On Saturday, California tax law finally catches up with the 21st century: some online retailers -- most notably, juggernaut Amazon.com -- will start charging sales tax for items sold in California if they have warehouse space in the state. Though we always knew there was something fishy about the tax exemption, as a consumer this development does not thrill me. As a citizen of the state, I suppose it's fine. The more money we can raise, the better.  As an urbanist, however, I say bring on the tax.  I don't think that humanity will ever be able to take full stock of the impact that e-commerce has had on the urban landscape. The extreme version holds that the Amazon's and Shopzilla's of the world have siphoned customers off from mom, pop, and even the terrestrial chain stores. It has turned the most social aspect of capitalism into something that can be performed in one's boxer shorts, usually at a relative discount. This collision of frugality and convenience has enriched the likes of UPS and FedEx while devastating Main St. and even the malls.  Then again, no one will ever be able to disaggregate the impacts of e-tailing from those of countless other factors including the rise of big boxes, the expansion of the suburbs, and many Americans' chronic indifference to living their lives in public. Nevertheless, the 7.25% that Amazon wasn't collecting did not help matters (reports indicate that few other e-tailers will be affected by the new law because they do not have physical presences in California).  Gov. Jerry Brown and bill sponsor Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) presumably weren't necessarily thinking about land use when they approved AB 155 , which was passed following negotiations with Amazon and other big retailers. They wanted the cash -- as did lawmakers in the 13 other states with similar laws. But in a roundabout way, the instatement of sales tax offers a new -- and potentially positive -- twist on the fiscalization of land use.  As CP&DR publisher Bill Fulton has written, tax structures often inadvertently dictate the types of land uses that cities and planners promote. If you stand to collect a lot of revenue from auto sales, then an auto mall is your best bet. If Main St. requires a lot of city services but doesn't exactly rake in the tax money for selling baubles like books and lightbulbs, then maybe it's OK to let them fade away. And if tract homes fill city coffers more than downtown apartments do, then let's rev up those bulldozers.  The great thing about the e-commerce tax is that pretty much no one is buying cars on the internet in the first place. It's the small appliances, clothing, office supplies, and books that are going to get relatively more expensive. I'm not sure how elastic all of these goods are -- or if there's even such thing as cross-elasticity between online retail and brick-and-mortar stores -- but it's tempting to think that somehow, in the aggregate, at least a few customers will be drawn back out into the daylight now that Amazon doesn't have a built-in 7.25% price advantage over everyone else.  Usually, fiscalization of land use refers to the competition between cities to lure big retailers, but in this case, the entire state benefits.  In my fantasy world, that margin should be enough to make a thousand stores bloom, ideally in those small vacant storefronts that have been multiplying statewide ever since the recession first hit. These stores would all be locally owned -- since many big chains, most notably Borders and Barnes & Noble, are in trouble -- and they'd be the types of places where neighborhoods would bump into each other. The money they spent would go right back into other locally owned businesses. Amazon would shrivel ever-so-slightly.  That fate is not, of course, what Amazon has in mind.  The company now building a new series of "fulfilment centers" (i.e. warehouses) nationwide, partially in response to the new California law, in order to assure faster shipment of its goods. The first of several planned for California will be in Patterson, 85 miles east of San Francisco, and the next will be in San Bernardino. Amazon currently ships to California from facilities in Las Vegas and Reno (SacBee has a nice map ). Amazon is shooting for delivery in two days once the network is up and running. While warehouses might not be planners' favorite typology, at least some construction jobs and permanent jobs will come with them. It's funny, though. If my local bookstore hadn't closed four years ago, I could have taken a five-minute walk to pick up that new copy of Small is Beautiful or The Economy of Cities instead of writing this blog. And the state deficit would have been smaller by two bucks.

At least someone thinks California is going to emerge from its mess.  According to the recent issue of the venerable  Foreign Policy  magazine, 11-figure deficits, municipal bankrupticies, shrinking beaches, and a train to nowhere will not dim Calfornia's spotlight on the world stage. According to FP's recent ranking of the 75 "Cities of the Future," no fewer than three California heavyweights are going to guide the world economy into the 21st century. The magazine describes all of these cities as "powerhouses of the urban revolution," under the premise that economic growth both at home and abroad will be housed in cities.  In case you're holding out hope for Stockton or Mairposa, you can relax. It's the usual suspects: Los Angeles ( 12th ), San Francisco ( 57th ), and San Diego ( 70th ). The full list is here .  FP's exuberance points to a paradox that plagues many pleasant places. Whereas cities in Texas and North Dakota face few strains, many of California's cities are a wreck precisely because they are so attractive. There's the population burden, but that's not all. As Paul Peterson wrote three decades ago in City Limits, the most attractive cities can, in essence, get away with the most.  Cities can get away with fiscally risky moves like offering generous social services and pension plans because they know that the demand for real estate and the influx of new residents will keep them vital. San Francisco has played this hand skillfully, though at the expense, say some, of becoming a "boutique city." Los Angeles, however, is just hanging on. As for San Diego, let's just say that things have been looking up since 2008. That's what happens after your economy nearly hits rock-bottom.  What the FP list suggests is that to the rest of the world, California remains as attractive as ever. So, for all the lumps the California Dream has taken, this news should be heartening, inspiring, and sobering. It should remind us that if we can fix our fiscal messes -- at both the state and local levels -- that brighter days may yet be on the horizon. Especially since, in the coming generation, the brightness will be coming at us from the west.  On a not unrelated note, Forbes magazine recently released one of its ubiquitous city-ranking lists, and this time California also cleans up. Among US cities with the "happiest young professionals," California takes spots 1-3, 5-6, and 9. In order, that's Los Angeles, San Jose, Sunnyvale, San Diego, Irvine, and San Francisco. I can't help questioning a ranking that puts Irvine's toddler-fest above a place that permits public nudity. Nevertheless, young adults are probably the ones who are going to connect with the global economy, and if they're still happy here--perhaps because they're oblivious to many of the state's bigger challenges--then more power to them.  The news is even more heartening when you judge California against the world's other mere mortals--i.e. those cities that aren't in China. I'm sure you can't name 29 American cities of over 1 million people (because there aren't), but that's how many Chinese cities are going to be dominating the global economy before you can say " ni how ."  Shanghai tops the list, and six other Chinese cities populate the top 10. Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzen are there, but you only have to look as far as No. 3 to find a city (Tianjin) that, as far as its global reputation goes, might as well be a thatched hut and a rice paddy. Of course, that's exactly what many of them were 30 years ago.  I'm writing this in part because last month I visited No. 1. I feel like a Parisian writing about New York in 1900. With scant exceptions, the streets of China offer little charm. I, for one, would be happier in an Irvine McMansion than in a Chinese superblock--and so would most other young adults, I think. The business of China is business. Nowhere is that more true than Shanghai, where the richness of Chinese culture dissolves into a vascular network of surface streets, elevated highways, and the world's most rapidly constructed subway system all designed to maximize the use of human capital. (I envy only the Maglev, which actually exists. If you've heard of Maglev, you'd be forgiven for thinking it sounds like a middle school science experiment. But, as it turns out, the Pudong Airport "demonstration line" is not the 1/4-scale model that its name implies but rather a smooth, silent projectile that covers 30 kilometers in seven minutes. You do the math. Its only moving parts are the doors.) I'm glad, then, that California cities are still investing in infrastructure despite their financial desperation. We have to keep up appearances as long as we can, even if that means telling people in Beverly Hills to sit down and just eat their caviar. That might also mean figuring out a replacement for redevelopment ASAP. China probably redevelops more acres in a month than California did in 55 years.  Ultimately, Shanghai can have its global dominance. I'll take the beach, the Mission, and a burger at Father's Office. But given the mistakes we have made in California, I think we all should be excited -- and thankful -- just to still be in the game.

