At the rate things are going, cities in California might not just be broke -- they might become an endangered species. This month, a grand jury recommended that governance of the tiny city of Maricopa be turned over to the Kern County Board of Supervisors. 

Among the many counterintuitive theories that Jane Jacobs dispensed was that of the evils of parks: if designed and situated poorly, they could turn into vast dead spaces where unsavory characters could congregate and mischief could ensure. She preferred, instead, smaller, more intimate spaces with close connections to their communities.  If Jacobs loved Washington Square Park, then she most likely would have swooned over "parklets." 

As one of the most prominent organizations lobbying on environmental and land use issues in Sacramento, the Planning and Conservation League has led campaigns on everything from global warming to public health to local dam removal. Its history includes the promotion of such landmark measures as the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Act, and Prop 12, the 2000 Parks Bond measure. 

Last week the Nevada Legislature—usually not an entity with much to say on California land use—issued a decision that would make King Solomon blush.  After 31 years as a supposedly equal party in the Bi-State Compact governing the Lake Tahoe basin, Nevada has taken its first steps towards pulling out of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and thereby negating the agreement under which the two states have governed and managed Lake Tahoe and the surrounding basin. 

With a surface level at 227 feet below sea level and shoreline temperatures often rising past 120 degrees, the Salton Sea could be mistaken for the headwaters of the River Styx. Sometimes, concentrations of salt in the brackish lake, formed by a not-quite-natural overflow of the nearby Colorado River a century ago, asphyxiate resident tilapia fish by the thousands. Currently California's largest lake--larger, even, than Tahoe--the Salton Sea itself may soon dry up, leaving a

In order to avoid having your takings claim dismissed, your timing must be just right. Unfortunately for Colony Cove Properties, LLC, the timing was off, and its multifaceted takings claim was rejected by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal for being both too late to challenge a rent control ordinance and too early to challenge how a city applied its ordinance. 

Even if it takes a village to raise a child, apparently it does not take a planning department to raise a village. Or even a city of villages.  The City of San Diego's Planning Department won national acclaim for its 2008 "City of Villages" general plan update, which was guided by outgoing Planning Director Bill Anderson and his predecessor, Gail Goldberg. But budget constraints have compelled Mayor Jerry Sanders to order that the department be shut down and merged with

If, as the adage goes, it's impossible to tell the dancer from the dance, then it might be even harder to tell the SCS from the RTP. 

Even with the preoccupation over the state budget--and especially the fate of redevelopment--Sacramento lawmakers have managed to advance a typically broad array of bills related to land use.  Several of those bills focus on redevelopment reform, most notably Sen. Alan Lowenthal's SB 450, which seeks to preserve funds for affordable housing, and Sen. Rod Wright's SB 286, aimed at comprehensive reform -- but not elimination -- of the state's redevelopment system. Both bil

For years, major cities, especially in California, have held their ground in what some consider an unwelcome onslaught by Walmart stores and their like. In the City of San Diego, however, Walmart has been making one of its most significant plays yet in attempting to establish itself in urban California. Its recent announcement of its intention to build up to a dozen stores comes amid a political battle that has raged for a half-decade.

The words "pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure" probably cannot motivate the masses the same way an unguarded 8-year-old in a faded crosswalk can. That's understandable. According to the Centers for Disease Control, two-thirds of drivers nationwide exceed speed limits around schools. The result is that one child ages 5-15 per 200,000 are killed as pedestrians each year. 

A state appellate court has ruled that a city and its redevelopment agency's approval of a term sheet for the development of a professional football stadium was not a "project approval" that required review under the California Environmental Quality Act <p> </p> Although the term sheet was detailed, and substantial sums had been spent on consultants leading up to that agreement, it did not commit the city to a definite course of action, the Sixth District Court of Appeal rule