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

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

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Angelenos of a certain age may remember Allan Malamud, whose column in the Herald-Examiner , and later the Los Angeles Times , was called “Notes on a Scorecard.” He jotted down scattered thoughts and observations—some amusing, some profound—over the course of nine innings and shared them with readers. I recently attended the annual journalists forum at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , which entailed two days of discussion on all things land use around the country. Based on panels, keynotes, and side conversations, here are a few notes on the proverbial tract map. *** A reporter from the East Coast asked me what the one-year anniversary story on the Los Angeles fires will be. At first, I said there was no story. Almost nothing has broken ground yet, and no vision for Pacific Palisades (in the City of Los Angeles) or Altadena (in unincorporated Los Angeles County) has been announced or adopted. The sniping about whose fault it is—Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom, the LAFD, or Prometheus himself—will probably persist forever. (Rarely discussed: the inherent dangers of developing and living alongside an eminently flammable, drought-prone landscape.) The real story centers on decisions: What have homeowners, 12 months into exile, decided to do? What can they afford to do? Rebuild and move back? Rebuild and sell? Cut their losses? Go bankrupt buying insurance?  *** The federal government has clawed back $80 million in funding for wildlife corridors nationwide to help various fauna move about their habitats in the face of incursions by roads, development, and other uses. I couldn’t help doing the math: that’s exactly $12 million less than the cost of the soon-to-be-finished Wallis Annenberg Crossing near Calabasas, in western Los Angeles County. Over 150,000 people will drive under the crossing every day, so hopefully that outsized investment will be good PR. Otherwise, as much as Los Angeles loves its mountain lions, it sounds like a lot of money to help a few cats on the prowl. *** The Lincoln Institute has undertaken an impressive study to identify the owners of every single residential parcel in the United States, called “ Who Owns America? ” to discern, in part, how much real estate has been purchased by corporate entities. Even Wall St. is priced out of California I was not previously convinced that the specter of corporate ownership wasn't overblown. I was wrong. In some cities, corporations own up to 20% of the housing stock (St. Louis and Baltimore among them), disproportionately located in low-income and minority-majority neighborhoods.  Importantly, corporate investors tend to overpay by 4%, meaning they push up prices for everyone. California appears relatively unscathed. For once, our high costs work in our favor: real estate is too expensive for capitalist speculators to take a risk. *** An interlude with Providence, Rhode Island:Providence, RI, Mayor Brett Smiley took a question about his measured approach to bike lanes, which has disappointed many bike advocates in Providence. He argued that the development of bike lanes should be commensurate with use: currently less than 10% in Providence, and almost 0% at certain times of year. (Smiley has recently been in the news for far sadder reasons.)  Adaptive reuse in Providence Even allowing for induced demand, investment in bike lanes has to be sensible and strategic. I think everyone in California can name a newly installed bike lane that is both controversial and under-utilized. A lane on Venice Blvd. basically sunk the career of an L.A. City Council member a few years ago, and I’m really not sure that permanently shutting down all of San Francisco’s Great Highway is such a good idea.  Bike advocates should lobby as hard for biking—to help other people adopt biking and use those lanes—as they do for the lanes themselves.  Providence puts California to shame in an unexpected way. The city has declared itself a “city of design,” partly because of the Rhode Island School of Design and partly because it’s converting old mill buildings into inexpensive live-work spaces.  Thus, Providence’s creative economy is on the rise at the very moment when Los Angeles’ is being sold off for parts (cf. Netflix’s intended acquisition of Warner Bros., announced recently). With the exception of former Mayor John Bauters of Emeryville , I don’t think I’ve heard a mayor in California speak as enthusiastically about development as Mayor Smiley of Providence did. Rather than speak in hushed tones about “fair shares,” “following guidelines,” and “upzoning in appropriate places,” Smiley said, “People can choose where to live. We want them to choose Providence.” Full stop. So, California, what do we want?  *** Our keynote speaker was Michael Sandel, Harvard professor of political philosophy and teacher of the near-legendary course “Justice.” I asked him whether cities should be obligated—as a moral principle—to accommodate any and all people who would like to live in them. Sandel did not declare a categorical obligation, but he posited that if a city was to acknowledge such an obligation, it should also adopt a land-value tax, echoing 19th-century economist Henry George. Sandel reasoned that speculation in real estate leads to scarcity whereas a land-value tax promotes development and is infinitely expandable to match revenue with demand for services.  