A proposal to use eminent domain to ward off foreclosures in two cities in San Bernardino County has been slammed almost unanimously by both Wall Street and federal regulators. The most powerful dissenter was Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who said on August 7 that he would resist any effort by local governments to "take" homes owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies under his supervision; those agencies buy the majority of US home loans and repackage them as mortgage-backed securities. Coupled with an earlier rejection by the same official to reduce the unpaid balances on "underwater" mortgages, few options appear available to homeowners sliding into foreclosure, except to deed the properties back to the lender.   With an estimated 13.5 million American households underwater on their mortgages – that is, owing more on their mortgages than the market values of their homes – foreclosure remains the greatest single barrier to the recovery of the housing market –and arguably to the economy itself. Homes that are "underwater" are perceived to be right at risk of foreclosure, particularly for home owners who view their mortgage payments as "throwing good money after bad," to quote a neighbor of mine who just went through the process. The lukewarm response of the Obama administration to the foreclosure crisis is one the shortcomings of the president's first term.  In inland California, the housing crisis has hit families and cities alike. The bankruptcies of cities like Stockton and San Bernardino are due in no small part to the plunge in home values and even the abandonment of otherwise perfectly good homes. It's hard to collect taxes when your populace has fled for someplace they can afford.  At the national level, the administration's most effective response, to date, is the HARP 2.0 loan, a government-backed loan program able to refinance mortgages for more than 100 percent of the mortgage balance. (Otherwise, home owners who are underwater can't refinance.)  Introduced in October 2011, the program represents nearly one in four re-financings currently, according to the Mortgage Banking Association. (Limiting the program's effectiveness, however, is a requirement that home owners be current on their mortgage payments for 12 months; that limitation, while prudent from the lender's perspective, leaves millions of at-risk home owners without the means to refinance their home loans to affordable levels.) If impolitic, the idea of using eminent domain is an ingenious response to a genuine crisis: the destructive effect of foreclosure on cities and neighborhoods. Mass foreclosure is the broken window syndrome in block-high letters: Empty houses become playgrounds for antisocial activity and for squatters; the same neighborhoods are shunned by families and investors. In the hardest hit cities, such as working class neighborhoods in Cleveland, entire blocks have been emptied as a result of falling home values and the inability of many home owners to refinance. Property values implode, and neighborhoods become dilapidated slums for decades.  It's not surprising that San Bernardino County, along with the City of Fontana in the same county, might look at eminent domain as a way to stanch the bleeding. The concept has been devised by a San Francisco firm, Mortgage Resolution Partners. Here's how it works: The city identifies homes that are underwater. With the cooperation of the home owner, the city condemns the property, takes possession, and then transfers ownership to the investor. The investor, in turn, creates a new mortgage for the home owner with a lower balance and lower monthly payments. The investor gets $4,500 per successful turnover. The winners are the home owner, local government and the investor. The loser is Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the bond holders who own mortgage-backed securities.  Legal and even constitutional questions abound.  Defenders of the take-the-foreclosures proposal say that eminent domain exists to advance public purposes. What could be more public than preventing mass foreclosure and neighborhood degradation? Opponents point out, however, that mortgages are not real property, and that mortgages have never before been "taken" by government. Moreover—and this is a powerful argument –government intrusion into a contract between two private entities—here, the lender and the home owner—could potentially violate the contract clause of the Constitution.  Further, the ability to "take" properties from their owners, which are most often Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or giant, private buyers like GMAC, could have a harmful impact on the way that mortgage finance works in the US.  The majority of lenders sell their mortgages to second-market agencies like Fannie Mae for cash; the lender's replenished funds are then used to finance new loans. While many left-leaning observers may understandably look askance at this system—mortgage-backed securities, after all, were at the center of the financial meltdown of 2008—it probably does not make sense to compromise the integrity of the bonds, by saying that local governments can forcibly take possession of properties when markets go south.  Why would local governments, then, embrace eminent domain in the first place? My assumption is that government could identify the homes in greatest danger, while policing the investor who buys the loan. The obvious error is to introduce eminent domain into the agreement, which is unnecessary. One could imagine a somewhat similar arrangement, in which the city and the bond investor form a private, not-for-profit corporation that buys a home from a willing seller as a short sale; again, the city is the guardian of both public policy and the home owner, while the investor puts up the money. After the short sale is completed, the investor provides a new mortgage with a reduced balance to the home owner, and pockets his fee. In this scenario, nobody's ox is gored, at least theoretically.    Even better is a proposal from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) who has proposed a large-scale refinancing scheme called Rebuilding American Homeownership. (The proposal was praised in a recent New York Times editorial by economists Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Zandi. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/opinion/the-one-housing-solution-left-mass-mortgage-refinancing.html?_r=1rat)  Under the Merkley proposal, home owners who are current on their mortgage payments could refinance at extremely low rates, perhaps 2 percent higher than the Treasury rate, the super-low rate that the government uses for borrowing. The trust making the super-low-interest refinance would accept refinance applications for three years, then "wind down," according to Stiglitz and Zandi. In other words, if buyers cannot get lenders to lower their balances, perhaps the government can make interest rates affordable. Again, this solution offers little for people in financial trouble. Still, this seems like an orderly process in which no oxen are harmed – even though the authors speculate that some lenders may complain about losing the income from performing loans with high interest rates. The next question is whether a rational proposal that assists millions of home owners and helps revive the economy, has a chance in an election year--or with an opposition determined to defeat any proposal by the current administration.

