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The frenzy of housing legislation adopted in recent years, designed to increase the zoned capacities of California, has had ironic consequences for many planning departments: a shortage of the very planners who are needed to implement those laws locally.

Any planner in California who has followed the various sagas of high speed rail knows better than to daydream too much about station-area planning. The state’s north-south system, approved many years ago, is woefully behind schedule and over-budget, much to the dismay of cities in the Central Valley. But, in a different corner of the state excitement is building — possibly with good reason. Last month, Brightline West, a privately developed high-speed rail line connecting Rancho Cucamonga with Las Vegas, received $2.5 billion in private activity bonds from the U.S. Department of Transportation, bringing the $12-billion project one step closer to groundbreaking. All told, the project has received nearly $9 billion in federal loans and grants. Though various versions of Brightline West project have come and gone since 2005, optimism is running high now. The company already opened a line in Florida — connecting South Florida with Orlando — and believes that connecting the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas could, finally, usher in the era of high-speed rail in the United States. Brightly expects to hire 11,000 construction workers in the coming months. And, for Rancho Cucamonga Deputy City Manager Matt Burris, the progress is even more palpable than that. Burris said that, recently, Brightline workers have been taking soil samples in and around the station area. “It was pretty cool to see a drill rig,” said Burris. “That’s serious work. They are moving forward.” If those soil samples give way to a ribbon-cutting on-schedule in 2027 — Brightline wants to operate a the line for a full year in advance of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles — the line could transform Rancho Cucamonga, link exurban desert communities to Los Angeles, and boost the economy of the entire Inland Empire. “If those jobs are located in the vicinity of the new transit service, that’s a good thing,” said Rafa Sonnenfeld, policy director for YIMBY Action. “Having more amenities and destination along that transit corridor is what will make that transit corridor successful. There’s a lot of potential for transit-oriented development in those communities with this new spine of Brightline.” In total, the line will run 218 miles, largely within the median of Interstate 15, at speeds to up to 186 miles per hour. The line will briefly travel through the heavily urbanized areas of the western Inland Empire, then go through the Cajon Pass, and travel 185 miles mostly unimpeded through the Mojave Desert. The right-of-way offers distinct advantages: the line will be built in an already developed area, with easy access for construction crews, and it will only minimally disrupt the desert habitat that lines the majority of the route. The company reached an agreement with the California Department of Transportation to develop the Hesperia-Rancho Cucamonga leg in March. “We’ve done maybe the most difficult steps,” said Ben Porritt, Brightline’s senior vice president for corporate affairs. “Step one is securing our land in all of our right of way, an existing corridor that’s already environmentally disturbed.” In 2016, back when Brightline West’s predecessor, DesertXpress (see related CP&DR coverage ), intended to terminate in Victorville, the City of Rancho Cucamonga adopted a progressive specific plan for the area around its Metrolink Station. The city took over an underutilized 160-acre golf course and envisioned medium-density commercial and residential development. Today, the Lewis Group, a prominent Inland Empire developer, is building on the southern end of that plan area, while the northern end remains mostly undeveloped. Brightline is likely to stir interest from developers who want to build out the plan area. “We’re seeing greater interest in some of the underdeveloped properties in the vicinity of the station,” said Burris. Regardless of whether the train arrives, the city believes that this sort of development is appropriate for Rancho Cucamonga no matter what. The city is required to zone for 10,525 additional units according to its 6 th Cycle Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Burris said that it makes sense to concentrate development in a few key areas so that it does not encroach on the city’s vast swaths of single-family neighborhoods. “One of the strategies laid out in the general plan is that we’re going to accommodate the vast majority of our growth in a couple key corridors and nodes,” said Burris. “It really resonated with the community to come up with a land use plan to protect the existing neighborhoods…but provide new amenities and destinations in close proximity to their neighborhood.” “Having mixed use development with a lot of housing near that station is really promising,” said Sonnenfeld. “They’re planning for basically a TOD employment.” While the city welcomes development near the station, other impacts remain uncertain. Brightline estimates that the line could carry 11 million annual trips at full capacity — for a daily average of just over 3,000. Those passengers will have the option of connection to the Rancho Cucamonga terminus via Metrolink commuter rail (which connects to downtown Los Angeles), local bus service, or, of course, private automobiles. The company is building a 5,000-stall parking garage at the station area to handle that demand. The city’s streets could suffer if a disproportionate number of Brightline passengers opt for cars.  “We could see a good bit of traffic,” said Burris. “On the economic benefits side, we could see increased demand for office, professional, and hospitality associated with tourism.” (Currently, an estimated 50 million car trips are currently taken annually between the Los Angeles metro area and southern Nevada, in addition to more than 2 million commercial air passengers between Las Vegas and the region’s four airports.) The company is collaborating with Metrolink and local bus systems to avoid this scenario. Metrolink has pledged to increase frequencies and synchronize its schedule with that of Metrolink. Metrolink and Brightline are also discussing a ticket that would allow for seamless transfers between the systems. “We are moving our model not away from the commuter but beyond the commuter,” said Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle. “More evening trains, more midday trains, trains targeted for trips for different reasons; we’re already going in that direction. I think Brightline will highlight the importance of that effort.” Even so, Burris says that there are many unknowns — and no meaningful precedents. “We’re not exactly sure what the impacts will be,” said Burris. “We haven’t found a good analog for this type of thing in the United States to see how it functions to understand what it means in terms of economic impact or potential benefits. There isn’t an interstate high-speed rail station within a couple miles of an international airport (Ontario) that connects to a commuter rail system for a multimillion-person region.” Burris linked Brightline to a small commercial airport being dropped into a city, with “similar impacts and benefits.” Though Brightline owns, and intends to develop, a large swath of land at its Las Vegas terminus, at the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip, it has expressed no such ambitions in Rancho Cucamonga. “Brightline has not spent a lot of time talking with us about that,” said Burris. “What they shared with us was their focused needed to be on getting their permitting, getting all their agreements in place, getting their funding in place, and getting the line under construction.” Prospects are, arguably, even less certain for its one intermediate station. Brightline’s “Victor Valley” station — to be located in an undeveloped area on the northern end of the City of Apple Valley, and closely adjacent to Hesperia and Victorville — is not likely to generate much ridership on its own. But it’s being designed, in part, to connect, via a spur that is as-yet unplanned and unfunded, with a future Palmdale station on the state high-speed rail line.  “We look at California High Speed Rail as simply a different model to get to the same goal that we have,” said Porritt. “We’ll certainly root for that project and ultimately connect to that project, and we would serve as the east-west and they as the north-south.” In the meantime, passengers will be able to park and catch the train in Apple Valley — both for trip to Las Vegas and to Rancho Cucamonga. As part of its collaboration with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, Brightline will welcome passengers who use the train as commuter rail, presumably from less expensive housing in the high desert to the job centers of the Inland Empire — and, possibly, to those of Las Vegas as well. “What I think this project also does is sort of reverses the commute,” said Assistant Town Manager Orlando Acevedo. “Folks will start to look to the Las Vegas metro as another job area to do business or even commute.” Traditional transit-oriented development in Apple Valley is unlikely, especially since the station area is currently bare desert. But Acevedo said that it could direct the city’s growth. “We know it’ll have significant impact on north Apple Valley,” said Acevedo, who noted that the city is only 30% built-out. “The project will extend water, sewer, roads to the site. “Brightline will help extend infrastructure to this area , and that will really open the door and catalyze development opportunities in north Apple Valley.” While housing advocates are often wary of exurbanization, especially in environmentally sensitive areas, Sonnenfeld noted that Apple Valley is supposed to add 4,290 homes according to its RHNA numbers no matter what. “They have a housing shortage and need to grow,” said Sonnenfeld. “The fact that there is already a city there means that that city needs to accommodate the needs of its current and future residents. Whether or not that city should exist in the first place is a philosophical question. But, the reality is, Apple Valley exists.” “We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what that means for job creation in the high desert and residential development,” said Acevedo. Contacts & Resources Brightline West: Project Overview Cucamonga Station Area Plan Prior CPD&R Coverage:  Victorville Hopes to Capitalize on Las Vegas Bullet Train , December 4, 2011 Orlando Acevedo , Assistant Town Manager, City of Apple Valley, OAcevedo@applevalley.org Matt Burris , Deputy City Manager, City of Rancho Cucamonga, matt.burris@cityofrc.us Darren Kettle, CEO, Metrolink, https://metrolinktrains.com/news/metrolink-news/ Ben Porritt, Senior Vice President for Corporate affairs, Brightline, ben@gobrightline.com Rafa Sonnenfeld, Policy Director, YIMBY Action, rafa@yimbyaction.org Images courtesy of Brightline West A version of this article appeared in  InTransition Magazine (with sidebar ) in October 2023. 

