(it might help if you ASK poeple to give out feedback. Usually people assumeyou just want to post an interesting piece of information.)
I only wanted some feedback! 
But can you blame those people to buy cheap lands in Bakersfield? It is very expensive in urban areas to have a house. Most people only can afford an
APARTMENT and how could a family live in an apartment??
I
don't blame them, I blame the cost of living and salary, so the people themselves who chose to live there. There are families that do live in apartments, I'm sure of that.
If people wants to preserve the trees and farmlands, THEN there has to be a solution to curb the expensive housing in urban areas. Make efficient housings to allow multiple-families to live in one space (ie-- CONDOS or big apartments). Look at Manhattan-- they used up EVERY PIECE of land-- they don't have any left... so they build upward instead of spreading.
Bakersfield doesn't have forests, so the farmlands are everywhere and it's in a desert region, too. Trees bring up property values.
Why don't we do the same in California?? I think the reason we weren't willing to build upward because of EARTHQUAKES. The tall building is, the deeper the foundation has to be to ensure its stability during an earthquake.
So we are stuck with our solution to spread wide to keep our building/apartment complex/condos close to ground, not 30 floors of apartments.
But five floors of apartment that costs 2,000$ to rent is hurting us as well. An average income cannot provide a house that can fit in a family of two kids reasonable.
Whose fault is that?
Our enconomy? Our Property Taxes? Our fear of tall buildings? Ourselves for not thinking about the lack of farmlands for our future generation to raise their own crops?
Is that our fault that we just WANT to own an afforadable and spacey house for our family to live in without tensions and stresses of high-priced rents and crowded space? Is it our fault that we decided to move FARAWAY so we can drive to urban areas just to work?
Well, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc have lot of highrises under construction and they're in a earthquake zone.
Bakersfield should do the same, because they CAN redevelop downtown and bring some other residents that are interested to live in downtown area with good jobs. The people chose where to live for jobs and cost of living, so it's a complex problem.
===NOT ABOUT BAKERSFIELD BUT STILL===
Plenty of San Diegans are beginning to live 2 hours east from the downtown... in the desert of Anza-Borrego in a small city called Borrego Springs. Their houses used to be under 100,000... and in TWO YEARS, their housing prices RAISED fast that the people in the city cannot afford it anymore... to 350,000. under 100,000 to 350,000 in JUST TWO YEARS?!?! And it is a SMALL TOWN.
I even met some San Diegans who live in Las Vegas and communte DAILY. I met some Deaf people that are communting from Riverside (because it is cheaper, but now they are experencing a spike as well so more and more Deaf people are migrating to Victorville)
This is getting out of control.
It's good to have a lot of trees in the city/metro area for the people to breath fresh filtered air from the smog.