Update: Sen. Michael Rubio and Senate Pro Tem Darrel Steinberg have announced that Senate Bill 317, which would have made major changes to the enforcement of the California Environmental Quality Act, has been killed and will not be heard by the Senate. A fter 42 years of occasional tweaks, frequent criticism, and, allegedly, rampant abuse, serious CEQA reform has come to the forefront of California's legislative agenda. With ten days to go in this year's legislative session, two bills have emerged that would dramatically alter the state's landmark environmental law.  Yesterday, SB 317 (Michael Rubio, D-Shafter) was introduced as a gut-and-amend bill. The new law would not actually change CEQA but rather would introduce a companion law, called the Sustinable Environmental Protection Act, which would dictate how CEQA is enforced. The act would restrict certain types of lawsuits and it would exempt some projects from CEQA review as long as those projects conform with local planning and zoning codes.  Supporters have also noted that CEQA sometimes frustrates efforts to implement SB 375. SB 317 seeks to ease the way for infill projects that would likely conform with Sustainable Communities Strategies.  Both sides went on the offensive yesterday, with environmental groups decrying any weakening of CEQA and developers, business groups, and labor groups crying that reform is long overdue. Gov. Jerry Brown has said that he supports CEQA reform and has in the past supported efforts to exempt a limited number of large projects from CEQA review and lawsuits.   The impetus for CEQA reform stems from claims that frivolous lawsuits, filed by opponents who are not necessarily motivated by environmental protection but rather by more parochial and even personal interests, drastically complicate and delay the development process across teh state. Developers have claimed that CEQA costs them considerable time and money.  Environmental groups, however, have maintained that CEQA -- in mandating that developers discover, disclose, and propose mitigation for environmental impacts -- offers the best defense against development that could hard natural resources or exert other undesirable impacts on the environment, including traffic, noise, and pollution. A "working group" of supporters touts what it considers the following advantages of SB 317:   Integrate Environmental and Planning Laws: where a federal, state or local environmental or land use law has been enacted to achieve environmental protection objectives (e.g., air and water quality, greenhouse gas emission reductions, endangered species, wetlands protections, etc.), CEQA review documents like EIRs should focus on fostering informed debate (including public notice and comment) by the public and decision makers about how applicable environmental standards reduce project impacts. Eliminate CEQA Duplication: SB 317 would avoid duplicative litigation by limiting the ability to challenge the  environmental document prepared for a project that complies with an approved plan and incorporates all applicable mitigation measures from the environmental impact report (EIR) prepared for the approved plan. Focus CEQA Litigation on Compliance with Environmental and Planning Laws: CEQA lawsuits should not be used to challenge adopted environmental standards, or to  re-challenge approved plans by challenging projects that comply with plans. Opponents, including the Planning and Conservation League, Nature Conservancy, and Sierra Club have called SB 317, a "war on CEQA" that would "take the heart out of this great law." They claim that the exceptions and streamlining hat SB 317 promises would effectively nullify any lawsuits and therefore render the law moot.  They contend that SB 317 would:  Exempt certain large industrial projects that would likely create pollution, including oil refineries  hazardous waste dumps, and power plants.  Undermine SB 375 by granting the same exemptions to low-density housing as to dense infill development.  Replace project-specific CEQA lawsuits with lawsuits over general plans and zoning.  Promote suburban sprawl over urban growth.  Provide for exemptions based on outdated information.  The working group insists that local agencies and governments will retain ultimate control over project approvals and that legitimate environmental concerns will be met under SB 317.  This bill is currently being debated in the Capitol. A coalition of Democrats has reportedly pledged to vote against any changes to CEQA.  Please refer back to CP&DR for updated coverage as this story develops.

In a case pitting a real estate brokerage against a homeowners association, the trial court sustained demurrers to the HOA's complaint against real estate brokers who acted as dual agents in the developers' sale of properties in the development to HOA members.  The Glen Oaks Estates Homeowners Association, representing a five-parcel development in Pasadena, alleged in the complaint that the realtors had obtained inaccurate soil reports and had misled the members, resulting in defects of a common roadway and common area slopes. The Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District reversed the trial court's determination that the association did not have standing to assert claims on behalf of its members against the brokers under Civil Code section 1368.3.  Part of the Davis-Sterling Common Interest Development Act ("Act"), section 1368.3 states that that a homeowners association established to manage a common interest development "has standing to institute, defend, settle, or intervene in litigation … in its own name as the real party in interest and without joining with it the individual owners of the common interest development … ." However, such associations have standing only in particular matters, specifically matters pertaining to (1) " amage to the common area," and (2) " amage to a separate interest that arises out of, or is integrally related to, damage to the common area … ."   The act defines a " eparate interest" as "a separately owned lot, parcel, area, or space."  A " ommon area" is defined as "the entire common interest development except the separate interests therein."  In this case, the HOA argued that while the right violated was "personal to the members" in that the realtors owed the HOA members a fiduciary duty, their damages consist of a $3 million repair obligation for the common area driveway and slopes.  The Court of Appeal first held that the complaint failed to allege damage to the HOA members' separately owned lots or parcels, and therefore there was no standing under the provision in section 1368.3 for damage to a "separate interest" that is integrally related to damage to the common area.  However, the Court of Appeal held that the complaint sufficiently alleged facts that show that the matter pertains to damage to the common areas. The theory alleged in the complaint was that the HOA members would not have purchased their homes in the development had the realtors: 1) acted as proper fiduciaries; 2) not concealed information relating to the budget for the HOA monthly dues; 3) warned the members about the alleged invalid soil reports; and/or 4) complied with the laws requiring them to provide a final report and other transactional documents. The complaint further alleged that, because the members did purchase their homes, the HOA is now embroiled in third party actions arising from the failure of the common area slopes and roadway, and it is responsible for certain expenses to repair the common areas. According to the Court of Appeals, those allegations were sufficient for section 1368.3 to confer standing to the HOA. The Court of Appeal went on to reject the realtor's argument that section 1368.3 confers standing only to sue a developer for damages to the common area, and not a realtor. The court explained that the statute does not, by its plain terms, contain a limitation on whom the HOA may sue. Quoting Windham at Carmel Mountain Ranch Assn. v. Superior Court (2003) 109 Cal.App.4th 1162, 1175, the Court of Appeal held that the statute gave associations "the standing to sue as real parties in interest in all types of actions for damage to common areas." That included the claims against realtors alleged in this case. The Case:  Glen Oaks Estates Homeowners Assn. v. Re/Max Premier Properties, Inc. (2012) 203 Cal.App.4th 913 The Attorneys:  For the Plaintiff: Castro & Associates, Jose B. Castro, David H. Pierce, Toneata Martocchio, J. Alan Warfield; Law Office of Morton Minikes and Morton Minikes For the Defendant: Carlson Law Group, Inc., Mark C. Carlson, Jonathan A. Feldheim; Sedgwick LLP and Douglas J. Collodel