That recommendation was gratifying to the Georgists in the room. The institute’s founder, John C. Lincoln, was an enthusiastic Georgist, as are many current staff members.  (Side note: Sandel forbids screens in his classrooms. That strikes me as a pedagogically sound policy as well as an inherently pro-urban policy, insofar as human connection is one of the purposes of cities.) *** “States should set housing targets and enforce them.” With apologies to Huntington Beach , California is doing at least one thing right. *** Lincoln Institute President George McCarthy, an expert in local tax policy, mentioned that, for a while, Bogotá, Colombia, invited residents to voluntarily add to their tax payments if they wanted to support the city. On its face, this sounds insane. Who would voluntarily pay a tax? But let’s face it: most cities are not as nice as residents want them to be, and some people understand that a desire without a commensurate willingness to pay is tantamount to whining. There’s no better place than California to experiment with this approach. Why? Prop. 13 ensures that many Californians pay a fraction of their fair share. I’d like to think that at least a few of them would recognize their good fortune clearly enough to chip in. My proposal: whatever bonus a homeowner adds to his or her tax payment, half should be spent in the immediate neighborhood and half should be pooled and allocated to underserved communities. Dare I call it a win-win-win? *** Here’s something I didn’t know: A “Corruption tax” is a premium imposed by lenders on localities that do not have robust press coverage.  What does press coverage have to do with lending liability? Lenders know that the absence of a civic watchdog makes their investment more precarious than it would otherwise be. So, developers, support your local newspapers ! (Even if they annoy you sometimes.) *** For every local mayor and councilmember who is incensed over preemptive pro-housing legislation from Sacramento, they are in good company in almost every state in the country. This chart, compiled by the Mercatus Center, indicates around 400 total housing bills. These bills represent 33 states, according to the Mercatus data.    Bills, bills, bills. That’s a torrent of bills, for sure. But by our count, at least 200 of those bills are from Sacramento, in pretty much all 13 categories. *** A ballot measure to reduce local taxes or otherwise alter a locality’s revenue model “is only one half of a conversation” and therefore perilous, at least compared to legislation. “At least legislators have to think about other arguments. Ballot measures don’t need balance.” This is, of course, how you end up with measures like Los Angeles’s Measure ULA transfer tax. *** One discussion focused on state preemption of local land-use control, which is basically the story of California for the better part of the past decade. Cities have understandably carped about unfunded mandates and the burden that new housing places on them—with dubious fiscal benefits. Speakers had two major recommendations: 1) provide funds for planning; and 2) link intergovernmental transfers (i.e., funds the state sends to cities) to the production of housing: “Until growth is a promise that common pool resources will be invested in where growth is happening, we are never going to be able to solve the housing crisis.”

Treasure Island has nearly every necessary feature to make it the most exciting new residential development in San Francisco. This 403-acre island between San Francisco and Berkeley has superb views of downtown San Francisco, Alcatraz and Angel islands, and the Bay Area’s ridgelines. It has dozens of acres of green fields and an environmentally sensitive coastline, to make it a regional eco-attraction. And Treasure Island and its 125-acre companion, Yerba Buena Island, are large enough to become a self-contained community while still enjoying close proximity to the city. What could be lacking? Only design. For some reason, the developers are proposing something that looks like a suburban office park. Among the housing choices are four high-rise residential towers, which seem absurd on this small island, more than half of which is to be protected coastline and open space. The plan has an orderly grid, but the residential streets have a casual zig-zag look that is at odds with the developers’ avowals to emulate the streetscape of San Francisco. There is a 20-acre farm smack dab in the middle of the island, which is to be a demonstration farm for city folks who have never seen a real, live farm before. The developers plan to spend $20 million to build a new ferry terminal, only to greet visitors with a conventional shopping center. Living close to nature has its costs, apparently. Treasure Island is an odd place. Built by the city during the late 1930s to accommodate the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939, the man-made island was converted to military use during World War II. The island has been the object of discussion among local planners and city officials since 1997, when the Pentagon gave the rectangular island back to San Francisco. On-site conditions include a smattering of ex-military buildings and about 900 houses and rental units. Water-borne wind and fog are downsides of the site. The most