Downtown planning

It has taken 25 years, but various government and private investments have turned downtown Modesto into a center for the arts, entertainment and dining. Still, there is a long way to go before downtown is completely "back" from the dead. » read more | add to cart

San Ramon City Center is an ambitious, 39-acre mixed-use project in the Contra Costa County city of 50,000 people. CP&DR Contributing Editor Morris Newman doesn't think much of the project, but he concedes that he might be asking for a little too much.

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Almost 30 years ago, an ambitious young developer named Rob Maguire created an audacious proposal for the greatest development project never built in downtown Los Angeles. Responding to a request from the Community Redevelopment Agency for a development plan atop Bunker Hill, Maguire put together a magnificent team – including most of the leading architects and planners of the day – and proposed combining a reconstruction of Bunker Hill’s historic urban fabric with a few tall office towers.

The project was never built, but it wasn’t long before Maguire set the tone for big-time development in L.A.

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Although redevelopment often seems like a never-ending process, redevelopment of Old Town Monrovia is nearly complete. The city is now switching its focus to redevelopment of an 80-acre area about one mile south of Old Town and studying how to tie together the two areas. » read more | add to cart

A slew of land use issues are converging on Stockton, an older Central Valley city that is simultaneously struggling to revitalize its downtown and deal with a political environment that is both pro-growth and environmentally conscious. » read more | add to cart

A roundup of green news: San Francisco may soon have the most stringent environmental building standards in the country; the state's "million solar roofs initiative" gets a slow start; new Oakland office tower would be among the tallest and greenest.

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Nearing the 20th anniversary of its incorporation, the high desert city of Hesperia is simultaneously confronting its past and future. The city continues to install infrastructure that was never provided in the first place and is working on a plan to create what would be the first real downtown in a city of 86,000 people. At the same time, Hesperia is considering plans from two developers that would open up a whole new part of town for growth and potentially increase the city’s population by two-thirds. » read more | add to cart

The downtown in the East Bay city of Hayward has many features that any redevelopment agency would envy — an Amtrak station, a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, historic buildings, and a modern grocery store with additional shops. Soon to come is a 12-screen movie theatre and more retail shops. But what may be helping the downtown area even more is years of work to create additional housing in and around downtown, within walking distance of BART and its connections to jobs in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties.

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Just as a well-aimed bowling ball can be expected to knock down all ten pins and boost a bowler to a top score, many planners believe that a well-written zoning ordinance can steer the housing market toward socially beneficial ends. There is a difference between a bowling lane, however, and a downtown area. » read more | add to cart

Seattle-based planner, architect and journalist Mark Hinshaw identifies a back-to-the-urban-core trend, in which people who have rejected suburban uniformity are choosing to live instead in dense, diverse urban environments. He explains his findings and theories in an interview with CP&DR. » read more | add to cart