Josh Stephens
Epic S.F. Redevelopment Wins Approval
Submitted by jstephens on 16 August 2010 - 6:19amWhen the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard closed, the United States Navy was steaming home from the South China Sea and the best way to get across San Francisco was in an airborne Mustang GT. It was then, 36 years ago, that the prospect of a massive redevelopment for Hunters Point and adjacent Candlestick Point first sprang to life. And it was just last month that a project was finally approved.
ARB Staff Releases Proposed SB 375 Targets
Submitted by jstephens on 9 August 2010 - 12:50pmThe staff of the California resources board has released a staff report (pdf) and CEQA functional equivalent (pdf) document with its proposals for per capita greenhouse gas emissions targets for the state's four largest MPO's. The report comes roughly two months after ARB staff presented the board with a target range of 5-10 percent per capita reductions for 2020 for the four urban MPOs and "placeholder targets" for those of the Central Valley.
Somewhat unexpectedly, ARB staff has recommended different targets for each of the "big four."
A Strategy Session for Los Angeles
Submitted by jstephens on 5 August 2010 - 10:29amIf you are at all involved with urban planning in Los Angeles you were probably either in the audience or on the panel at last night's "The Future of the Los Angeles City Planning Department (and the City of Los Angeles)" event, sponsored by AIA, APA-L.A., ULI, and Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design. I suppose a third option is that you were stuck in traffic and couldn't make it.
Irvine Embraces Infill
Submitted by jstephens on 2 August 2010 - 10:02amJamboree Road might not become the next Park Avenue, but a new vision plan recently completed by the City of Irvine signals a major shift away from the suburban lifestyle of Orange County. One of the early cities to pioneer the strict segregation of office-park style commercial development from master-planned residential areas, Irvine will be allowing thousands of new residential units into its business core in the coming decades.
Modest Goals for New L.A. Planning Head
Submitted by jstephens on 26 July 2010 - 11:41amAt a press conference at City Hall this morning Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa introduced Michael LoGrande, his nominee to success Gail Goldberg as the city's planning director. At some moments the rhetoric of the mayor and fellow speakers -- including LoGrande, City Council Member Ed Reyes, and Planning Commissioner Bill Roschen, and affordable housing activist Jackie DuPont Walker -- sounded as if they were building the world's next great city.
Other times, their emphasis on customer service made the city sound more like a Nordstrom store than the writhing metropolis that it is.
Villaraigosa Names Michael LoGrande as L.A.'s Next Planning Director
Submitted by jstephens on 23 July 2010 - 10:10pmLos Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is reportedly set to announce his selection of Michael LoGrande as the city's next planning director. A 13-year veteran of the department, LoGrande currently serves as its chief zoning administrator. He replaces Gail Goldberg, who had served as planning director for four years before announcing her retirement three weeks ago.
LoGrande's path to the directorship contrasts with that of Goldberg, who arrived in 2005 to a department far different from the one she is leaving.
One Spreadsheet to Plan Them All
Submitted by jstephens on 18 July 2010 - 9:59pmOf the many raps on urban planning post-World War II, one of the biggest was that it was led by the head and not by the heart. Engineers made precise calculations that yielded efficient highways but not much by way of soul. Though that trend has largely been abandoned, the release of a new, ambitious study may usher in a new approach to empirically based planning.
Joel Kotkin Anticipates How California Will Handle Its Share Of ‘The Next 100 Million’
Submitted by jstephens on 18 July 2010 - 11:23amIt doesn’t matter which superlative you pick: 25 Los Angeleses. 100 San Joses. 2,000 Poways. Nearly three Californias. That’s how many people will be added to the United States population by the year 2050. They are not all going to live in Los Angeles, San Jose, or Poway, but a great many of them are going to live in California, thus pushing the state’s population to about 60 million, according to the state Department of Finance.
MPOs, ARB Hone In On SB 375 Emissions Targets
Submitted by jstephens on 10 July 2010 - 7:44amAs national debates about climate change have raged and federal action has grown ever more unlikely in the shadow of -- take your pick -- economic woes, mid-term election jitters, and the blackening of the Gulf of Mexico, the State of California last week edged closer to implementing its own land use based program to curtail climate change. Per a June 30 deadline stipulated in Senate Bill 375, the staff of the California Air Resources Board (ARB) released its draft regional targets for carbon emissions reductions.
The targets are based on what participants have said is an extraordinarily sophisticated scenario planning and modeling.
San Fernando Valley Cities Join Forces
Submitted by jstephens on 9 July 2010 - 9:36pmWhen the San Fernando Valley portion of the City of Los Angeles attempted to form its own city in 2002, one of five names nominated for what would have been the nation’s sixth-largest city was “Camelot.” This for a region most famous for being the vapid home of Valley girls.
Although Measure F (CP&DR Insight Vol. 16 No. 10 Oct 2001) failed on both sides of the hills that separate the Valley from the rest of Los Angeles, nearly a decade later a far less grandiose, but perhaps more pragmatic, solution has emerged to give a unified voice to the Valley and some of its neighboring cities.