difficult issue, however, is access. Treasure Island is accessible to cars only by a hair-pin exit from the Bay Bridge. (Muni buses do serve the area.) In a city in perpetual need of new housing, Treasure Island joins Mission Bay as one of San Francisco’s two largest home-building opportunities. A specially created agency, the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority, is overseeing a group of developers selected by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to build on the island. The developers include Kenwood Investments (which includes political lobbyist and Democratic Party fundraiser Darius Anderson) and Lennar Corporation, the giant homebuilder that is already involved in the redevelopment of three other former bases: Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, Mare Island in Vallejo and El Toro in Orange County. The newest partner is Wilson Meany Sullivan, which led the restoration of the ferry building in downtown San Francisco. After a dozen years of planning and public discussion, the goals for Treasure Island are clear: a community that is compact, environmentally respectful and easily accessible to the mainland. Many of these basic assumptions behind Treasure Island are rational. To maximize solar gain, planners have created a grid that maximizes the exposure of rooftops to the sun. To minimize the breezes, planners have proposed a “staggered” grid, where buildings block open pathways that could otherwise become wind tunnels. Plentiful tree-planting would provide a natural wind-screen. To make the island accessible to San Francisco, the developers want to build an entirely new ferry terminal on the southern tip of the island, which is a 10-minute boat ride to the city. The developers are planning between 3,500 and 5,500 units – depending on the final height of the apartment buildings – with a density somewhere between 90 and 110 units per acre. The housing would take the form of low-rise, mid-rise and several high-rise towers. Each housing cluster would have its own small park. In the name of creating a “self-sustaining community,” the developers propose 200,000 square feet of retail space, or enough stores to make it unnecessary to leave the island to buy anything smaller than a pickup truck. There is also a 400-slip marina and 600 hotel rooms. What is lacking here is any sense of urban organization. While it is commendable that the developers want to build compactly, the plan is not orderly. Visitors and returning commuters to Treasure Island are met with a hotel and a conventional, open-air shopping center, not by a coastline and spectacular views of the city. Disembarking ferry riders need an open space to orient themselves once they reach the island. An old-fashioned public square with civic buildings like post offices and satellite city offices would be in order, along with some smaller retail buildings. The proposed “grand plaza,” surrounded by retail, is overscaled and lacks the sight lines needed for visitors to get a sense of their location. Another factor that is disconcerting here is the presence of tall buildings – we still do not know how tall – in the casually planned residential streets. These residential swards (one can’t really call them blocks) could be likened to fields of grass (the low rise buildings) upon which grow some hedges (the mid-rise buildings) and occasional tall oaks (the high rises). Mixing density and height is good, but neither Feng Shui nor the Kabbalah can explain why the high-rise buildings poke out of the earth where they do on this plan. Moreover, I don't think tall buildings are appropriate on a site that has no other tall structures to provide context. I appreciate the need to keep the development compact, and the high-rises may be unavoidable if we are to achieve these ambitious densities. But they could make the island look overloaded, like a bunch of Gullivers strolling around a tropical atoll. High-density housing raises, at least for me, another issue, which is usable open space. In my view, high-density housing represents a loss – a loss in personal outdoor space, the direct relationship with both the soil and the street – that must be compensated for. In a mature city, those compensations could be stimulating street life, delis and bakeries, coffee houses, bars and museums. Equally important for high-density urban dwellers is active open space suitable for impromptu soccer matches, picnics, birthday barbeques and Fourth of July parties. Treasure Island has ample open space. The trails that circle the island and connect to Yerba Buena would probably be great for walking and bicycling. But the lack of active open space — the fields for softball and soccer — is the greatest failing of this plan. And even if Treasure Island contains adequate open space, the current plan suggests that high-rise dwellers would have to walk a considerable distance to get to a park. Ideally, open space — not only retail stores — should be literally at residents’ feet. The hierarchy of open spaces begins with one’s own yard, and then moves up in scale to neighborhood courtyards or mini-parks, then to civic parks and regional parks. The proposed farm occupies exactly the place where a large, urban park should exist.. It is fine that the developers of Treasure Island have adopted the right set of environmental values. Now they must rethink their plan to make a place that would be worth living in.