A few days ago, I drove from west Los Angeles to Whittier, a leafy suburb founded by Quakers on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. Just east of downtown Los Angeles, I got on the 60 Freeway and took it to the 605. I kid you not, every single billboard along this route advertised one of two things: insurance or accident attorneys. I lost count of the latter. There was Jacob Imrani, Anh Phoong, Sweet James, Morgan & Morgan, and the dean of Los Angeles accident attorneys, Larry H. Parker, who's been "fighting for you" seemingly since the days of covered wagons. Pirnia Law sponsors UCLA athletics and appeals to the fraternity crowd with the most bro-y slogan in legal history: "putting the 'lit' in litigation." The Pirnia billboard I saw on Friday promised, "We run L.A.," whatever that means. (An aside: if you're going to be an accident attorney in Los Angeles, it is, apparently, mandatory for you or your avatar to have facial hair, ideally a goatee.) These billboards all make for an ugly drive. Granted, it wouldn't have been any less ugly if they advertised something else, like soda pop, cigarettes, or, well, cars. What's remarkable is that, in a county with a $750 billion GPD, these are the only businesses that seem willing to spend money on outdoor advertising. Sadder still: there is a robust market for their services. Our society is as litigious as it is dangerous. Between 2013 and 2022, Los Angeles County averaged around 54,000 fatal or injury crashes annually (the vast majority being injury-only crashes). I'm pretty sure the only people who celebrate those statistics are the attorneys. And yet, the crashes persist. One city in Los Angeles County is attempting to do something about car accidents and, especially, the hazards they pose for pedestrians. On March 5, voters in the City of Los Angeles will consider Measure HLA, an initiative that would force the city to implement its Mobility Plan 2035, which was adopted in 2015. Backers of Measure HLA say that the city has implemented as little as 5% of the plan. Meanwhile, some 300 deaths take place annually on the city's streets. HLA promises a revolution in active transportation and the pedestrian realm. We're talking about enhanced sidewalks and crosswalks; street furniture; trees; dedicated bus lanes and upgraded transit stops; bike lanes; traffic calming; and more. It's the sort of mobility bonanza that activists and progressive planners have dream about. It could turn at least a few of Los Angeles's ugly, dangerous thoroughfares into places that people where people just might want to hang out. HLA will not be cheap. A recent analysis by Los Angeles City Administrator Matt Szabo estimates it will require $3.1 billion. Supporters dispute that number and, of course, argue that the promise of lives saved and streets beautified justifies a major investment. Now, our friends on the billboards haven't come out against Measure HLA, as far as I know. Even they aren't brazen enough for that. And yet, someone else has -- the firefighters of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Let that irony sink in for a moment. The firefighters claim that many of these street improvements could interfere with emergency responses. “Every second counts. The road diets slow down our firefighters,” Freddy Escobar, president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, told the Los Angeles Times. “And it will be so much worse with HLA.” In other words: we don't want a hook-and-ladder truck getting hung up on a bulb-out or squeezed by a bike lane. I give due respect to emergency responders, and I get that the firefighters have their priorities--especially when it comes to saving lives. But the mobility plan isn’t merely about aesthetics. Its point, in fact, is to save lives: not by responding to accidents but by preventing them in the first place. In 2023, 336 people died in traffic-related deaths in the City of Los Angeles (half were pedestrians). Meanwhile, between 2014 and 2019, the average number of deaths from accidental structure fires was 14. I hardly want to pit one sort of tragedy against another. But, let's face it, governance is always about priorities. And, indirectly, Measure HLA can improve public health by promoting walking and biking and even by fostering social relationships. It's a lot easier for neighbors to get to know each other when they're walking down the same sidewalk than when they're both racing to make the yellow light. And, however harrowing a fire may be, at least most of them are accidental and isolated. Measure HLA attempts to undo an entirely intentional, nationwide disaster. The firefighters thus miss the city for the buildings. It's not the first time, though. Many cities' street dimensions are already dictated by the size and performance of fire trucks. And, last year's successful AB 835 made the case that fire codes that require most multistory buildings to include two stairways (for emergency egress) severely constrain the way residential buildings can be designed and, indirectly, make California cities uglier and more expensive than they'd be if buildings were allowed to have only one stairway. I'm not an expert on emergency response. But I've been involved in urban planning long enough to know that, in too many instances to cite, the very people who are trained, paid, and empowered to design our cities somehow get shoved aside. Meanwhile, veneration for emergency responders -- much of it well earned -- has often given them, and their unions, unduly loud voices in the civic discussion. Not this time, though. What's especially bonkers about the firefighters' opposition to HLA is that they are almost alone. The list of groups that have endorsed it is not just long -- it's also among the most diverse you could ever imagine in Los Angeles. Plenty of other unions support it, including the SEIU and the teachers union. Elected officials have lined up in favor of it. Seemingly every mobility, environmental, and social justice organization has too. Democratic groups support it, and so does the Los Angeles County Business Federation. If ever a group could be expected to oppose a measure that de-emphasizes the use of cars, it would be the United Autoworkers -- but, no, they're on the list too. For all of this enthusiasm, I'm not sure that the mobility plan will cure all that ails Los Angeles's streets, even if it's supercharged by Measure HLA. And I certainly don't know if $3.1 billion -- or whatever the true amount is -- would be a sound investment. But, the fact that concepts once as obscure and forlorn as "complete streets" and "active transportation" are on the ballot in a famously car-centric city has to be good news, for planners and pedestrians alike. It has at least a chance of making the city safer and more attractive. Of course, I don’t expect those billboards to come down any time soon, and we’re probably stuck with the freeways too. But we can at least hope that some of those attorneys go out of business.