When the upscale cafeteria-style restaurant Forage opened in Los Angeles's Silver Lake neighborhood in early 2010, it did so with a new take on the "farm to table'" movement that's slowly been gaining ground in California, as well as the rest of the country in recent years. Forage features produce grown not only by local famers, but, most unprecedentedly, by urban farmers, inviting the latter to bring their backyard harvest to the restaurant for use in its kitchen (in exchange, growers receive market price or store credit). With a stack of positive reviews and a feature article in the Atlantic Monthly, Forage's chef Jason Kim has gained national recognition for this concept. Despite its popularity, Forage's "foraging program" was shut down by the Los Angeles County Health Department soon after its inception but has now been reinstated, as long as all participants get grower certified by the county at a fee of $63 dollars annually. And the restaurant is thriving.  That Kim's fairly simple idea should have drawn so much attention and in many ways come off as radical, hints at an assumed division between the food found in cities and where that food comes from. California has been the most productive agricultural state in the country for over 50 years, but most of the production takes place in decidedly agricultural areas—in the Central Valley or Imperial County—not within a city's limits.  Even with a grow-local movement that ultimately dates back to the environmentalism of the 1960s, big-city zoning codes have reinforced this rift.  According to Daniela Aceves of the food sustainability advocacy group Roots of Change, in San Francisco: "Zoning policies exist in the first place because of the belief in incompatible land uses." Activists like Aceves contend that, in cities throughout California, these codes are now proving outdated, keeping out desirable uses, as more and more people turn to agriculture in urban areas for both personal and financial sustenance, to reduce carbon footprint or simply for lack of better options for access to fresh produce and animal products. Many proponents also contend that city-grown foods can help cut down on traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, because of reduced distances from field to table.  A spate of legislation throughout the state in the last two years reflects this trend.  In June of 2010, the Los Angeles city council passed an amendment to its 1946 general plan, which indirectly outlawed the cultivation of anything other than vegetables for sale off-site. Written at the behest of an embattled flower farmer in Silver Lake and informally dubbed the "Fruit and Flowers Freedom Act," the bill, introduced by Council President Eric Garcetti in 2009, sought to define truck gardening to include berries, flowers, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, ornamental plants, nuts and seedlings, essentially ensuring the legality of small-scale agriculture throughout the city by clearly addressing the previously murky term.  "In Los Angeles, there's definitely been a growth of interest in locally-grown food, and I was proud to author an ordinance that clarified city policy on urban farming.  L.A. has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to sustainable living," said Garcetti, himself an avowed gardener.  Other recent changes throughout California, include a 2011 ordinance passed by the City of Santa Monica that allows backyard beekeeping on single-family residential properties, allotting a maximum of two hives per residence to be registered with Santa Monica's Animal Control Office.  San Diego passed an ordinance in February making it easier for city dwellers to keep chickens by easing up on property line restrictions that had called for them (up to 25 only) to be kept at least 50 feet from residential structures. Under the new law, as long as coops are well ventilated and provide six square feet of space per chick, depending on space, residents are able to keep a varying number of chickens on their property, from five to 50. San Diego also passed a law in January allowing residents to keep two—for companionship's sake—miniature goats per property (though products such as milk and cheese are still for personal consumption only) as well as two beehives.  In Northern California, at the urging of local urban farmers whose livelihoods were directly being affected, in May Berkeley's Planning Commission passed an amendment (known as the Berkeley Edible Gardens Initiative) on the zoning code's permitting process for Moderate Impact Home Occupations (the permit has been waived previously for home teachers). If the ordinance wins approval of city council, home growers will be able to avoid a permit for selling their produce that can cost upwards of $3,000 and take as long as six months to obtain.  Finally, in April of 2011, the City of Oakland passed a law updating its zoning to allow for the growing of vegetables on empty lots without a conditional use permit. Planners are  currently working on a further overhaul of their city's zoning regulations in relation to urban agriculture.  The most dramatic actions, however, have been taken by San Francisco, which passed two major ordinances in the last year and a half.  The Urban Agricultural Ordinance, passed in 2011, permits farms in virtually all areas of the city and, even more progressively, allows farmers to sell their produce on-site as well. The zoning for the ordinance is based on size (operations must be under an acre) as opposed to category— such as commercial, community, demonstrational—the way it is in other cities.  Eli Zagas, a Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager for the San Francisco based nonprofit SPUR thinks that's a wise decision.  "If what you're concerned about from a zoning perspective is intensity of activity or possible nuisance or just general noise or smells, you could have a community garden that's not commercial at all, that's attracted lots of people, and has ended up being a very big operation, and smelly," said Zagas. "And you could have a market garden that was just one or two people working and was quiet and run very well, so the real risk for impact for a neighborhood or area of the city, I think, comes more from size than what they're doing with the food itself." In April SPUR published Public Harvest: Expanding Land Use for Urban Agriculture in San Francisco, a report that outlines a number ways that the city can further promote urban agriculture. Though seven separate agencies spent nearly $1 million on urban agriculture in San Francisco in 2010-11, SPUR deemed the efforts uncoordinated and lacking focus.  Supervisor David Chui recently introduced urban agriculture legislation that reflects many of SPUR's recommendations. The draft ordinance proposed that the city set goals with outlines and timelines, create a single urban agriculture program that could bring together disparate government agencies, and commission an evaluation that would take stock of the current state of existent programs and decide how best to move forward, whether with a city agency or a nonprofit partially funded by the city at the helm of things, by the end of 2012. Last month the Board of Supervisors approved the ordinance unanimously  This legislation is intended to provide more comprehensive support for urban agriculture in San Francisco, giving farmers a kind of "one-stop shop" for application processes on public land. It will also provide information and technical assistance. However, hurdles still remain for farmers in urban spaces.  "The obstacles are land resources and institutional support," said Zagas. "People finding a place to start growing food has been a big obstacle at least here; I think in Detroit, for example, it's not a big obstacle but it certainly is here." The cost of materials, water, permits and farmers' ability to support themselves through full-time farming remain in question.  Some farmers across the state are, nonetheless, making a go of it.  Jennifer Little, who runs Little Farm Fresh from her home in San Gabriel, started farming just a couple of year ago and is now working at her business full time. She sells an eclectic mix of fruit, vegetables, herbs and seedlings, many of them lesser known or heirloom variety. She claims that her and her partner, James Imhoff, are about two-thirds of the way to being sustainable.  "Being so small, we are limited in how much we can produce," said Little.  "We want to get a larger plot, perhaps city owned land, but we would need a loan or a grant to be able to do it. It's really hard to find available resources that apply to us since we are so small. Of course all of the normal problems that farmers face with pests and plant diseases affect us too. We grow everything organically, so we spend a fair amount of time squishing bugs."  Little's business model is so rare in Los Angeles that the coordinator for a study she's participating in on urban agriculture through the UC Extension Program often tells her that there's hardly anyone else in the city doing what she does. She wonders if that might mean she's "crazy, or revolutionary." "There are lots of great things about being an urban farmer," she said. "For one, it's really nice to be home together all the time. Also it feels really good to work hard all day in the dirt with the sun beating down on you, and even though we don't make much money, we know we earn every penny."  Though Los Angeles ranks low opposed to other cities in California and the rest of the US for urban agriculture, if policy continues to shift, Little might not be alone too much longer.   "The city benefits from the people growing food, said Zagas. "Individuals benefit, but the city as a whole does as well so we think it's important for the city to meet that demand and continue to help support people who are trying to grow food." And what shape that support will take in the future seems to be continuing to grow as well.  Contacts:  Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager, SPUR :: San Francisco Planning + Urban Research, 415.644.4881 Daniela Aceves, Communications Manager, Roots of Change, 415.391.0545  Eric Garcetti L.A. City Council President, 213-473-7013 Jennifer Little, Owner Little Fresh Farms,  Kate Wolf is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

