Blogs

According to the “traffic on the fives” radio station, I was avoiding all the bad freeways, just like I was supposed to. Apparently, there were no crashes or unusual conditions on my chosen route.

Still, the needle on my speedometer hovered just below 10 mph. Although I was in the midst of five lanes of brake lights, the alternatives were worse.

A little more than a month ago, in a blog from the CCAPA conference, I wrote about a panel that discussed the design of streets from a planner’s perspective. I promised to follow-up with some links that presenters offered, and I have finally gotten around to posting those links. These are great resources for planners, engineers, developers and anyone interested in how their neighborhood might function better.

From CP&DR's Morris Newman:

Personally, I think there’s a way for Disney to make lemonade out of the lemons of this dispute over housing near Disneyland in Anaheim. Given that affordable housing is a clearly one-way ticket to blight and criminality -- at least according to some critics in Anaheim -- Disney should capitalize on the setting, and "theme" its third gate as “Disney’s Urban Adventure.”  

Downtown Ocean Beach seems like a coddled momma’s boy afraid to grow up. The small San Diego community just south of Mission Bay is a curious little enclave where the outdated downtown clashes with the cost of housing. The residents seem in denial about the hustle-bustle of capitalism and stubbornly resist the modern amenities like Starbucks. Shoes are optional and suntans are mandatory.

Southern California is in flames again – it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even remember which fire the soot on my car is coming from – and makes me wonder once again why we’ve given up on land use planning as a way to reduce fire risk in such a fire-prone region.

As I write this, the current conflagration has cost more than 1,000 homes and forced the evacuation of more than a half-million people. Will Californians come out of this catastrophic event thinking that we need to use land use planning to avoid fire-prone areas?

Hollywood has finally made it official: Los Angeles is undeniably an urban place – one that’s beginning to look and feel more and more like Manhattan.

It’s one thing when we urban planners say it and point to loft conversions in Downtown L.A. But when NBC-Universal confirms it, you know it’s true.

A couple of weeks ago, NBC-Universal announced that the NBC studios and West Coast news operation is going to move – from old suburb to new urb.

California is an urban state, but it also has about a million small cities. All right, maybe not a million. Actually, there are 377 incorporated cities in California with fewer than 75,000 people.

Get ready for the Great Eminent Domain War of 2008.

Jim Madaffer, the San Diego city councilmember who’s the incoming president of the League of California Cities, traveled all the way to Ventura Friday – by train – to encourage local elected officials from the Central Coast to help collect signatures for the League’s eminent domain initiative.

The housing market slowdown appears to be running straight into the state's new flood control laws. It makes one wonder which way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is close to homebuilders, will turn when the collision occurs.

There were lots of highlights, and some lowlights, at my first state planning conference. Here I list the best and the worst of my experience at the California Chapter, American Planning Association conference last week in San Jose. I’ll let you decide which is a highlight and which is a lowlight.

1. Flew up Monday morning (October 1) after playing musical chairs to get a seat in Southwest Airline’s “open seating.” I was surprised the cab driver from the airport knew San Jose was the 10th largest city in the country.