Some of the hot takes following last Tuesday's election insisted that San Francisco—home of the Beats, hippies, Harvey Milk, and Byzantine development processes—no longer deserves to call itself "progressive." These proclamations stem in large part from voters' sentiments on two land use measures (among five other, unrelated measures on the city ballot): Prop. A, a bond measure to pay for low-income and assisted living housing, and Prop. C, a measure to exempt certain commercial transactions from paying a transfer tax.

In the past few years, the California legislature has upzoned just about everything that could be upzoned in the name of housing: transit-oriented areas; jobs-rich areas; high-resource neighborhoods; malls and big box stores; college campuses; church parking lots; and, yes, your backyard. (Or, at least, many backyards — by way of ADU laws and the Senate Bill 9 “duplex law.”)

What do San Francisco, San Mateo, and Berkeley have in common with Jackson, Miss.; Lake Charles, La.; and St. Louis, Mo., have in common? Basically nothing, right? Unfortunately for everyone involved, all six cities are on a recently published list of the "18 Fastest-Declining Cities in the U.S." They are accompanied by Monterey Park, South San Francisco, Daly City, and four other California cities, meaning that California cities comprise more than half of the list. San Francisco took the "top" spot for the most rapidly declining city. As you may already have guessed, this report is not exactly scientific. For one thing, it was published by a site called "Insider Monkey." More importantly, it relied on just one metric (population decline) and a brief, anomalous time period (2020-2022). Silly as this ranking may be, it should give Californians pause. "Rapid decline" connotes all sorts of urban destitution. You'd think someone shut down our factories, set our rivers on fire, boarded up our businesses. These are the hallmarks of legacy cities where work has disappeared or where structural inequities have been impossible to shake. These misfortunes explain, in part, why residents leave the St. Louises and Jacksons of the world. The California specimens -- as well as New York City, which ranked No. 2 -- tell a far different story. Broadly, it's true that California has lost population in recent years. The glib reasons are the pandemic and housing prices. Those reasons are valid, but they're also nebulous. They don’t stir the emotions the way a factory closure might. And so many Californians plod along, oblivious to, or even gleeful about, the state’s population decline. I'd like to think, though, that the ignominy of being called out by something with "Monkey" in its name would lead to some soul-searching. The cities that "declined" in previous generations arguably did so through little fault of their own. The Toledos, Clevelands, and Buffalos of the world were subject to global macroeconomic trends, such as overseas manufacturing. California's decline, though, is very much self-inflicted. The 750,000 or so people who left the state in 2020 didn't necessary leave behind blighted, vacant homes. They were probably renting in the first place. Many of them are leaving because they have, or want to have, children. (Causing, as well, an invisible brain drain that will set in 20 or so years from now.) These young adults who are leaving behind mom and dad, to rattle around half-empty houses where they might have raised two or three kids. These empty-nesters have more than enough equity to keep the lawn mowed and the paint fresh. From curbside, California looks as idyllic as ever when, in fact, their neighborhoods have shrunk.  A recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the average homeowner tenure in San Diego has doubled since 2005, from seven years to fourteen. Household size has declined by 9%, 7.5%, and 5% in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and the Inland Empire, respectively. Some young adults might want to buck this trend by living in the literal houses where they grew up, except, thanks to Prop. 13, their parents are essentially imprisoned in homes with low tax bases. Insider Monkey's listicle belies a greater tragedy about the American economy. It's one thing if, say, a middle-income couple moves from a rental in Daly City to a starter home in Reno. They’re moving up in the world, albeit it a few hundred miles away. It's another matter entirely if someone desperately wants to trade Toledo, Detroit, or, Jackson for better job prospects in a Los Angeles or San Jose--but is barred by unaffordable rents. That's what economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes in a piece published just a few weeks ago: Technology... has made America as a whole richer, but it has reduced economic opportunities in rural areas. So why don’t rural workers go where the jobs are? Some have. But some cities have become unaffordable, in part because of restrictive zoning — one thing blue states get wrong — while many workers are also reluctant to leave their families and communities. His point is that we can't necessarily reverse the economic decline of rural areas (or of legacy cities, for that matter). But, intra-national migration could rebalance the economic scales, matching eager workers with opportunities, if suitable homes were available. That's exactly what happened in California for a good half-century. The economy boomed, the population grew, and the rest is history. Today, California's restrictive zoning hurts the state and, according to Krugman, the entire nation alike. California's "decline" is not a function of a lack of prosperity. It is because of prosperity. More specifically, it's due to our inability to manage our prosperity. The trouble with prosperity is that the people who benefitted most from it in the past are often least likely to promote -- or even tolerate -- it in the present. If your screenplay, search engine, or pistachio orchard has already paid for your house and your retirement fund, what do you care about the people who were born too late?  Planners have devised plenty of policy solutions to reverse this "decline." They've being implemented as we speak, through new housing elements, some California Environmental Quality Act reforms, density incentives, and whatnot. Even so, those are half-measures. A little enthusiasm wouldn't hurt. A state that once was the epitome of optimism has grown dour. Californians -- mostly the wealthy ones -- have lost their sense of state pride. That's how a word like "decline" gets so easily attached to us. Californians should be embarrassed by it. We should be outraged. I'm aware of the hazards of referring to the nonspecific "we." But, one trait the vast majority of Californians share is that we live here by choice. We need to get excited about our state -- its economy, landscape, people, values, and everything else -- and get excited about allowing other people to participate in our prosperity. That starts with providing them with proper places to live, afford other people the choice of living here. Maybe Insider Monkey is the enemy we didn’t know we needed. Obviously, being accused of “decline” is no fun. It’s a blow to the collective ego. The difference between California and, sadly, many other states is that our decline is taking place by choice. We’re also choosing to adopted polices to build more housing and reverse population loss. Much of that work has already been done. Planners who have drafted new housing elements and legislators who have sponsored new laws can, and should, now add some cheerleading to their repertoire. All the regulations in the world aren’t going to create demand and aren’t going to create excitement for new development. If we can reframe population loss as “decline – and, conversely, frame population gain as prosperity – some of those slow-growth sentiments might recede. California’s future depends on attitude as much as on demographics or economics. If that doesn't happen, and people keep leaving, I can think of at least a few cities that would be overjoyed to welcome them. The average home price in Jackson is $115,000.

Under the duress of legislative action or the Regional Housing Needs Allocation program, California cities have added millions of units to their zoned capacity in recent years. All of those potential units mean little, though, if developers can’t put shovels in the ground.