When redevelopment was first introduced in California, it included no provisions for affordable housing and instead focused solely on fighting blight. Introduced in 1976, the affordable housing set-aside � amounting to 20% of an agency's annual tax increment � was intended to mollify critics who contended that redevelopment amounting to nothing more than a boondoggle for developers. With the governor's successful dissolution of redevelopment, affordable housing now counts among the most lamented collateral damage.  For decades, cities in California had relied on redevelopment agency funding to contribute to their respective Low and Moderate Income Housing Funds; statewide, redevelopment generated roughly $2 billion annually for these funds. Redevelopment agencies across the state had gotten mixed reviews for their production of affordable housing, with some accused to stockpiling funds rather than actually promoting development. But many cities did produced promised housing, and they are now being forced to adapt to the new reality.  Long-planned projects will appear for the next several years. The dissolution legislation allows redevelopment successor agencies to continue to fund "enforceable obligations," as long as contracts were signed before June 1, 2011. But the outlook for affordable housing after that looks more uncertain.  Some lawmakers in Sacramento are trying to replace TIF funds with another statewide funding source, rather than force localities to fend entirely for themselves.  An initial attempt to stanch the loss of housing funds through redevelopment was Senate Bill 1220, which attempted to raise $700 million a year for affordable housing through a real estate document recording fee. That measure failed to get two-thirds necessary for passage in the state senate, losing by two votes.  Dianne Spaulding, executive director of the president of the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, remains optimistic, in light of the close vote. "1220 was the beginning," she said. "It raised a lot of awareness."  On a number of controversial issues, she noted, "you have to start, and it takes years before you get there."  Some cities are waiting to see what the state government does to make up for the loss of millions of dollars in redevelopment funding for affordable housing. But others, such as San Francisco, are moving ahead. Two measures are on the city's November ballot to increase funding for affordable housing there. Other cities are looking at local real estate transfer fees, Spaulding said.    Affordable housing, of course, is not financed solely by redevelopment money.  Federal money and inclusionary zoning also helped to add more affordable housing.  But cities were required to spend 20% of all redevelopment money on it. And redevelopment money helped non-profit developers acquire land and keep construction costs down.  Some cities adjusted early to the new reality. The City of San Jose, said Housing Director Leslye Corsiglia, struggled with state takeaways of redevelopment money in the two years before redevelopment ended, and laid off 25%of its housing staff. In its heyday, the city was producing 500 to 1,000 units of affordable housing per year, she said.   But as a large city with almost 1 million residents, San Jose still has few programs robust enough to continue its output of affordable housing units.  The city gets $3 million a year in federal home investment partnership funding, and also gets money from inclusionary programs and developer programs that help, Corsiglia said. San Jose also has a large loan portfolio of $800 million that allows it to loan money to developers and first time homebuyers. As those funds are repaid, new loans can be made.  Similar loan programs exist in smaller cities such as Emeryville in Alameda County, which has 10,000 residents. Emeryville's program has 317 outstanding loans worth $13.4 million, and its work continues, according to Helen Bean, Director of Economic Development and Housing.   Bean said the city is also looking at a linkage fee on new commercial and residential construction that would fund affordable housing. That kind of fee will provide some of the money lost after the end of redevelopment, but not all of it.  Non-profit affordable housing developers are among those wondering what's next.  The lost funding will not come from private sources, according to Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, a non-profit housing developer in Hayward.  Mandolini said that her organization used to receive between $2 million and $10 million per project from local redevelopment agencies, and wonders where that money will come from.  "You can't replace millions of dollars a year in $5 increments," Mandolini said. Eden Housing, which serves the entire Bay Area, has 7,000 people on its waiting list for affordable units, she said. Two affordable developments that Eden recently opened in Fremont and Dublin in Alameda County had ten applicants for every available unit.  Housing proponents are still trying to make sense of the demise of redevelopment after 60 years. "Part of the challenge right now is the demise of redevelopment agencies is incredibly complicated," Mandolini said. "It's just too soon to be innovative." Terry Henderson, a city councilwoman in La Quinta in Riverside County, said cities don't know where they stand. Henderson said a recent letter from the state Department of Finance stating that it has the discretion to change its mind on locally approved projects has local officials confused.  It's now "more complex (and) more confusing for cities to work on low-income housing," she said. "We remain in a state of limbo."  Her own city is in the midst of rehabilitating an 85-unit housing complex, but the end of redevelopment has complicated how parts of that project will proceed, she said.  San Francisco's ballot measures provide one glimpse of what the future may hold in other California cities. The measures would set up a housing trust fund, financing it with a variety of taxes and fees. The measures would provide between $20 million and $50 million a year for housing programs for 30 years. Part of the funding comes from property tax revenue that would have gone to the city's redevelopment agency in the past.  San Francisco voters last approved a bond measure for affordable housing in 1996, and state voters last approved bonds for affordable housing through Proposition 1C in 2006, Spaulding said.  Spaulding said San Francisco's ballot measures have no formal opposition, and are supported by the business community. She said  Corsiglia of San Jose said her staff will discuss options for funding San Jose's affordable housing in the fall when the city council reviews its housing investment fund, a process it undertakes every five years. She said "provocative" ideas will be presented to the council.  Like many public officials, Corsiglia said her city should be okay for the next two years.  What happens after that is the unknown. "It's a real concern," Corsiglia said.  Mandolini pointed to one affordable housing project in her area that had ended due to the collapse of redevelopment. Another in Livermore is on hold.  Others have been reduced in scope, like an 800-unit mixed income complex at the South Hayward BART station planned by Eden. That project is now slated to have 375 units, she said.   Government officials acknowledged that redevelopment had its excesses, but point to affordable housing development as one its successes.  "It's a dark time for the state of California," said Bean, of Emeryville. Redevelopment, she said, "was the only affordable housing and economic development program the state had. There's nothing to replace it." Contacts: Linda Mandolini, President, Eden Housing (510)582-1460 Dianne Spaulding, Non Profit Housing Association of Northern California (415)989-8160 Leslye Corsiglia, Director of Housing, City of San Jose (408)535-3851 Terry Henderson, city councilwoman, La Quinta (760)777-7030 Helen Bean, Director, Economic Development and Housing Department, Emeryville, (510)596-4350

