For now, the environmentalists have won their lawsuit challenging the San Diego Association of Governments' sustainable communities plan (which is part of SANDAG's regional transportation plan). SANDAG has appealed the ruling to the California Supreme Court.

Two San Diego agencies that lost recent appellate cases on climate planning have decided to seek review by the state Supreme Court.

With California in one of its worst droughts in recorded history, cuts have fallen swiftly on users of surface water, but the effects on groundwater will percolate more slowly. Unlike surface water sources, including deltas, rivers, lakes, and basins, groundwater has remained largely unregulated in the state, even though it accounts for about a third of California's total water supply. That will begin to change soon under the , signed into law this past September by Gov. Jerr

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system is slowly making its way to San Jose, although the journey there continues to be bumpy. The first trains will arrive to one northeastern San Jose neighborhood in 2017, but whether they'll ever serve more of the city remains an open questio

This recruitment will close at midnight on Sunday, January 4, 2015 .

The State Supreme Court heard oral arguments December 2 in the major Berkeley Hillside CEQA exemptions case, focusing on the legal significance of the term "unusual circumstances". While the genesis of the case is a single residence, the ruling may have statewide impact on the application of exceptions to categorical exemptions from CEQA. Thus, the case has attracted interest from environmental advocates, public agencies, preservation activists, and the development community

Some important institutions got an awkward surprise last August when U.S. District Judge James Otero ruled that the Veterans Administration's sumptuous 387-acre West Los Angeles Campus was reserved for the provision of health care to U.S. military veterans, to the exclusion of several third-party lease agreements. His order sided with a group of chronically homeless veterans living with mental disabilities and/or brain injuries who argued that veterans like themselves had a p

With a split decision in a long-awaited case, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) should have analyzed a gubernatorial executive order on greenhouse gas emissions in the environmental impact report on its long-range transportation plan.

California American Water won clearance from the Coastal Commission on November 12 to dig its disputed slant well from the Cemex sand mining plant in North Marina on the Monterey Peninsula. The well would allow feasibility studies for a desalination plant fed by sand-filtered water to be drawn from under Monterey Bay. The project had some unbudging opponents but received support from some conservation groups, in part because it called for subsurface rather than open-water int

So, one of the biggest questions in planning and development today – in California and elsewhere – is what accounts for the Millenials' preferences for urban living and less driving. Is it generational? Or a lousy economy? "I think our answer is yes," says Brian Taylor, an urban planning professor at UCLA and head of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies there.  

A ruling is expected any day now on a major appellate court test of a key early response to California's SB 375 law on greenhouse gas reduction. The case of Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) was argued before California's Fourth District Court of Appeal on August 14 and submitted August 27 , so the court is nearing its 90-day deadline to reach a decision.

Officials with the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) have created a "new normal" baseline for discussing possible changes to CEQA transportation metrics under SB 743. They've succeeded pretty much by having the stamina to keep discussing their August 6 preliminary discussion draft. Over. And over. And over. For three months. In an extended public workshopping process the key OPR drafters -- Chris Calfee and Chris Ganson -- have spoken before many different California grou