A great deal of literature has already anointed the hero in the fight against climate change: the city. Beginning with David Owens' Green Metropolis and including the work of Paul Hawken, Ed Glaeser, and countless others, the city has come to symbolize all the ways that humans can live densely and tread lightly on the Earth. 

These accolades might be premature. In his brief but wide-ranging book Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in a Hotter Future, Matthew Kahn renders no such heroes. 

Alvaro Huerta grew up in a forlorn place, where urban planning surely failed. Living in Los Angeles' Ramona Gardens housing project, the son of Mexican immigrants, Huerta read only two books and wrote a single two-page paper through 13 years of elementary and secondary school in the public school system. But he knew what he was missing, and he is now in the process of completing his doctorate at UC Berkeley's Department of City & Regional Planning. Currently a visiting scholar at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center, Huerta has emerged as a leading voice for disenfranchised urban poor. Last fall, the American Planning Association awarded Huerta its national Advancing Diversity & Social Change award for his service to the planning world and to minority communities. 

When you are hog butcher for the world, you become Chicago. When you make bacon and sausages for Southern California, you face a rather different fate. 

Assembly Speaker John Perez introduced last month AB 46, a bill that would take the singular action of forcing the disincorporation of a city that many consider noxious in more ways than one: the Los Angeles County city of Vernon. 

For over 100 years Vernon has operated more as an industrial park than a traditional city, and city leaders have vowed to fight -- and even sue -- to maintain cityhood and its distinctive business environment. 

As the clock ticks down to an imminent -- but as yet unscheduled -- vote on Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal, localities and their respective redevelopment agencies have been taking frantic evasive measures to try to shield funds and properties from liquidation and transfer to the state. 

If Gov. Jerry Brown gets his way in the Legislature in the coming days, he and the state will face a conundrum to make a Zen master's head spin: Is it illegal to transfer funds from agencies that no longer exist?

The governor has thus far been unyielding in his effort to eliminate the state's redevelopment agencies. In doing so he hopes to recoup up to $1.7 billion to help offset the state's estimated $26 billion deficit. Negotiations are ongoing at the Capitol, with a handful of Republican legislators--the so-called "GOP 5"�still in discussions with the Democratic governor. A vote is expected any day now. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, March 9, here are the following results from local elections related to land use in California: 

Beverly Hills Measure 2P - Approved; Measure 3P - Rejected

2P Two Hours of Free Parking Initiative; approved, 3,168-1,963 

3P Three Hours of Free Parking for Residents of Beverly Hills, Measure 3P; rejected, 1,436-3,539

The debate over the fate of redevelopment has called into question the usefulness of redevelopment in places such as, say, Coronado or Palm Desert. But there is no doubt that blight still infects large swaths of the state's major cities -- and that those cities are deeply concerned about the fate of their redevelopment agencies. 

In response to the release of a draft bill that would make the elimination of redevelopment official, the mayors of the state's nine largest cities today sent a stern letter [.pdf] to Gov. Jerry Brown asking him once again to reconsider his intention to eliminate their redevelopment agencies -- along with nearly 400 others across the state. 

 As expected, supporters of redevelopment in California wasted no time responding to a scathing report released today by State Controller John Chiang. This afternoon California Redevelopment Association re-iterated its longstanding contention that redevelopment creates jobs, stokes local economies, and provides a net economic benefit to the state despite what Gov. Jerry Brown claims is a $1.7 billion annual drain on state coffers. 

Throughout the now eight-week battle over the fate of redevelopment, both sides have issued claims about the efficacy -- or lack thereof -- of redevelopment but have relied on scant data to do so. Today the empirical analysis of redevelopment has, according to the office of State Controller John Chiang, become quite a bit clearer. 

Five weeks ago Chiang initiated a limited-scope review of redevelopment and today released findings that are highly critical of redevelopment. Among other criticisms, the findings directly contradict claims that redevelopment is responsible for the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs -- because, according to the report, agencies have done little, or nothing, to track job creation. 

With apologies to Sir Isaac Newton, we may finally find out what happens when an irresistible force runs headlong into an immovable object.