The scene is the control room of a spy satellite, launched by an unnamed country. Two men sit in semi-darkness, their faces washed in the ghostly light of a video screen. At this moment, the satellite is transmitting images of a new master-planned community known as Dos Lagos, located in the western Riverside County city of Corona. “What’s that?” says the first guy, pointing a sausage-like finger at the screen. It shows the configuration of office, retail and residential buildings. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The second guy squints at the screen. “It looks like suburbia to me.” “How do you know,” says the first guy in a contentious tone, “that it’s not some sort of weapons plant? You see those two lakes? They could be cooling ponds for a reactor.” The second guy squints again. “Nothing big enough there for a reactor,” he says finally. “It looks more like a master-planned community in Southern California.” He adds teasingly: “You oughta go back to spook school, dude.” At this point, the two men break the tension by exchanging some playful punches. “How can you tell it’s suburbia?” says the first guy, still feeling a little defensive. “That layout sure doesn’t look like the suburbs where I grew up in the ’70s, when the streets looked like something you’d see inside a can of bait. This place is a lot more orderly and put-together, like a big industrial operation. Besides, if this is a residential community and not a weapons plant, like you say, what are those missile silos doing there to the left?” “Those are office buildings.” “And how do you explain those chemical factories next door?” “Those are live-work lofts. You’ve gotta have housing choices in these master planned communities. This isn’t the ’70s anymore.” After a moment, the first guy asks: “What are office buildings doing in a residential master plan? I thought you said this was the suburbs.” “The office buildings are there,” says the second, “ because this is an enlightened, state-of-the-art plan that balances jobs and housing.” “Really?” says the first, showing interest. “How many people who live here will actually work here too?” “If experience is our guide,” says the second, “almost nobody.” “Ah-ha!” the first guy shouts. “What about those airplane hangars next to the runway?” “Those are retail buildings arranged on either side of the main street,” says the second guy quietly. “Stores, huh?” says the first. Then, after a moment’s reflection: “How come that retail strip is the most formal and orderly part of the installation?” “Well, now, that is a good question,” says the second before answering his own question: “I think it’s because retail is the most public part of the master plan. This is where folks are supposed to gather and hang out. It’s a promenade, like.” “ ?” says the first, in a derisive tone. “Dude is talkin’ now. Tryin’ to lose your security clearance or somethin’?” The second guy colors a bit. “I read about it in the papers,” he says, sounding a bit steamed. “It’s called the New Urbanism. That main street is probably meant to be a lifestyle center, which is basically a shopping mall that’s supposed to look like a street or something.” “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” says the first, also getting a bit ticked. “I know a little something about the New Urbanism.” Attempting to lighten the mood, he asks: “Hey! You know what they call a city full of naked people?” The second one sighs. “The Nude Urbanism?” “I guess you heard that one already,” says the first. Then, summoning his confidence, he says firmly: “This layout makes no sense as urbanism.” “How you figure?” says the second, cool and incredulous. “Well,” says the first, “To the south, you have a strongly defined axis of the street with all the shops. But instead of continuing all the way through to the north, where the office buildings and live-work lofts are, the shopping street stops at those two lakes. If this street is so all-fired important, why doesn’t Mr. Enlightened Developer locate all the commercial buildings on the main drag?” “Because the water is an , dude,” says the second, with a trace of condescension, adding, “It’s about . This is L.A. It’s supposed to look like paradise.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” says the first. “If the water is an ‘amenity,’ as you call it, then why is it stuck in the middle, where it gets in the way of everything? It should be off to the side in a park.” “You’re an idiot,” says the second. “The water is smack dab in the middle so everybody can see the water no matter where they are! It’s brilliant!” “It’s stupid,” says the first, growing similarly uncharitable. “There is no reason for the main street not to have all the commercial space, especially if this street is supposed to be the part of this here master-planned community!” Now it is the second guy’s turn to get quiet. Clearly on a roll, the first guy jabs his fat finger at the screen again. “Plus, what kind of mixed-use development is this? Nothing is mixed! Everything is kept in its own little area — office buildings here, retail there, housing somewhere else. Nothing touches anything else. It looks like one of those sectional plates that little kids eat from, so their creamed corn doesn’t get up mixed up with their peas.” “Anyway,” the first guy goes on to say, “we’ve got to get our report out — we’re under pressure from Upstairs to find you-know-what.” “Say anything you want,” says the second dispiritedly. “I’m hittin’ the can.” He gets to his feet wearily and walks out. The first guy rubs his chin for a minute, and then starts to type. “Suspected suburban development,” he writes on his keyboard. Then, after a moment, he adds: “Weapons plant cannot categorically be ruled out.” He hits the send button, stands up, hitches his trousers and goes to lunch.