Robert Venturi has, as of last week, retired from architecture. If that seems like unremarkable news , because you didn’t know Robert Venturi was still practicing, you’re probably not alone. But when you consider that no art form moves so slowly as architecture does—planning being slower, but not exactly art—then it’s quite something that the man who, with his collaborators, instantly changed architecture has also been quietly practicing ever since. Venturi’s revolution was both instantaneous and glacial, as his writings immediately changed how we view the landscape and his designs, like those of any architect, changed the real thing much more slowly.  Though he wrote about architecture, he leaves no small influence on planning. When I was an undergraduate,  Learning from Las Vegas  (1969) and  Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture  (1966) – by Venturi, his wife Denise Scott Brown and co-author Steve Izenour – inspired me to consider the built environment in ways that I had never considered before. Indeed, before I read Venturi, et al, I had never considered the built environment  at all . I suspect that many other Americans had not, and still do not. Their books held the distinctions of being familiar, provocative, and fun to read. They are still the source of the glee I feel every time I pass by an Arby’s fronted by a big neon hat.  Tracing the history of urban planning, it’s hard to situate Venturi, now in his late 80s. On the one hand, he allies with the forces of smart growth and New Urbanism, boring into the fortress of High Modernism. It was Venturi, after all, who reintroduced humor into architecture, metaphorically pantsing stern bores like Meis and Corbu. On the other hand, this is the same architect who gleefully designed his own big boxes. His designs for Best stores (no corporate relation to Best Buy) included flower patterns and facades that seemed to be crumbling and other playful flourishes. Lamentably, these designs helped legitimized the typology, literally paving the way for the flimsy monstrosities that followed. Of course  Learning from Las Vegas  celebrates roadside America in every possible way. And why shouldn't it? In the 1960s, the road was the place to be. In that respect, Venturi took after Corbu, but without the pretense. Indeed, it’s been so long since Venturi debunked high-minded architectural theory – the type that lamely attempts to attach tortured, indecipherable rhetoric to things that are, well, just things – it’s a wonder that anyone attempts it anymore. Seeing that Modernist sterility was about as uplifting as a hand full of jokers, Venturi made the world safe for ornament again. His own designs make reasonable, if sometimes unremarkable, attempts to put his own ideas into practice. He and his firm are responsible for countless handsome structures with just enough surface flourish – masonry patterns; unusual arrangement of windows – to keep them interesting. That might have been Venturi’s genius: he embraced the garish, profane elements of kitsch and commercialism, but he knew that the world already had plenty of it. He promotes refinement, but not dogma. I’m not sure if New Urbanism takes Venturi a step further or whether it does an about-face. In any event, whether you embrace ornament as it used to be as ornament that comments on ornamentation, you still arrive roughly at aspects of New Urbanism. That’s because, whether you prefer the cutesy, retro New Urbanist aesthetic or the practical, compact neighborhood, Venturi enabled architects and planners to stop with the ridiculous effort to “push the envelope,” with ugliness and abstruseness, and start thinking about humanity again. He didn’t bother with perfection but instead sought designs that were “almost all right.” So, on the one hand, Venturi gave us the eclectic highway strip and the garish billboard: both necessary to snap the world out of the Modernist hypnosis. On the other hand, he revered Main Street, and he gave us ornament and freedom: both necessary for the planning movements to come.  I’m not sure if Venturi learned about the world quite the way his revolutionary counterpart Jane Jacobs did – she putting about the front stoop and he roaring by the vernacular in a ragtop Corvette – but, as far as Modernism was concerned, I think they played for the same team. And I'd like to think that both were necessary to make the world safe to question the orthodoxy of Modernism (itself scarcely less authoritarian than the regimes that Mies and Groupius had escaped).  Of course, Venturi is still an architect, not a planner. The arrangement of buildings and the life that takes place between them has never seemed to concern him. (Though, unlike many neo-modernists and starchitects, at least he acknowledges that streets exist and that they are things to which buildings are usually attached.)  I once interviewed Andres Duany (about convention centers, of all things), and he gave me the most self-defeating assessment of architecture that you’d ever expect to hear. He basically said that aesthetics do not matter. “I love it. You hate it. Who cares?” he said. That sort of insouciance is one of the many gifts Venturi gave us. Venturi’s own take on that theme, recounted by  (pdf) Paul Goldberger in 1971: “you don’t have to like something to learn form it.” Even if his buildings, which are now part of a complete body of work, don’t always look like much, Venturi is, after all these years, still more than all right.

Citizens for Open Government v. City of Lodi  involves the consolidation of three separate actions revolving around the City of Lodi's approval of a conditional use permit (CUP) for a shopping center to be anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The first action stemmed from the city's petition to discharge the writ issued in an earlier lawsuit wherein the 2004 EIR for the Supercenter was challenged and the city's lodging of a supplemental administrative record. The second and third actions arose out of appellants Citizens for Open Government's (Citizens) and Lodi First's challenge to the city's certification of the 2008 revised EIR, and subsequent approval of the CUP and shopping center project. The trial court consolidated all three actions and issued one ruling. Adequacy of the Administrative Record Appellants sent letters to the real parties in the cases – Wal-Mart and the Browman Company –contending that certain internal agency communications were missing from the supplemental administrative record. (Why the petitioners would send such a letter to real parties – as opposed to the city – is not clear from the facts in the opinion. However, such a practice is questionable given the city is the entity which certifies and lodges the administrative record, not the real parties.) The city responded to petitioners by preparing a privilege log outlining the privileged documents, and augmenting the supplemental record with additional documents. Still discontented with the supplemental record, Citizens filed a motion to augment the record. The trial court conducted an  in camera  review of the documents claimed to be subject to the deliberative process privilege and ordered five of the twenty-seven documents to be produced. Notably, the trial court did  not  conduct an  in camera  review of the attorney-client or attorney work product privileged documents. A hearing on the merits was held in February 2010 and the trial court granted the city's request to discharge the writ in the first case, and denied the petitions for writ of mandate regarding the revised EIR certified by the city in 2009. On appeal, appellants first argued that the trial court erred in excluding 22 emails exchanged between city staff and the EIR consultants pursuant to the deliberative process privilege, and thus, the record was so incomplete as to require reversal. Initially, we note the appellate court  never  addressed appellants' first three arguments as to why the deliberative process privilege should not apply (For instance, Public Resources Code section 21167.6(e) abrogates the privilege, the privilege does not apply to quasi-judicial decisions, and the privilege does not apply to emails that post-date the release of the final revised EIR). Instead, the appellate court agreed with petitioner Lodi First that the city failed to make the detailed and specific showing required to establish a claim of privilege and never demonstrated that the public's interest in nondisclosure outweighed the public's interest in disclosure of the 22 emails. Accordingly, the appellate court found that the trial court erred in excluding the 22 emails from the administrative record based on the deliberative process privilege. In reaching this conclusion the court did not have to address appellants other contentions, leaving these issues for another day. The appellate court then questioned what prejudice was incurred by Lodi First, and held that "reversal is not required because Lodi First has failed to meet its burden to show prejudicial error in the trial court's exclusion of emails from the administrative record." In noting the missing emails did not deprive the appellate court of its ability to review the judgment, the appellate court acknowledged that the exclusion of the emails simply "deprived Lodi First of the opportunity to review 22 e-mails between the city staff and EIR consultants to determine whether those documents could have bolstered the analysis of the arguments it was going to make on appeal." The appellate court then rejected petitioners' argument that any time one document is erroneously excluded from an administrative record, reversal is required. The appellate court then advised that the proper procedural avenue to remedy petitioners' concerns regarding the trial court's ruling on the motion to augment the record was to seek an extraordinary writ, which petitioners had not done. The appellate court declined to exercise its discretion to treat petitioners' appeal as a petition for extraordinary writ since the normal 60-day time frame for filing such an appeal had long since run. Reasonable Range of Alternatives The Third Appellate District rebuffed Lodi First's contention that an EIR must include alternatives that both satisfy most of the project objectives  and  reduce significant effects of the project. Focusing on subdivision (a) of Section 15126.6 and citing to  Citizens of Goleta Valley v. Board of Supervisors  (1990) 52 Cal.3d 553, the court of appeal reiterated the "rule of reason" as a guide to selecting what alternatives should be analyzed in an EIR, and held that despite the fact the revised EIR did not discuss an alternative that would feasibly attain the most basic project objectives  and  avoid or significantly reduce project impacts to less than significant, the record contained substantial evidence to support the conclusion that a reasonable range of alternatives had been analyzed. Urban Decay – Baseline for Review One of the main purposes of the city's revised EIR was to address the 2004 EIR's inadequate discussion of cumulative urban decay impacts, which the trial court had previously determined was defective due to a lack of discussion of the two existing Wal-Mart Supercenter projects in Stockton, a neighboring city. The appellate court held that the revised EIR did not need to address urban "blight" conditions contained in Redevelopment Agency documents because "blight" and "urban decay" are two separate issues. It also held that the city did not abuse its discretion in using an economic baseline of late 2006/early 2007 (as opposed one of late 2008 as suggested by petitioners) in the revised 2007 draft EIR based on the evidence in the record. That evidence suggested changing the baseline would be problematic given the fluctuating economic conditions and because the economic conditions did not affect the urban decay findings.  