Bill Fulton's blog

As Barack Obama would be the first to say, you can’t underestimate the importance of North Carolina anymore. At 9.1 million people and counting, it’s now the 10th most populous state in the nation, and it has added a million people just since the 2000 Census. Another few boom years and North Carolina – along with Georgia – will pass Michigan in population.
» read more

Here’s a puzzler for you: What land use creates more pedestrians than any other?

Transit stations? Office buildings? Condos?

Try airports!

Every single person who arrives at an airport from out of town arrives without a car. At many airports, the first vehicle in which people ride after landing is a train of some sort. So what’s the rush to put them into cars?
» read more

Even on a typical day, Las Vegas often seems like an extension of Los Angeles. Throngs of tourists arrive via car on the I-15 each day, and it’s not uncommon to walk down the Strip and run into people you know.

This week, however, the American Planning Association conference – being conducted at two hotels along the Strip – has often seemed like an extension of Los Angeles as well. Not only is the conference flooded with planners from L.A., but there are so many sessions on L.A. that it could become a whole separate track!
» read more

All the urban planners in the country are in Las Vegas this week, and it’s clear they have a love/hate relationship with the place.

Vegas is kitschy and over the top, and at first glance it always looks like the least sustainable place on the planet. Vegas is acres of neon plastered across the front of 30-story casinos in the 100-degree desert – each casino more outlandishly upscale than the other – along with the occasional lake and 200-foot water fountain.
» read more

OK, so everybody’s bought into the idea that Sacramento’s Blueprint process is a national model of regional smart growth planning. But what happens next in this cooler-than-we-ever-imagined metropolis? Depending on who you talk to the answer is:

» read more

The passage of AB 32 – California’s climate change law – has focused the attention of Left Coast policy wonks like a laser beam on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And as we have reported over and over again on this website, land use patterns are at the center of this debate. But adapting to a warmer world may actually be a bigger land use policy question.

» read more

Do ya think that the California redevelopment crowd might be a little nervous?

It sure seems that way, and here’s why:

• Under a state law passed in 1993, some of the oldest redevelopment project areas will have to start going out of business next year.

• The state has a $16 billion budget deficit and the state’s finance wonks are eyeing redevelopment’s tax increment money – the property tax revenues generated inside redevelopment project areas.
» read more

It looks like the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral race has begun. And it looks a lot like the 1989 race. In the role of an incumbent determined to bring L.A. to the next level as a “world city” – the Tom Bradley role -- is Antonio Villaraigosa. And in the role of a crusading neighborhood activist seeking to protect the city from overdevelopment – the Zev Yaroslavsky role – is, well, Zev Yaroslavsky.

» read more

Add Tucson to the list of cities in the Intermountain West that fear California-style growth – and is thinking about California-style solutions to forestall California-style problems.

» read more

Will transportation and land-use planning get its share of dough from federal climate change programs? Not if the coal industry has its way.

That was the message from a Capitol Hill staffer at a plenary session of the American Public Transit Association's annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday. To combat the coal industry, smart growth and public transit lobbyists will have to prove they have an important national asset that can help meet the climate change challenge.
» read more