Legend records that the dying Julius Caesar looks up to find his friend Brutus among his assassins. “ ” (And you too, Brutus?) is his pathetic and much-quoted response. This tragic scene from the stage has nothing to do with land use politics in Santa Monica, of course - except for the smell of opportunism and something approaching betrayal of Santa Monica residents by their own city government. Santa Monica officials have been rightly aghast at proposals by MaceRich Company, the owner of the Santa Monica Place shopping mall, to build three high-rise towers, each 24 stories, on or near the site where the mall currently stands. This opportunistic proposal comes in response to MaceRich's offer to tear down its existing mall, designed by architect Frank Gehry in 1980. The mall is a klutzy building that even the architect may be pleased to demolish. The mall's removal would open the wildly successful Third Street Promenade to the city's wildly unsuccessful civic center. In this happy scenario, the teeming foot traffic of the shopping street spills out into an area of public parks and civic buildings, including the handsome new headquarters of RAND Corporation, as well as the ugly and obsolete Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. In exchange for the civic gesture of removing the Great Wall of Gehry and connecting the long-estranged Third Street and Civic Center, MaceRich wants a set of princely concessions, including the right to build not only the condominium towers but a pair of 40-foot-tall retail buildings on either side of Third Street. Some local residents have likened the proposed development to a canyon. Yes, Santa Monica city council members have been aghast at the idea of the three towers, which would be five times taller than the current height limit of 56 feet. But do not rush to call MaceRich “greedy” or “grasping” or any of the other names that some people frequently attach to developers. You may need those words soon for another party - namely, the City of Santa Monica itself. The city recently bought the former RAND site, which lies immediately north of the new campus, including some inestimably valuable land along Ocean Avenue with excellent ocean views (see , June 2000). Seeking to maximize its public investment, the city wants to build one or two 12-story residential buildings along the avenue. These buildings would not be as tall as the proposed MaceRich buildings, being only two-and-a-half times taller than zoning allows. Of the two proposals, the city's own proposal is arguably worse because it has a chance of actually getting built. The MaceRich proposal, in contrast, is a kind of bluff. California developers know their projects are going to get cut down to the bone, so their opening offer tends to be wildly oversized. (Developers seem to believe that if they were foolish enough to open talks with the city with a realistic proposal, they would walk out of City Council with blueprints for a bird house.) The sudden spate of high-rise proposals is unusual in Santa Monica, which is one of the most regulated places in California. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” a land use lawyer once told me, “Santa Monica gets an 11.” The city has been rigorous, perhaps to a fault, about upholding design standards and limiting development, especially along the city's waterfront. The city, for example, has set a limit on new hotel rooms, and the last two hotels to open in Santa Monica have been rehabs of historic hotel buildings, so as to prevent any net increase in units. If this kind of stringency can make lawyers tear out their hair in hanks, there are benefits, too. High-rise construction has been limited largely to a single street, Wilshire Boulevard, where it belongs, while the rest of the city, including the waterfront, remains no higher than four stories. As a result, Santa Monica has one of the most visible waterfronts of any city in Southern California. The offensive nature of the MaceRich proposal is that tall buildings would block views not only from the north and south, but from the east, as well. However, those towers are unlikely to be built, at least at the proposed heights. Although the city towers are only half the height as MaceRich buildings, they are even more offensive because they would block views from even closer to the ocean. And although I have not conducted an audit of the Santa Monica city treasury, I suspect the city does not really need this real estate windfall. Santa Monica is tourist catnip, and local businesses disgorge plenty of tax increment, sales tax and hotel tax (and soon more, as the city has proposed lifting the existing hotel tax from 10% to 14%). I respectfully - and seriously - propose the following: The City should negotiate with MaceRich, allowing the mall owner to build something like its desired density. But the development should be horizontal along the street in the form of row houses, rather than high-rise towers. To preserve MaceRich's square-footage, the city should redistribute that entitlement along Ocean Avenue, giving the developer a portion of the city's own property, if necessary. Both MaceRich and the city should limit residential construction to two-story townhouses, or four stories at the very most, with two-story units stacked atop one another. The townhouses would provide the city with the housing that it needs, while providing a pleasantly citified edge to Ocean Avenue. The same solid wall of housing would benefit the new public space on the remainder of the Ocean Avenue acreage because a solid wall of built stuff is the best way of defining a park or plaza ( “Urban Space” by Leon Krier). Inside the park, we can create a public garden or ball fields or cultural facilities or any other public use compatible with a heavily used public park. Nobody's ox is gored, especially not the public's. MaceRich and the city can both a make a killing on the absurdly inflated prices that ocean-front condominiums can command nowadays. (I have seen loft units off of Third Street priced at $4 million.) Best of all, everybody's ocean view is preserved. And nobody would be able to write a Shakespearean tragedy about how the City of Santa Monica assassinated its own General Plan in the hope of making a couple of bucks. “ , City Council?”

