Over the past month, California cities have been learning the fate of countless redevelopment projects—touching everything from graffiti-removal programs to nine-figure transit-oriented developments to billion-dollar stadiums. For many, the news is not good – especially now that the California Department of Finance has gotten into the act. 

When Axl Rose first stepped off the bus from Indiana, took the stage at the Whisky, and screeched out the opening lines of "Welcome to the Jungle," he probably wasn't thinking about parking. But he might as well have been. 

Since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, when the Environmental Protection Agency told a property owner to jump, in some cases the property owner's only possible response was "how high?" No so anymore.  Last month, in Sackett vs. Environmental Protection Agency , the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling that places a limitation on how far the EPA can go to compel property owners to comply with the Clean Water Act. 

The adjective "short" best describes California's land use and CEQA statutes of limitation, and Okasaki v. City of Elk Grove illustrates this principle perfectly. 

The premise behind the categorical exemptions in the California Environmental Quality Act for infill and single-family projects is that projects in relatively dense, established urban areas are unlikely to create major impacts. According to a recent decision, this premise has its limits.  

The definition of wetland would seem to be self-evident: wet land. If only it were that easy in California.  From vernal pools that slowly diminish in the Central Valley heat to brackish estuaries separating ocean from land, California's topography includes some of the most varied types of wetlands imaginable. Their numbers and varieties baffle that which governmental regulations such as the federal Clean Water Act describe. 

With the American Planning Association National Conference arriving in Los Angeles tomorrow, it's likely that more planners than usual will not just be attending lectures and idly networking but rather will be actively, and sometimes desperately, trying to remain in the profession. 

Loath as I am to make grand pronouncements, I think Bay Meadows, the 83-acre project in San Mateo, is possibly the best plan I've seen for a transit oriented development. 

For many jurisdictions that are part of California's "Big Four" metropolitan planning organizations, Senate Bill 375 has ushered in new, unprecedented degrees of collaboration. But whereas SB 375 makes a regional planning revolution for many, for the jurisdictions of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the SCS is business as usual. 

In San Diego County, a dispute involving a long overdue application for a conditional use permit has resulted in the closure of a church that had been essentially squatting in a trailer park for over 25 years. 

Having already prepared one environmental impact report that was set aside by a court, the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea undertook a new EIR for the purposes of evaluating the impacts of the city disposing, by sale or lease, of a historic mansion. 

As the adage goes, they may not be making any more real estate these days. But, for some bargain-hunters, the death of redevelopment may be the next best thing.