In 1940 California had a population of about 6 million people. Today our population is pushing 40 million. In other words, California on average has added more than 1,000 people per day, every day, for the last 67 years, and there is no end in sight! The population of the United States is predicted to rise 40 percent by 2050. That means an additional 140 million people in the next 40 years.

We are going to have to provide as much housing in the next 40 years as was provided in the last 100. Water, transportation, electricity, schools and all the infrastructure needs that support this growth will have to be supplied as well. We as a nation, state, region, county and city need to start planning now on how to handle this rising demographic tide.

We cannot afford to sit on our hands and decry the influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, the projected birth rate, or the internal migration of our aging population. Just because we may not like the fact that these problems exist will not make them less of a reality. Dealing with the reality of this situation is the only way that we can ever hope to solve the huge problems that are ahead of us and continue to maintain a relative high standard of living and quality of life that we have all come to expect.

Prosperity for Oceanside in the 21st century must be based on government, business, education and the community working together to create a vibrant and sustainable local economy. We must come up with long-term investment strategies that encourage enterprise and housing within our city that serve the needs of local residents, workers and businesses.

We cannot continue to do things in the same old way. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but that is exactly what is happening now. Currently we wait until a developer brings forth a project and then we decide how to make it work with what we already have in place. So we simply limp along without any clear vision of what we need or want. Rather than allowing developer-initiated, piecemeal development, we should be the ones to initiate the planning process and look to our needs and not wait to see what some outside builder may bring us. The city of Oceanside should have a master plan that designates where new growth, infill or redevelopment will be allowed to occur.

Oceanside should have compact, multidimensional land use and zoning patterns that ensure a mix of uses and density that infuses value into the community while preserving our existing open space as much as possible. To minimize economic, social and environmental costs and efficiently use resources and infrastructure, new development should take place in existing urban cores and suburban areas as much as possible.

Now is the time to move forward. The one area that is ready for rethinking and preplanning is the area around the transit center. We should bring together interested parties and plan how we can create sustainable, transit-oriented development at the depot, where the Coaster, Sprinter, Metrolink and Amtrak all come together. Let's come up with a plan and see how the marketplace responds.

- Jerome M. Kern is a member of the Oceanside City Council.