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

According to the state Department of Finance, California had 532,000 more residents at the end of 2003 than it had at the beginning. This has been going on for quite a while in California. What is changing is where and how people live. In some parts of the state, we are seeing a

Many years ago, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the numbers involved in modern society, humor columnist Russell Baker suggested that we should replace all numbers greater than 10,000 with the word "lotsa." As in, McDonald's has sold lotsa hamburgers. Social Security entitlements

There's no denying it anymore: California has entered the infill age. Suburban development still continues apace, especially in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. But most of the state is engaged in the process of adding more residents to existing neighborhoods and existin

To many urban planners, the "mixed-use" development project is a kind of Holy Grail, a development that combines residential units with commercial space into one seamless project where people can both live and work. Although other ideas are also important to planners seeking to c

The economy may be a little sluggish, but housing prices throughout California have not stopped going up. So it's not surprising that cities and counties throughout California appear to have developed a new interest in "inclusionary zoning" programs, which require housing develop

The wildfires of late October and early November - which some fire experts claim were the worst in the state's history - have stimulated a whole new round of debate about whether and how to permit urban development in areas with naturally high fire risk.

Despite a budget deficit so large that it triggered the first gubernatorial recall in California history, the administration of Gov. Gray Davis has shown scant interest in stimulating the economy. But with the chaos in Sacramento - and the fact that elected officials have a small