headed analysts of the built environment to emerge in Southern California in at least two generations." [6]
He also co-authored The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl with architect Peter Calthorpe, a founder of the New Urbanism movement; and California: Land and Legacy, an appreciation of California's natural environment and how it has been manipulated for human use.
A longtime contributor on economic development issues to Governing magazine, in 2010 Fulton published his fifth book, a collection of columns from Governing titled, Romancing The Smokestack. [7] Many of his columns have dealt with the industrial decline of his native Upstate New York.
From 2000 to 2008, Fulton ran Solimar Research Group, a consulting firm and think tank dealing with land use issues. Among his most prominent Solimar works was "Who Sprawls Most,"[8] a 2001 study for the Brookings Institution Center for Urban & Metropolitan Policy (now Metropolitan Policy Program) that debunked myths about sprawl in metropolitan areas around the nation. Among other things, "Who Sprawls Most" concluded that the West is growing densely while other parts of the nation have serious sprawl problems. For many years, "Who Sprawls Most?" was among Brookings' most downloaded publications.
In 2008, Solimar was merged into the Berkeley-based planning consulting firm Design, Community & Environment.[9] DC&E subsequently merged with The Planning Center to become The Planning Center / DC&E, where he is now a Principal. [10]
In addition, Fulton is a Senior Fellow at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy [11]> at the University of Southern California, where he teaches land use policy and smart growth. [12] He is also the longtime publisher of the periodical California Planning & Development Report ([15]).
Fulton has long been active in local politics. In the 1980s, he was a planning commissioner in the then-new City of West Hollywood, California. In 2003, following his involvement in a campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would have permitted a large hillside development project, he ran for the City Council in Ventura.[13] In the election, he received more votes than any other candidate.[14]
In 2007, Fulton sought re-election as a thoughtful moderate.[15] After a successful re-election campaign,[16] Fulton was selected Deputy Mayor by his colleagues.[17] In early 2009, Fulton was said to be considering running in 2010 to represent California's 35th State Assembly district, a seat being vacated by the term-limited Pedro Nava.[18] However, he chose not to run for the Assembly seat, which was eventually won by Das Williams,[19] and instead was selected as Mayor by his City Council colleagues in December 2009.[20] He served as Mayor until his term on the City Council ended in December 2011 and did not seek re-election.
During his career as a City Councimember and Mayor, Fulton emphasized both urban planning and economic development issues. In 2004, Ventura hired as its city manager Rick Cole, a former mayor of Pasadena, California who is well known for his leadership on urban planning issues. Two years later Cole was selected by Governing as one of its "Public Officials Of The Year" [21] In 2005, Ventura adopted one of the first all-infill General Plans in the United States. [22]
As mayor, Fulton played a major role in promoting Ventura's creative economy, especially the growing arts and culture scene [23] and the city's innovative high-tech incubator and venture capital efforts, bringing national attention to the city's work in both these areas. [24]
A longtime devotee and former student of UCLA "parking guru" Donald Shoup [25], Fulton championed the introduction of Ventura's widely-hailed downtown parking management system, which included some paid on-street parking, while he was mayor in 2010.
Thought the parking system achieved its goal of encouraging more efficient use of parking spaces downtown immediately [26], it incurred the wrath of local Tea Party activists, who excoriated Fulton on the right-wing John and Ken talk radio show in Los Angeles. [27]. Tea Party activists subsequently qualified an initiative for the Ventura ballot to remove the parking meters. However, the measure was removed from the ballot by a judge. [28] In the subsequent election, the Tea Party candidate for City Council fared poorly and Fulton's endorsed candidate was elected to succeed him on the council. [29]
In early 2011, Fulton stepped into California's heated debate over the future of redevelopment when he was the only mayor in the state who came out in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate the longstanding urban revitalization tool. At a speech in Sacramento, Fulton, a longtime advocate of redevelopment reform, said he believed redevelopment should be replaced with a more targeted and effective tool for revitalization. California cities, he said, "should not confuse the job we have to do with the tool we've been accustomed to using," [30]
In early 2010, Fulton publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative retinal condition that gradually robs those who have it of their peripheral vision and night vision and often leads to complete blindness. [31] Other prominent people with RP include casino owner Steve Wynn and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Fulton's nephew, Eric Fulton, who is also affected by RP, is active in the Washington, D.C. area in raising funds for the Foundation Fighting Blindness to find treatments and a cure. [32] His daughter, Sara Torf-Fulton, is a recent planning and history graduate of Sonoma State University.
Shortly before leaving office, Fulton announced that he would relocate to Washington, D.C., to become Vice President of Smart Growth America, a nationwide advocacy group. [33] He said he was making the move to work on a national level, to be closer to his family, and to live in an urban environment that did not require him to drive as much given his visual impairment. However, he said he would continue to be affiliated with The Planning Center | DC&E and the USC Price School and would return to Los Angeles and Ventura frequently. [34]
A new edition of Guide to California Planning will be published in Spring 2012.
Calthorpe, Peter, and William Fulton. The Regional City: Planning For The End of Sprawl. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001. ISBN 1559637846 [16]
Fulton, William, California: Land and Legacy. With a forward by Kevin Starr. Englewood, Colo.: Westcliffe Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1565792815 [17]
Fulton, William, and Paul Shigley, Guide to California Planning (Third Edition). Point Arena, California: Solano Press Books, 2005.[18].
Fulton, William, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (original edition, Solano Press Books, 1997). ISBN 0801865069 [19]
Fulton, William, Romancing The Smokestack: How Cities and States Shape Prosperity. Ventura, California: Solimar Books, 2010. ISBN 0615395937. [20]
City Council biography http://www.cityofventura.net/city_council/bios/fulton
Professional biography http://citistates.com/speakers/wfulton/
City Council blog http://www.fulton4ventura.blogspot.com
California planning blog http://www.cp-dr.com/blog/27