This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . State Ceases Effort to Recoup $4 Billion in Federal Funds for High Speed Rail Henceforth, the state will no longer expect the federal government to help fund California High Speed Rail. This summer, the Trump administration announced that the federal gover

Top Stories 2025  In a perfect world, urban planning and wildfires would scarcely make acquaintance with each other. Settlements would be built far from fuel, with well managed buffer zones. Building materials would be resilient. Escape routes would be clear. And humanity and nature would live in perfect harmony.  Alas.  Last year’s wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena were not the biggest by land area, nor were they the most deadly. They were, though, the most costly,

So, in the battle between the California Environmental Quality Act and the Housing Accountability Act, which law wins?

The City of Davis doesn’t have to do an environmental analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act in order to move playground equipment from one location to another.

This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . Push for Potential Home Insurance Ballot Measure Fizzles Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog withdrew its Insurance Policyholder Bill of Rights, which would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who fireproof their homes following

CP&DR Vol. 40 No. 12 December 2025 Report

An annexation and zoning plan that would constitute the most dramatic expansion of a California city in recent memory will, most likely, be more incremental than monumental. Last week, the Fresno City Council considered the proposed Southeast Development Area (SEDA), a 9,0000-acre swath that would annex farmland for urban development, including up to 45,000 residential units.

Last week, state demographers reported that California’s population had increased again in 2024 – if only slightly – making the third year in a row the population had gone up. That’s a market change from the pandemic years, when the state’s population dropped significantly for the first time ever.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Angelenos of a certain age may remember Allan Malamud, whose column in the Herald-Examiner , and later the Los Angeles Times , was called “Notes on a Scorecard.” He jotted down scattered thoughts and observations—some amusing, some profound—over the course of nine innings and shared them with readers. I recently attended the annual journalists forum at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , which entailed two days of discussion on all things land use aroun

Apparently a city can delegate final approval of its housing element to the city manager – and not hold a final public hearing – so long as the final changes as a result of negotiating with the Department of Housing and Community Development are relatively minor.

Carlsbad’s growth management plan – dating from the 1980s – is often held up as a model of integrating private residential growth with public infrastructure. (It’s even highlighted in Guide To California Planning.) Times have changed in the last 40 years and local growth control advocates say the Carlsbad City Council has not stuck to the spirit of the initiative. But the growth control folks keep losing in court.

This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . Los Angeles Extends Adaptive Reuse Policy Citywide Los Angeles will expand its adaptive reuse policy, allowing office and commercial buildings to be converted into housing citywide, per a unanimous vote of the City Council. Previously, these conversions we