ENGINEERING, I NEED MORE POWER!
I haven't been writing coz I've been busy studying. Yes, Meng actually working hard in school. Strange but true. I came here half expecting to breeze thru the course like I did in NTU. Some professors here call the campus "Club Med". Yeah, Club Med indeed, it feels more like an academic marines boot-camp. Grad school is heavy stuff, man. Now I know why everybody complains about grad school.
From what I understand of the NUS-ISCS Masters course, the graduation requirement here is at least double of that in NUS-ISCS. To graduate, I have to take 7.5 grad level courses (limited to 3 per quarter) plus thesis. (I'll also be taking undergrad courses on top of that to shore up some loose foundations). This compares to 2 grad modules + thesis for NUS-ISCS. Is this a fair comparison? If you know, tell me. How abt NTU?
For the past few weeks, with the exception of facing an unexpectedly heavy courseload, things are generally going more smoothly than I've planned for. So we're cool.
For this article, I'll just give you a short take on our living conditions.
Will write more when I can squeeze the time.
OUR LITTLE PLACE IN PARADISE
One of the very first things I discovered about paradise is how expensive it is. Well, it just got even more expensive.
For those of you unfamiliar with the area, here's an overview. We're living in the city of Goleta. Goleta is an unincorporated city right next to the city of Santa Barbara. It consists of, among other things, the SB muni airport and the University of California campus. The population is about 70,000, land area is (my estimate) about a quarter of Singapore.
For the city to be "unincorporated" means basically that it's technically not a city on its own. The whole area is under the direct admin of the county. I'm guessing that this probably used to be a sparsely populated rural area that became crowded and urban when the university became reputable and started attracting industry. There is now a grassroot movement to get the city incorporated (ie, it'll have its own govt, mayor etc). Democracy at work.
We live within a little town in Goleta known as Isla Vista. It's
a small town bordering the campus
and the Pacific ocean, the majority of its residents are UC students
and poor families. Basically, this is a poor area. We were
told by the local police that IV is one of the most densly populated areas
in the whole of the US. And it's a noisy town, thanks to all these
party students. I guess that noise and crowding is the curse that
plagues many university towns. The town is abt half a square mile
in area and has a popln of about 20,000 or so.
For those of you in S'pore, IV is a little like the terrace housing
area in Sin Min, except here the
streets are twice as wide, it's more crowded, a lot noisier (esp on
Fri nites), and people are a lot poorer.
I've just read in the local newspaper that the local property market
has gone "crazy". The median price
of a home in Goleta is now $410K. This compares with something
like $170K nation-wide. It's even more expensive than Silicon Valley,
which the last I checked, has a median price of some $340K per home (though
some pockets of the valley are likely to be a lot more expensive).
Rental vacancy is below 1% and a lot of students here are having tremendous
problems getting housing.
You're right, the economy in this area is booming.
What I don't understand is, given that there is still a lot of usable
flat undeveloped space, why is there
still such a severe shortage of housing?
Locals told me it's coz the authorities are making it very difficult
to build more houses, in order to keep
the city small. Why? There seem to be a multitude of reasons.
One of the most important reasons is water, or rather the lack of it. There is always a major concern that the drinking water available might not be able to keep up with the population growth. Hence, growth is pegged to water supply.
Another reason seems to be the concern of the state govt to limit urban
growth along the coastline to
protect the environment. And the whole cities of SB and Goleta
are along the coastline. So there you
have it. :)
There seems also to be a political reason. Due to a law (Proposition
13) that protects long-time property owners from paying market rates for
property taxes, the county levies very high "development
fees" on new developments to pay for county expenses. This is a strong
disincentive for building more houses. There seem to be some concensus
(among the younger folks) that this is an unfair law, but it takes political
courage to change it. And one of the laws of nature is that most
politicians don't have courage. So things are not likely to change
for a while.
Finally, there seem to be a general desire by most residents here to keep the city small. Now, remember that many of the residents are retirees. Keeping the city small has the advantage of keeping it charming and keeping the problems of a big city (crowding, pollution, traffic jams etc) at bay.
My own opinion is that choking the housing supply might be a mistake, it will choke the hi-tech-led economic boom. The reason is simple, without housing, you're going to have a lot of problems attracting industries and workers, even if this is paradise.
If you have more insights, tell me.
I really have to go. 2 assignments are awaiting....