In the latest installment in a feud between neighboring Big Sur property owners, the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled that the Coastal Commission did not make the proper findings for approving a house in an environmentally sensitive area.

After 76 years afloat, the RMS Queen Mary surely still draws stares from the cargo ship crews that call at the Port of Long Beach, where the Queen remains one of Southern California's more incongruous tourist attractions. Having sailed the North Atlantic under the Cunard flag, the ship has, since 1968, served simultaneously as a hotel, museum, event venue, and elegant icon for an otherwise working-class Southern California port city.

A challenge to a large power plant in western Riverside County has been rejected by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the plaintiffs could not contest the project in federal district court.

A San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District permitting process for dairies has been rejected by the Fifth District Court of Appeal because the district did not conduct an adequate assessment of public health impacts.

A 7-year-old City of Los Angeles ordinance prohibiting new off-site signs has been upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the argument that the ban combined with a city contract permitting advertising at city-owned bus stops violated the First Amendment.

Not since Lyndon Johnson more than 40 years ago has any president come into office with anything like the sky-high expectations about reforming urban policy that Barack Obama brings. But the various federal policies related to growth and development have many constituencies – urban, suburban, and rural – and it is not yet clear that Obama can meld them in a meaningful way.

The development of affordable housing is inherently difficult. Projects typically require multiple funding sources, face neighborhood opposition, and are closely watched by both skeptics and state housing officials. Yet California's need for additional affordable housing is undeniable, despite the crash in real estate prices. So CP&DR shares this look at three different projects to offer lessons for anyone involved in providing housing affordable to people of modest means

There is a new gold rush in California. Rather than extracting minerals from the ground, the new prospectors are hoping to exploit California's abundant sunshine and wind. From the southern Cascade Mountains of far northern California to the desert along the Mexico border, utilities, start-up companies and entrepreneurs are proposing scores of large-scale solar thermal, photovoltaic and wind projects to generate electricity.

Although gigantic state budget deficits are threatening to stall thousands of public works projects in California, one major effort appears to remain on track: Courthouse construction. The $5 billion program for replacing, rehabilitating or expanding 41 courthouses has its own funding source in the form of civil filing fees and criminal penalties.

The City of Riverside's plan for spending $6 million in federal aid for foreclosures promises participation in nearly every category of rescue listed by the the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including rehabilitation, readying properties for sale to homeowners, and even demolishing properties that are too far gone and selling the land to Habitat for Humanity, the volunteer home building group.

Five million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is the target – at least for now – that is likely to drive "smart growth"-style land use planning in California over the next few years. It's the tentative reduction target that the California Air Resources Board has assigned to the land use sector in order to help meet the state's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals by 2020.

A mobile home park owner in San Luis Obispo County has won a state court order for a new county hearing on a rent increase. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Manufactured Home Communities is due a new hearing because it did not have the opportunity to cross-examine tenants who testified against the proposed rent increases at an earlier county hearing.