To whom did you send you your first email? What was the first app you installed? What was the first movie you streamed? Where did you go the first time a robot drove you? For nearly as long as I've followed planning and transportation, the running joke, recited in conference sessions and at happy hours, has been that self-driving cars are at least five years away -- and always will be. But, no. A few days ago, I boarded an otherwise empty Jaguar I-Pace , festooned with sensors, and driven according to a dataset aggregating the wisdom gained from tens of millions of miles of driving. Nine minutes later, I arrived at the Country Mart, a shopping center that looks like a 1900s farm. The future is now. None of this is news to many engineers, alpha testers, and tech evangelists. But, given that 99.9% of the population has yet to witness this fact, I feel obligated to confirm that autonomy is not five years away. It's here, now. (Los Angeles was one of Waymo's three beta-test cities, along with Phoenix and San Francisco. In March, it received permission from the Public Utilities Commission to operate in 22 cities on the San Francisco Peninsula.) According to the axioms of computing, the technology is as bad now as it will ever be. How bad is autonomous driving? Not. It is not bad at all. At every turn, the car was cautious to a fault. It accelerated gradually and never went an iota over speed limits. It came to complete stops and took curves gently. It used turn signals fastidiously and stopped for pedestrians. It was like the DMV Driver's Handbook incarnate. Bedazzled in sensors, a Waymo Jaguar I-Pace stops for a pedestrian. I'm reasonably confident that robots are safer for occupants, fellow vehicles, and all other users of streets and sidewalks than are the millions of bozos (myself included) who text, talk, sing, dance, daydream, make out, smoke out, and do god-knows-what-else behind the wheels of our sundry suicide machines. My only complaint: I wanted more zip. I don't want my robots to be in a hurry, but I don't want to feel like I'm in a horse-drawn carriage either. Eventually, there may be a case to be made for higher speed limits for robots. At whatever speed, autonomous taxis aren't going to take over Los Angeles, or anyplace else in the state, overnight. There's still a chance that AV's will go the way of the Segway. Or, it could be the next iPhone. Planners, start your engines. For cities, AV's present a few appealing best-case scenarios: they demand less parking (since they'll always be on the move), create efficient carpool situations, reduce emissions (as long as they're electric and, ideally, charged by green energy), and, yes, might reduce crashes. The more planners can accommodate AV's, the more of these benefits cities will reap. Most obviously, planners, in collaboration with developers, need to figure out how to trade parking spaces for safe, easy pickup/dropoff areas. Case in point: my Waymo picked me up in a red zone on a fairly congested two-lane street. To drop me off, it unnecessarily snaked through a parking lot when it easily could have pulled into a curbside space. Cue the public works folks and private-sector architects to design driveways, cut-outs, and portes cochère to their hearts' content. And yet, Jevon's Paradox tell us that the more efficient something is, the more heavily it gets consumed. What does that mean for safe, affordable, carbon-lite transportation? Author and robot (l.) out for a Sunday drive. Jevon will get jump-started when, inevitably, some developer in Hemet, Poway, Camarillo, or Pleasanton -- God bless all of them -- builds huge houses on huge tracts of land and give away free Waymo memberships with each one of them. The discomfort of the hour or so it would take to reach downtown San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco from the exurbs will give way to the pleasantries of reading, watching movies, getting foot massages, or whatever. Super-commuting could become robo-commuting, and we're going to have a huge traffic problem on our hands, along with no small measure of suburban ennui. I don't know if AV's are going to be good for the soul. I suppose they're not going to be any worse than regular cars are. But, I do know what is better than regular cars: an attractive, lively, diverse city. As humanity surrenders itself to yet another technological revolution, good planning in center cities becomes increasingly urgent. That ping you hear from the Waymo app: it's a call to arms. Planners, along with developers and everyone else who collaborates to create urban form and culture, must create appealing, functional urban places. We need places that make walking short distances more attractive than kicking back while R2D2 navigates us through traffic. We need places that promote human interaction and aesthetic delight. We need places that are fun, affordable, and full of opportunity. We need places that obviate the need for driving entirely.We always need those things, of course. Now, though, AV's heighten the urgency. Luring people out of their robot cars, once they take hold, is going to be even harder than luring them out of their regular cars. If people fall in love with their robots, they're going to miss out all the more on the flaneuristic joys of walking, biking, and existing as a real, live human in the urban realm. Likewise, public transit agencies need to collaborate with AV services to promote trips to and from mass-transit stations. The robot that can drive you all the way to the office could just as easily drive you to the light rail station -- and then immediately pick up someone who's doing the opposite commute. Unless and until AV fleets grow, this is the ideal way for AV companies to magnify their presence and usefulness. They're especially useful if the robot can calculate exactly where and when to drop a passenger off to meet the train or the bus, or, perhaps, to avoid traffic jams during, say, morning rush hour. The public sector has some leverage here, at least for the time being. AV's are still experimental and aren't yet broadly permitted to operate. And they're too conspicuous to follow the "don't ask for permission; ask for forgiveness" strategy of rideshare apps. They need state sanction, which means that the state can attach conditions. Those conditions can, and should, include earnest efforts to support and collaborate with public transit. They should also include contributions to a fund to help retrain and place TNC drivers who are going to be displaced. (Every developer who has ever participated in inclusionary housing, paid an in-lieu fee, or paid a utility hookup charge knows how this works.) Much of the regulatory lobbying thus far has focused on safety and been motivated by labor interests, such as the Teamsters, who surely would like AV's to drive themselves into the ocean. Meanwhile, SB 915, introduced in January, would give local jurisdictions significant regulatory powers; currently, the Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Utilities Commission have the final say over vehicle-related regulations. As appealing as this bill may be for individual cities, it portends chaos whenever an AV crosses a city limit. At this point in my life, I've sent and received probably 200,000 emails. And I've taken many thousands of car trips. I expect that my ride to the Country Mart is the first of many autonomous rides to come. But, like receiving a handwritten letter, they still will won't beat a walk down a lively city street. Image credit: Waymo .  This blog came to you courtesy of California Planning & Development Report, the authoritative source for land-use planning news in California. Check out our subscription packages here . Still need AICP CM LAw credit as the May 31 deadline approaches? Take Bill Fulton’s one-hour course on RHNA and the Housing Element in California. To learn more, just click here .

