Stephen Svete

Back in the early 1990s, regionalism was the hot planning topic. Championed by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, regionalism sought to organize a range of planning functions traditionally managed at the state and local levels into newly defined "regions" that would better reflect actual human activity and social function.

The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities - one Tucson and one in Orange County - illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

Now that the smoke has cleared from last fall's Southern California firestorms, one might assume that fire protection experts and elected leaders are busy working on methods to ensure that developments in fire hazard areas are better protected. That assumption, however, is only partly true.