Stephen Svete

Back in the early 1990s, regionalism was the hot planning topic. Championed by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, regionalism sought to organize a range of planning functions traditionally managed at the state and local levels into newly defined “regions” that would better reflect actual human activity and social function.

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The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities – one Tucson and one in Orange County – illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

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Now that the smoke has cleared from last fall’s Southern California firestorms, one might assume that fire protection experts and elected leaders are busy working on methods to ensure that developments in fire hazard areas are better protected. That assumption, however, is only partly true.

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Developers are building residences in California at the fastest pace in years. From recent economic reports suggesting a slowing economy, the construction might appear to be risky. But builders are banking on two irrefutable facts: There is no end in sight to the state's population growth, and all of those people need a place to live.

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This summer, another huge ice shelf broke off the north polar ice cap and began drifting out to sea. The event made world news because it added to the mounting, tangible evidence of a phenomenon that the Bush administration ignores but that California’s government cannot afford to dismiss: Climate change.

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With all of the static energy burning away in today’s world, it’s no wonder a growing number of communities want to stay in the dark. A handful of communities are working with educational organizations and lighting manufacturers to dim the lights in an effort to limit nighttime lighting pollution.

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Whoever said that art imitates life has not visited one of Southern California’s neighborhood cybercafes, where, according to some planners and police, the reverse is true. It is in these mainly blue collar, immigrant enclaves where video games and youth culture have combined into a lively and sometimes violent activity, thereby creating the state’s latest LULU (locally undesirable land use).

In predictable fashion, cities are responding with ordinances, and businesses are fighting back through the court

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After two years of life under the Bush Administration, what we might call the "General Plan" for American is in the midst of a serious update. And it's not surprising that "smart growth" doesn't appear to be on the list.

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The time has come to call rail transit a planner’s pipe dream. Californians have poured tax money into rail for more than a decade, apparently on a well-intentioned aspiration that if we build tracks, we will ride the train. But according to a U.S. Census report on trip-to-work travel, Californians have not found the train station.

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Urban transportation panacea or mobility-oriented snake oil? The Segway Human Transporter is either, depending upon whom you ask. The device either will change the way we get around in cities, or it will be the pedestrian-version of the Edsel. No matter, we should gird ourselves for statewide debates during coming months regarding regulation of the Segway HT (or simply "the Segway").

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