Officials with the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) have created a "new normal" baseline for discussing possible changes to CEQA transportation metrics under SB 743. They've succeeded pretty much by having the stamina to keep discussing their August 6 preliminary discussion draft. Over. And over. And over. For three months. In an extended public workshopping process the key OPR drafters -- Chris Calfee and Chris Ganson -- have spoken before many different California groups to explain their August draft, often appearing with leading experts and spokespeople who raise challenging questions about it. Bill Fulton was already referring to "The SB 743 roadshow" in mid-September. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3576 .) Now in late fall, with public comments on the draft due November 21, the roadshow has returned, well-tested, to Sacramento. Those appearances didn't build complete agreement on CEQA transportation metrics -- nothing could -- but through public debates and informal consultations, it appears OPR has built up a corps of influential loyal-opposition advisor/critics who are at least willing to keep arguing constructively and maybe willing to edge toward consensus. Two chances to take SB 743 debate's temperature Two panel discussions last week showed there's still plenty of disagreement on details, but most of the new conversation is happening within a frame established by OPR: how best to apply a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) standard in California CEQA analysis without undue kerfuffles or litigation. An OPR-sponsored panel discussion November 3 brought together many of the leading figures in the SB 743 debate to argue and clarify the outstanding dilemmas. (Video is online at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php .) (The next day, in a panel discussion at the University of San Francisco, three of the speakers who had argued most fiercely in published essays in August -- Jennifer Hernandez, Ethan Elkind and Amanda Eaken -- made clear that not everyone has bought into the OPR approach, though they did manage to agree on some common ground. See our separate coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3622 .) OPR's loyal opposition on display At the November 3 panel discussion, the two Chris's began with their now-familiar OPR presentation on the drawbacks of LOS congestion analysis and arguments for choices in the August 6 discussion draft. (For prior CP&DR coverage of this evolving presentation see http://www.cp-dr.com/search/articles/node-opr .) The presentation lays out the SB 743 mandate to measure transportation impacts by a standard other than Level of Service (LOS) congestion ratings, and why OPR favors a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) standard to replace it -- that is, a rule based on the number and length of vehicle trips a project causes, not the amount of delay it may cause at any given intersection. It explains the rationales for disputed parts of the proposal: the proposed "no significant impact" presumptions for projects within half a mile of good transit; the recommendation of regional average VMT as the threshold of significance for individual projects; possible interactions between the VMT standard for transportation impact purposes and continuing LOS-based planning rules for purposes such as safety and air quality. As he frequently has, Calfee emphasized local agencies' authority to pick their own methodologies for estimating VMT, and he described many of the draft's practical suggestions for thresholds and mitigations as being recommendations, not hard requirements. Though in explaining local lead agencies' authority to choose their own methodologies, Calfee warned attorneys that the assumptions underlying transportation studies are best included in the administrative record. Calfee repeated his late-September comment that the January 1, 2016 date projected in the August draft for full implementation was "a placeholder" and "probably too quick" so "I would imagine that that date may change." And he had new hints on the rulemaking timetable: he said if the next proposal draft contained major changes, OPR might send it out for further public review, but when "we're comfortable with the proposal" it would go out to the Natural Resources Agency to start a formal rulemaking process, so he expected "that we won't come to resolution on this until some time in 2015." The Kool-Aid When Caltrans Deputy Secretary Kate White, acting as moderator, opened the discussion to panelists, independent planner Terrell Watt announced, "I think we're all up here on the panel because we've drunk the Kool-Aid, we're on the right path, we need to get constructive, roll up our sleeves, and figure out ." The only outright demurrer to that came politely from Jim Moose, partner with the firm of Remy Moose Manley. "I'm not sure whether drinking the Kool-Aid was