Insight

All California governors try to turn into Pat Brown sooner or later, so it's not surprising that Arnold Schwarzenegger has now done the same. What's surprising is not that Schwarzenegger is using Pat Brown's legacy, but that he's using nearly the same suburban model as Pat Brown

It has now been two years since Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California under perhaps the most peculiar circumstances in American history. His political stock has been dropping rapidly for almost a year, culminating in his across-the-board loss in the November sp

New Jersey is not California. New Jersey is an intense and partisan place filled with rough-and-tumble politics, gritty urban centers both decrepit and revived, political corruption, ethnic tension, and the suburban snobbery that goes with a desire to escape all of the above.

With all the talk these days about New Urbanism in California these days, it is sometimes easy to overlook the old urbanists. These were planners of the 1950s and 1960s who worked in the context of urban renewal and Modernist architecture, trying to fight a rear-guard action agai

Forty years ago, the Watts riots shattered the postwar illusion of California as a middle-class paradise. Combined with other events, the Watts riots led to the political demise of Gov. Pat Brown, the rise of Ronald Reagan, and - sometimes overlooked - the end of California's inv

By the time I actually met Ed Bacon in person, the legendary urban planner who died last week at the age of 95, he was already in his late 80s, cranky and quirky. He had just read my book The Reluctant Metropolis , which reminded him that I had written a magazine article many yea

For more than twenty years, the quintessential formula for the Orange County business park has remained more or less the same: the high-rise office building that affords a good view and a sense of feudal superiority over the masses on the freeway below; the Beverly Hills pasta re

Four weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an expansive view of eminent domain by a 5-4 vote, President Bush went on national television to nominate D.C. Circuit Court Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was in the minority on t

A few weeks ago, property rights advocates lost three big court cases. It's not unusual for June to be an important month for legal opinions because the U.S. Supreme Court wraps up its work before going on summer hiatus. But it is usual for property owners to go oh-for-June.

Most government budget crises get bailed out by increasing tax revenue, and the current situation in California appears to be no exception. With tax receipts on the rise throughout California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to throw several billion dollars into the kitty as

Six months after his re-election, President George W. Bush is seeking to place his distinct imprint on federal urban policy.

The news reports about Measure 37 come blasting out of Oregon almost every day now. Faced with 75 land use claims totaling more than $100 million, Clackamas County in suburban Portland decided to settle the easy ones first - permitting small landowners to subdivide their property