In November, if election patterns hold steady, around 250,000 voters in Solano County will decide whether to welcome as many as 400,000 new neighbors. It is likely to be a serious test of “yes in my backyard” sentiment in California — or, in the case of Solano County — yes in my pasture, field, or rangeland. The vote would mark a preliminary step in the development of the project, which was being promoted by corporate parent Flannery Associates and known as “California Forever,” but was recently rebranded the “East Solano Plan.” The developers submitted over 20,000 signatures in late April, which the county is now verifying; 13,000 valid signatures are needed for it to qualify for the November ballot. Currently titled, “East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative,” the measure would set the terms for a general plan amendment and development agreement between the company and the county. “It will be contentious and emotional,” said John Carli, mayor of Vacaville, in central Solano County. “Whichever way it goes, it’s going to create further divisions. The sides are becoming entrenched.” The project has gained infamy for its magnitude, nearly doubling the county’s population, and its origins: a consortium of backers from the technology industry who have espoused progressive views about urbanism while surreptitiously acquiring roughly 60,000 acres of rural land well beyond the existing urban fringe. (In early April, the company successfully defended a lawsuit filed by a group of ranchers who accused the company of price-fixing.) Most of the development would take place between Travis Air Force Base and the City of Rio Vista, with a “security zone” to separate development from the base. California Forever cannot simply start pouring and framing whenever it wants to, in part because of the county’s strict Orderly Growth Ordinance, which is designed to preserve open space and direct growth to the county’s half-dozen existing small cities. Overriding the ordinance to rezoning the 17,500 acres of land that the company wants to develop from agricultural to mid-density urban requires either assent of the county’s Board of Supervisors or a popular vote. Flannery Associates has chosen the latter route. It is a major gamble, given the fact that – according to CP&DR ’s long history of ballot measure coverage – developer-initiated ballot measures designed to end-run elected officials rarely succeed.

In what has become a nearly annual ritual, the legislative session has claimed its first major land-use victim, and its a familiar one: tax-increment financing. Assembly Bill 2945, the Reconnecting Communities Redevelopment Act, would have funded infrastructure projects from tax increments collected from immediate surrounding communities and administered by state-approved local agencies. It was but the latest version of redevelopment proposed in California; its recent demise in the Assembly Appropriations Committee ignominiously adds to the number of times the policy has died.

