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

It's no secret that Wal-Mart is running into resistance from communities all over California. But is Wal-Mart getting discouraged?

The San Joaquin Valley will likely lose a considerable amount of farmland to urbanization over the next 40 years no matter what policies the region adopts. However, different policy scenarios can substantially reduce the amount of farmland loss, according to a new report that I h

Throughout California, transit-oriented development (TOD) is the rage. Along the Gold Line in Los Angeles, a New Urbanist project appears to be rising out of the ground at every stop. High-rise condominium buildings are emerging adjacent to light-rail stops in downtown San Diego

Are the stars aligning on growth policy in Sacramento, for better or worse? It feels a little funny to be writing this story yet again. I have been writing it for 16 years, yet the state growth policy universe has changed little. This time, though, there might be something to it.

The day after he was elected to a second term, President Bush conducted a press conference in which he highlighted four issues as the cornerstones of his second-term domestic policy agenda: tort reform, education, the tax code, and Social Security. This list is hardly surprising.

California's population growth never seems to change much - a half-million more people per year, give or take. But where all those people come from and what the growth means for the future of the state are always changing.

There is no more peculiar animal in California housing than the mobile home park. It's a place where residents own their dwelling but rent the land on which the dwelling is located. The dwelling is theoretically moveable, but it's not going anywhere. So the landlords and the resi

Now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has received the California Performance Review, what will he do with it? This massive report is thousands of pages long and contains about 2,500 individual recommendations. Many are no-brainers, some are clearly from some interest group's agend

The average home price in California topped $400,000 in June. This news stimulated the now-familiar headlines about how even beat-up tract homes from the ’60s have become unaffordable for middle-class families. It’s getting to the point that a six-figure income does not guarantee

There is little question that, in most parts of California today, the idea of “smart growth” is winning the political battle. The land-rich areas of the Inland Empire and the Central Valley remain suburban holdouts, but in most of the ret of the state, the core ideas – higher-den