Vol. 20 No. 05 May 2005

Six months after his re-election, President George W. Bush is seeking to place his distinct imprint on federal urban policy.

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Donald Shoup is an urban planning professor at UCLA, where he headed the Institute of Transportation Studies from 1996 to 2001. For more than 20 years, Shoup has studied automobile parking policies. Recently, the American Planning Association published Shoup's new book, The High Cost of Free Parking, in which he condemns off-street parking requirements and argues for charging market-rate prices for curb parking.

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A lawsuit challenging a building permit granted by San Francisco was not filed and served before the statute of limitations deadline, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court also held that the city's notice of decision and order did not deceive the project opponent regarding the deadline.

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A billboard company has lost a lawsuit seeking damages from the City of Los Angeles for planting trees that obstructed visibility of six billboards.

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Raise the topic of suburban sprawl in California, and you most likely launch a conversation about the San Fernando Valley, coastal Orange County, or the bedroom communities inland of San Francisco Bay. Only belatedly, if at all, will the conversation wander to the high desert, historically home only to scattered, windblown settlements scraped out of sand and creosote bush.

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The meetings of two Malibu City Council members whom the council had charged with reviewing and negotiating over a land use plan prepared by the Coastal Commission were not subject to the state's open meeting law, an appellate court panel has ruled.

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I recently had an unsettling experience in a parking lot in Lompoc. I was standing in the middle of an enormous asphalt parking lot, surrounded by large buildings emblazoned with the logos of national retail chains, and, for a split second, I didn't know where I was.

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A recent ruling by the Department of Industrial Relations regarding labor rates for subsidized housing projects might be an advantage for affordable housing development, especially in rural areas. However, the situation regarding “prevailing wage” requirements might best be described as fluid.

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Kern County should have prepared an environmental impact report before adopting an ordinance regulating the disposal of sewage sludge on agricultural land, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

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A City of San Francisco decision to deny an application for a cell phone antenna has been upheld in part by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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