a prerequisite for being invited," he said, suggesting he hadn't entirely been converted to the OPR draft. He had a few concerns, including that ordinary people dislike congestion, rural county officials dislike taking instructions from "urban liberal elites," and a reduction in CEQA litigation threats over LOS issues might reduce the "fear factor" that could motivate his clients to cooperate with other jurisdictions on reducing congestion. The rest of the panel was a dream team of CEQA transportation expertise: Jeffrey Tumlin, the respected Nelson/Nygaard transportation specialist; Eric Ruehr, chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' SB 743 task force; Ron Milam, director of technical development with Fehr and Peers and an expert on VMT analysis; Viktoriya Wise, San Francisco Planning's lead on VMT analysis; Curt Johansen of the Council of Infill Builders, and Amanda Eaken of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who frequently invokes her role as a key figure in shaping SB 743 in the first place. The panel did raise criticisms and uncertainties. Among them: - Concerns for rural VMT analyses, about incentives for transit in small towns, and about oppositional attitudes of rural planners and developers toward instructions from central government. - A question whether projects that don't meet the threshold of current regional VMT average would or should get built anyway via mitigations or statements of overriding considerations. - Two objections Eaken has been making since August: First, that it's too lenient to grant a "less than significant impact" presumption to projects within half a mile of good transit because mere presence near transit doesn't guarantee transit-oriented design. Second, that when projects are analyzed individually, the threshold of significance could be stricter than OPR's suggested rule to generate less than the existing regional average VMT. Eaken argued projects should do better to reach 2050 climate protection goals. (Wise said San Francisco was already using stricter thresholds, and would want to continue doing so, in part "to accommodate all the infill growth that we are taking." - Calls for consistency between CEQA VMT rules and other requirements, including Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) and Air Resources Board pollution reduction targets. - On thresholds of significance -- an area where Calfee has already indicated willingness to change the draft (http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3582), Tumlin suggested projects should be considered acceptable if they fell 15% below any one of four standards: the expected average VMT for new development in municipal general plans; the regional average; Air Resources Board goals, or the local SCS. He suggested projects can often reduce their VMT by as much as 40% and 15% should be possible for most. - Calls for preserving local agencies' flexibility by lifting the more specific or technical requirements out of the guidelines themselves and moving those into technical advisory memos or possibly OPR's revised General Plan guidelines. This persistent recommendation came in light of disagreements running since August about whether OPR's "recommendations" could carry the force of law -- especially due to objctions by the Holland & Knight law firm about possible mitigation measures listed in the OPR draft's Appendix F (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3560 ). - Answering a query about case studies in VMT reduction -- White and Johansen recommended TransForm's GreenTRIP analysis tools. (See http://www.transformca.org/landing-page/greentrip .) - Some panelists questioned whether the proposed transportation metric guidelines ought to include recommendations on safety rules at all. Tumlin said "I can't believe that I'm actually arguing against safety," but for the sake of avoiding unintended consequences and litigation, he urged against definite road safety rules in a CEQA context. This was in part, he said, because of current controversy over conflicts between the overlapping road design manuals of CalTrans and of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). (White said CalTrans was now encouraging use of the NACTO manual in urban areas.) - Audience member Tom Pace, from the City of Sacramento, asked that "things like queuing on ramps" not be counted as a safety consideration, for fear that infill projects might be harmed by mitigation requirements involving the highway ramps that surround downtown Sacramento. Calfee closed by saying "our hope is to be very transparent about some of the conflicts that we see in this process and some of the policy choices that need to be made." Comments on the August 6 transportation metric guidelines draft under SB 743 are due November 21 to CEQA.Guidelines@ceres.ca.gov . The OPR presentation is available on video at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php .

