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The passage of AB 130 and SB 131 – the budget trailer bills from last summer – has shifted the landscape for planning in California in new ways. And although the impetus for these shifts came from the state’s desire to encourage more housing, there are pros and cons for both local governments and housing developers from the deal.

After a one-year hiatus, the Land Use Law and Planning Conference , sponsored for over 30 years by UCLA and now by the W. P. Carey Center for Real Estate and Finance at Arizona State Unviersity and the California Planning & Development Report, is returning to downtown Los Angeles Friday, January 23.   For its long history, the conference has served a crucial purpose for California’s land-use professionals: explain and discuss the myriad of new laws and legal cases that arise

Gov. Gavin Newsom released his last proposed budget Friday, with an emphasis on a the consolidated housing agency he promised to create - The new Housing and Homeless Agency would be spun off from a larger agency that also covers business and consumer affairs, with the Department of Housing and Community Development sitting in the new housing agency.

Top Stories 2025  In a perfect world, urban planning and wildfires would scarcely make acquaintance with each other. Settlements would be built far from fuel, with well managed buffer zones. Building materials would be resilient. Escape routes would be clear. And humanity and nature would live in perfect harmony.  Alas.  Last year’s wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena were not the biggest by land area, nor were they the most deadly. They were, though, the most costly,

An annexation and zoning plan that would constitute the most dramatic expansion of a California city in recent memory will, most likely, be more incremental than monumental. Last week, the Fresno City Council considered the proposed Southeast Development Area (SEDA), a 9,0000-acre swath that would annex farmland for urban development, including up to 45,000 residential units.

Last week, state demographers reported that California’s population had increased again in 2024 – if only slightly – making the third year in a row the population had gone up. That’s a market change from the pandemic years, when the state’s population dropped significantly for the first time ever.

Since Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement a few weeks ago, he has been hailed - and reviled - as the Court's "great liberal voice" of the past couple of decades. But especially in land use, Stevens' legacy rests with not only his ardent support of government regulatory power, but also his skill in mustering five votes, on a pretty conservative court, in favor of aggressive use of land use regulation.

A proposed development in Newport Beach that has become a crucible for the California Coastal Commission was overwhelmingly rejected, 9-1. 

Was Tuesday's election the turning point in the San Francisco density battles?  There's been a lot of talk lately about how the city's longtime policy of controlling new development may be outdated now that it's the most expensive city in the country. And in the election, a ffordable housing, urban density, and short-term housing rentals all prevailed . In fact, m ore people voted on land use measures yesterday in the City and County of San Francisco than in the rest of the

Major reforms of RHNA process and housing element enforcement are proposed.

13 bills are included. Two would permit tax-increment-style financing and entitlement incentives for adaptive reuse and commercial-to-industrial conversations. Those bills are already in the Senate.

In the 20 or so cities where growth and development was on the ballot, voters mostly sided with anti-development forces. San Diego and Monterey Park were the exceptions.