Finally, the appellate court found there was substantial evidence to support the city's code enforcement as a mitigation measure for urban decay. That discussion was not certified for publication. Agricultural Impacts Appellant Citizens challenged the city's analysis of project impacts on agriculture arguing that the city failed to disclose the cumulative impacts to agriculture, and failed to support its rejection of a heightened mitigation ratio (i.e., 2:1) with substantial evidence. The Court of Appeal soundly rejected both contentions. First, the court said that because the revised EIR contained both a table of approved developments, and acknowledged that an annexation application had been filed with the city to annex 320 acres of prime land adjacent to the Wal-Mart project, the city had satisfied its duties under CEQA to disclose potential cumulative impacts to agricultural resources.  In addressing petitioner's second contention, the court reframed the issue as not whether there was substantial evidence to support the rejection of a heightened mitigation ratio, but rather, whether the city's finding that there were no feasible mitigation measures was supported by substantial evidence. Ultimately, the court of appeal found the city's requirement that Wal-Mart purchase a permanent agricultural conservation easement over 40 acres (1:1 ratio) to mitigate for the loss of the 40 acres of prime land due to the project's development, was adequate and well within the city's discretion to establish given there were no feasible mitigation measures to avoid the loss of prime agricultural farmland. Application of the Doctrine of  Res Judicata The legal doctrine of  res judicata  precludes the litigation of a cause of action or issue that was previously adjudicated in another proceeding between the same parties where the decision in the prior proceeding is final and on the merits.  Res judicata  also bars the litigation of issues that  could have been  previously litigated. In this case, Lodi First attempted to claim the project would have significant and undisclosed impacts on water supply. Both the trial court and court of appeal rejected Lodi First's claim as barred by the doctrine of  res judicata  on the grounds that the original 2004 draft EIR contained a water supply discussion. Thus, Lodi First should have raised the issue in its first petition for writ of mandate filed against the city because the water supply claims were based on the same conditions and facts in existence when the original writ petition was filed, which it did not do. Comment While none of the appellate court's rulings comes as a surprise, there are two key aspects of the opinion to note. First, with respect to the administrative record issues, this opinion illustrates that courts are unwilling to deem interagency communications (e.g., emails) between staff and consultants (treated as an extension of staff) privileged pursuant to the deliberative process privilege unless the agency can show that the benefits of nondisclosure outweigh the public's interest in disclosure. In other words, the mere assertion that the communication in issue reveals deliberative discussions and that disclosure of it would hamper candid discussions does not constitute a valid showing that the public's interest in nondisclosure outweighs its interest in disclosure. Thus, agency staff should exercise caution when communicating via email since those communications could very well become part of the administrative record in a CEQA case. Second, the appellate court makes clear that disputes regarding undesired rulings on the administrative record by the trial court should be taken up on an extraordinary writ so as to reduce continued delay in a CEQA proceeding. The Case: Citizens for Open Government v. City of  Lodi (March 28, 2012, C065463, C065719) 205 Cal.App.4th 296 The Attorneys Law Offices of Donald B. Mooney,  Donald B. Mooney  and  John L. Marshall  for Plaintiff and Appellant Citizens for Open Government. Herum Crabtree ,  Brett S. Jolley  and  Natalie M. Weber  for Plaintiff and Appellant Lodi First. Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard,  Jonathan P. Hobbs ,  Mona G. Ebrahimi , Christopher Onstott ;  D. Stephen Schwabauer , City Attorney, and  Janice D. Magdich , Deputy City Attorney, for Defendant and Respondent City of Lodi.

It is not uncommon in CEQA cases for the opponents and the lead agency to extend the statute of limitations through a tolling agreement. The use of such agreements puts the litigation on hold, and can help facilitate settlement by taking the pressure of litigation off the front burner.  In Salmon Protection and Watershed Network v. County of Marin , involving the use of a tolling agreement to extend the time lines for a CEQA challenge to a general plan update, a demurrer was sustained to a complaint in intervention later brought by property owners potentially affected by the CEQA lawsuit. As the settlement discussions were undertaken (ultimately unsuccessful), the property owners were left in an indeterminate state as to what to do with their property.  The property owners' complaint in intervention, following the filing of the underlying CEQA action, alleged that the underlying CEQA lawsuit was barred due to the passage of the statute of limitations, and that any extension between the petitioner and the county was contrary to public policy. Relying in part on the policy favoring settlement of litigation, the First Appellate District court upheld the dismissal of the complaint in intervention.   The appellate court held that the fact pattern was one in which no private party was involved, as there would be in the instance of a lawsuit challenging approval of a private project. Given that the interests of property owners potentially affected by the litigation were only "incidental," their concurrence was not required as a condition to the validity of the tolling agreement. The Case:  Salmon Protection and Watershed Network v. County of Marin (April 20, 2012, A133109) 205 Cal.App.4th 195. The Attorneys:  For Plaintiffs: Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School, Deborah A. Sivas,  Alicia E. Thesing, Leah J. Russin, Tori Ballif For Defendants: Patrick K. Faulkner, Nancy S. Grisham; Remy, Thomas, Moose and Manley, LLP, James G. Moose, Jennifer S. Holman,  Jeannie Lee

How much is a hipster worth to a city? Is she worth more when she's building an app, or when she's writing a blog? Is a hipster with a walrus mustache and a mean whiffle ball pitch worth more than one who wears a sarong and practices aerial yoga? How many of them can dance on the pull tab of a PBR?  These questions (or at least less absurd versions thereof) underlie Will Doig's lastest "Dream City"  column  in Salon last week. Doig picks up on a discussion begun elsewhere on the interwebs about whether hipsters--typically described as scruffy 20-somethings, with or without trust funds, each engaged in their own personal counter-culture movements--in particular, and the "creative class" more generally, deserve much of the credit they've gotten for "saving" the cities where they live. A decade after Richard Florida anointed the "creative class" as the drivers of 21st century urban economies, we can now start figuring out whether he was right. And, if he was right, we can figure out whether he was catalytic or merely prescient. (Though hipsters and creative-industry workers are not one in the same, it's safe to assume that the dude who's growing arugula on the roof next to his Indica probably isn't suiting up for work at Skadden every day.) As easy as it may be for some to ridicule hipsters (e.g. the NSFW website  "Look at This F&%ing Hipster" ), Doig doesn't exactly take sides. He prefers to acknowledge that genuine "vibrancy" --  a fraught word  that, he says, may be be making the transition from au courant to trite -- lies not in the suburbs, the projects, or Brooklyn, but probably somewhere in between. He's ready to banish "placemaking" entirely.  We're always going to have semantic debates, mainly because it's easier to change the language than it is to change cities.  