At a time when many retailers are cutting back – or going out of business entirely -- Costco has the opposite problem. I've been to Costcos on weekend afternoons when they were so busy, you'd think they were giving away their inventories. Even getting a frozen yoghurt took 15 minutes. Costco membership inspires feeling of pride on par with sports teams. That translated into $176 billion in revenue last year in the United States. So it's no wonder that Costco wants to build more stores, which already number over 800 nationwide (compare that with over 4,100 Walmarts). The trouble is, fervor alone cannot shoehorn a warehouse of 150,000 square feet into urban Los Angeles. Even where there's space, the zoning is often unkind. That's why Costco is getting into the urban infill housing business. Everything about housing development is antithetical to Costco's business model. Costco is in the business of building the same big-box store – with the same gigantic parking lot – pretty much anywhere. Urban infill housing is costly, complicated, and customized. But some people will do anything for an entitlement. That’s why Costco’s proposal to develop a roughly 800-unit apartment complex in South Los Angeles is a Trojan Horse that will also not-so-secretly facilitate the development of the chain's 17th Los Angeles County store. It will be built on the site of a shuttered medical center a few miles west of the USC campus, near a stop on L.A. Metro's Expo Line. Rather than wade through the tedious, costly, and uncertain process that would it need to gain approval for a traditional standalone store, Costco and its development partner Thrive Living taking advantage of AB 2011, which exempts multifamily housing projects on commercially zoned property from CEQA review, plus density bonuses provided by Los Angeles’s Transit Oriented Communities program (TOC). Home sweet Costco. The density bonuses, which require 184 of the residential units to be affordable, raise the allowable number of units on the site from 593 to 918. It’s an elegant alignment of interests for both parties: Thrive gets a deep-pocketed partner with whom to build housing, and Costco gets to open its doors, stock its shelves, and begin generating revenue without suffering through environmental review and inevitable lawsuits. That’s no small matter when the average Costco store takes in $252 million per year. (The project was proposed over a year ago, and underwent site plan review in February, but recently gained attention thanks to an X/Twitter post by L.A.-area housing advocate Joe Cohen.) Even if it loses money on the housing (which isn't likely, especially if it's paying for the land anyway), Costco will surely make up for it in the pallets of protein powder and cases of canola oil that it's going to sell. The poison pill in AB 2011, which has rendered the law nearly useless, is that it requires developers to pay construction workers “prevailing wage” for onsite labor -- which generally equates with high-cost unionized workers. But Costco and Thrive have a solution for that: modular construction. By using mass-produced elements, Costco will minimize the use of on-site labor. It's savvy move for a company that knows how to buy in bulk. The end result may be the type of mixed-use development that, while achingly pragmatic, would give even the most sanguine New Urbanist a heart attack. From the renderings, it will not be a human-scale, finely detailed series of storefronts and front doors. It will, rather, be an enormous box hemmed in by slightly smaller boxes (Cohen likened the design to that of a prison – apparently coining the term “Costco Prison” – but he walked back that assessment in the face of a Tweetstorm of flack). And, in a rarity for Costco, much of the parking will be underground. In fact, parking is where this project gets really interesting. Based on TOC guidelines, the project is required to provide at least 1,141 parking spaces, for residential and commercial combined. But, based on AB 2097 – which prevents the city from imposing any parking requirement within a half-mile of a transit stop – that requirement drops to exactly zero . In fact, the developers are choosing to provide 1,515 spaces. This seemingly sensible investment contradicts the worst fears of pro-parking folks: zero parking minimums does not necessarily mean zero parking. Developers may be frugal, but they’re not insane. (Ponder, for a moment, what zero parking would look like at a Costco.) Frankensteinian as its form may be, it’ll be an apt representation of the regulatory tangle that, for better or worse, provided the necessary lightning bolt. Housing advocates probably won't worry about the aesthetics anyway. Eight hundred units is a lot, even in Los Angeles. And it will include 184 units of sorely needed affordable housing. Even so, it'll be a stark contrast to its neighbor, which happens to be Village Green, an Ebenezer Howard-style development from the 1940s that's on the National Historic Register. With laws, trees, and graciously spaced-out apartment blocks, Village Green represents high-density, affordable housing of a vastly different era. The Village Green trend didn't last. But, it's likely that the Costco Living trend is just starting. Big boxes aren't just stores. They are, by definition, real estate plays. Between the demand for housing, the urbanist antipathy for wasted space, new state laws friendly to mixed-use and adaptive reuse, and other local regulations akin to Los Angeles’s TOC (e.g. the Bay Area’s own TOC program), more such developments seem inevitable -- it would be financially irresponsible of the Costcos, Targets, and Walmarts of the world not to pursue them. The South L.A. Costco is just the prototype. On the one hand, I’m sure few urban planners want big box stores to dominate American retail even more thoroughly than they already have. On the other hand, it's possible that we've already lost the war against big boxes. And, their incursion into urban areas is only going to accelerate; greenfield sites on the urban fringe are simply too far from population centers to be feasible. If we can get some housing as part of the peace treaty, so much the better. Now, it's true that residents of those 800 apartments -- some of which will be small studios and one-bedrooms -- probably aren't Costco's target customers. Then again, once they try the frozen yogurt, they might be hooked. Resources Los Angeles Dept. of City Planning CUP Site Plan Review, February 2, 2024 (PDF download) Rendering by AO Architects.  This article is brought to you free of charge by paying subscribers to California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe here .

For decades, housing advocates, and some policymakers, have stressed the dire need to develop new housing in infill areas and — for a host of reasons — leave open space alone. These advocates now have an ally, albeit it an unwelcome one, in the form of the insurance industry.