Doig is frustrated because the creative class hasn't exactly saved dying cities. They've added color to neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, and many other cities. I'm too old and square to be a hipster -- In fact, by some accounts, I'm supposed to be pretty unamused -- but I've eaten enough brunch in Williamsburg to know what the fuss is about. Doig thinks that cities can do better that to simply attract creatives and let them do their thing.  The real problems--of the inner city and of desperate backwaters--are not solved through games of ironic croquet. In fact, they're hardly being solved at all. One of Doig's passing observations, which he presents more as a rumination than a conclusion, well captures well the fixation on the creative class in cities: "No one wants to feel like they're participating in a movement that's just a distraction from more pressing problems." Of course, being distracted is what residents of the hipster city have been doing. And why shouldn't they?  In the decade or so since they first arose, in Brooklyn and then elsewhere, hipsters have indeed left their marks on cities--but those marks have been largely cosmetic. Hipsters have moved into unwanted buildings, devised new menus, set up curious new shops, written blogs, organized dodgeball tournaments, painted murals, and, yes,  bathed in dumpsters . They have indulged in deliberate ugliness, gender nonchalance, recreational blacksmithing, freeloading, apathy, steampunk, gearless bicycles, political correctness, veganism, and nihilistic escapades like setting up a  living room on a railroad track  or having a Native American-themed binge in McCarren Park. (The examples are nearly endless.) Hipsters indulge in all of these idiocies of attenuated youth because they can: because the city -- whichever city it may be -- offers them the opportunity to do something.  Once you get past the thin beer, Goodwill clothes, vague income sources, hipsterism depends in large part on self-reliance. It's not a heroic, Emersonian self-reliance. It is, rather, a self-reliance of resignation. The DIY ethos governs everything from hipster cooking to the hipster economy. Computer programs and artisanal whatnots spring likewise from the individual mind and hand. So do those whisky shots and the all-night jam sessions. If some of this creativity leaks out into the greater economy, creating jobs where venture capital firms and Fortune 500 companies cannot, so be it.  I grew up a half-generation removed from hipsters, so I can't claim to be inside the mind of everyone in Williamsburg. But it's not hard to imagine that hipsters are resigned to living with a government and a mainstream economy that refuses to solve those "pressing problems" that Doig invokes. Pick your issue: climate change, health care, the drug war, education, real wars, campaign finance, civil liberties, the justice system, corporatism, the financial crisis, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, the 1%, the 99%.... whatever. Cataclysms loom so large that only a massive entity, on the scale of a government, can address them. Hipsters can't help but distract themselves from these problems, because what else can they possibly do?  I don't find this attitude admirable, but I certainly find it understandable.  Peel back the irony, and many 20-somethings may simply be trying to cope with profoundly confusing times. They've absorbed astounding technological advances, and they've witnessed injustice on a global scale. They've lived amid unspeakable wealth and pitiable destitution all at the same time. As the last great suburban generation, they grew up in places designed without them in mind--maybe in McMansions, even--and they will inherent a degraded landscape. They woke up one morning ready to go to homeroom and instead watched their nation's indomitability crumble into a twisted wreck. They have since come of age beneath the twin pillars of melancholy and melodrama.  Whether they were terrified by the event itself or appalled by the response -- or both -- we knew that this generation would invent its own hangups and own coping mechanisms. And it only stands to reason that they would flock to cities, seeking shelter among each other, and seeking human contact in a world so heavily mediated by technology.  When left to their own devices, hipsters have found that they can change their immediate world, even as the larger world drifts ever more into peril. Yes, some hipsters have done really stupid things. But while art projects and skinny jeans may be aesthetically questionable and functionally pointless, rarely are they morally questionable.  I agree with Doig. Hipsters may not be worth much to cities. But cities are worth the world to hipsters. And maybe that's enough. This piece also appears on Planetizen's Interchange blog .

In November 2006, the Imperial Irrigation District, based upon a negative declaration, adopted an Equitable Distribution Plan (EDP). The plan was designed to provide for the equitable apportionment of water to users in the event of a supply/demand imbalance. The governing board approved the plan, which provided for a straight-line method of allocation among agricultural users during shortfall periods. Agricultural users were the largest users in the district, with industrial users making up a small percentage of the remainder.  In 2007, IID adopted regulations implementing the EDP which provided more detail on allocations to non-residential users, including industrial. In adopting these regulations, the district relied upon the 2006 negative declaration. In 2008, the district adopted amended regulations, further refining the regulations. Language was added pertaining to new industrial water contracts. The district again relied upon the prior negative declaration, and relying in part on CEQA Guidelines 15162, concluded that no new environmental review was required.  The petitioners then filed a CEQA challenge. The trial court denied the petition, determining that Benton v. Board of Supervisors (1991) 226 Cal.App.3d 1467 was controlling, and under the traditional substantial evidence test (as compared to the fair argument test), ample evidence supported the district's decision to rely upon the prior CEQA document. Petitioners dismissed their other claims without prejudice, then appealed. At the outset, the appellate court wrestled with the effect of the dismissal without prejudice of the remaining claims, asking whether or not there was a final judgment subject to appeal. Concluding that there were no remaining claims, the appellate court would treat the judgment as final and proceeded to consider the merits of the appeal.  On the merits, the plaintiffs/ appellants first argued that Guideline Section 15162 was invalid as it facially applied to both EIRs and negative declarations, whereas the enabling statute, Public Resources Code section 21166 only pertains to EIRs. Relying on Benton, the appellate court rejected this challenge. Shifting next to the substantive CEQA claims, the appellate court applied the substantial evidence in assessing the IID's determination that there had not been a substantial change in the project requiring additional CEQA review. This is a factually intensive inquiry, and the appellate court compared the 2008 revisions to the regulations adopted in 2007.  The primary area of legal debate centered on whether the 2008 amendments changed the priority of industrial users to the detriment of agricultural users. As a matter of regulatory interpretation, the appellate court concluded that the 2008 changes did not materially affect the priorities established in 2007. Pointing to the allocation of water to an industrial (geothermal) project in 2008, the opponents also argued that there had been a change in circumstances surrounding the project, necessitating an EIR. As framed by the opponents, the granting of the contract for a user of 6,000 or more annual acre-feet, in conjunction with the alteration in priorities, constituted the type of changed circumstances under CEQA necessitating an EIR. Having determined that there was no material change in allocation priority between 2007 and 2008, the court rejected this argument as well. Comment:  Picking the right second (or third) generation CEQA document requires a thorough understanding of the initial action along with the relationship of the second action to the first, and probably a little bit of luck. Abatti involved the evolution of a policy to an implementing regulation followed by a later regulation. The passage of the statute of limitations on the intermediate regulation positioned the district to take full advantage of Guidelines Section 15162. In contrast, consider the very recent scenario in Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation v. County of El Dorado (2012) 202 Cal.App.4th 1156 where the lead agency was challenged in its transition from a general plan policy to an implementing regulation, and the appellate court rejected the use of a negative declaration following the earlier EIR. The Case:  James Abatti v. Imperial Irrigation District (April 26, 2012, D058329) ___ 205 Cal. App. 4th 650 ; 2012 Cal.App. LEXIS 496 The Attorneys:  Downey Brand: Gregory Thomas Broderick, Stephen J. Meyer, Kevin M. O'Brien and Courtney S. Covington for Plaintiffs and Appellants.  Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis,:Davis Leon Osias, David Duval Cooke, Jeffrey R. Patterson, Mark J. Hattam; and Jeffrey M. Garber for Defendant and Respondent