This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . Los Angeles Extends Adaptive Reuse Policy Citywide Los Angeles will expand its adaptive reuse policy, allowing office and commercial buildings to be converted into housing citywide, per a unanimous vote of the City Council. Previously, these conversions were largely limited to specific areas such as Downtown, Chinatown, Hollywood, and Koreatown under the older Adaptive Reuse Incentive Areas Specific Plan. These updates are intended not only to expand the scope from the previously limited area but to also make it easier to convert older and underutilized buildings left empty after the pandemic. City officials say this update marks the first step in the Citywide Housing Incentive Program, a program created in order to increase housing production and meet state-mandated housing goals. YIMBY Law Threatens Suit over Suspension of SB 9 in Los Angeles Fire Recovery Areas San Francisco-based YIMBY Law is threatening to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom over an executive order he signed in July that essentially bans duplex construction and lot splits in areas affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. The order runs in opposition to Senate Bill 9, which was passed in 2021 and made it legal to build multiple units on land zoned only for single-family homes. Newsom’s order was aimed at giving cities like Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Pasadena the power to suspend SB 9 in high fire-risk zones after the destructive wildfires earlier this year, citing concerns about evacuation safety and community risk. YIMBY Law threatened legal action unless Newsom revises the order to property owners’ ability to build duplexes after one year according to executive director Sonja Trauss. The group argues that SB 9 may provide flexibility to families who may be otherwise priced out of their community during rebuilding, while community members such as Sue Kohl, president of the Pacific Palisades Community Council, argues that these propositions are being pushed by developers over community members, and may exacerbate issues of crowding and congestion that created chaos and forced members of the Palisades community to flee their cars and escape on foot. San Francisco Upzoning to Face Legal Battle Neighborhoods United SF plans to file a lawsuit against San Francsico Mayor Daniel Lurie's Family Zoning Plan which he officially signed on December 12. The lawsuit could delay the implementation of the plan until after the next Board of Supervisors election in 2026, which might change the majority of the board with approval power over the plan. The lawsuit argues that the city cannot use an environmental impact report created for the 2022 Housing Element to get California Environmental Quality Act approval for the Family Zoning Plan, because the new plan is very different from the 2022 Housing Element. According to the lawsuit, the FZP will allow 54,000 new housing units, including in many areas not included in redevelopment in the 2022 Element. The suit also criticized the city for ignoring the 71,000 already approved units waiting to be built, saying the 54,000 added in the new plan far outstrips the 10,200 units needed to meet the city's RHNA goal of 82,000. Proponents of the lawsuit criticized the city's Family Zoning Plan for allowing rent-controlled units to be replaced with non-rent-controlled ones, and for not including requirements or funding for affordable housing in new construction. Del Mar Faces Builder's Remedy Conundrum The state has sent a warning letter to Del Mar saying the small coastal city must process a builder’s remedy application for a 259-unit bluffside housing project. But city officials say the project changed by more than the allowed 20% between the “preliminary application” permitted by the builder’s remedy law and the final application filed with the city. The developer, local philanthropist Carol Lazier argues that the city is obligated to approve the project because the housing element was not approved when she filed the application. But the city has stalled the application at first by saying Lazier’s application is incomplete because it does not request changes to the city’s planning and zoning policies. Lazier sued, then halted her lawsuit, then sued again before Attorney General Rob Bonta sent the warning letter. Shortage of Affordable Units Scuttles Major Mall Redevelopment in Santa Barbara Santa Barbara City Council declined to approve the redevelopment plan for the Paseo Nuevo mall after last-minute changes including the removal of part a parcel land from the proposed deal that could reduce the number of affordable units in the project from 80 to 24. Before the changes, the proposed project was set to include 233 market-rate and 80 affordable units, 125,000 square feet of retail space, and open areas and public amenities. City Council members stressed that while housing supply is a top issue, there are concerns around getting the best plan possible and not moving too quickly. The city of Santa Barbara owns the land under the mall, but the deal includes the city giving away the land, valued at between $32 and $39 million, to the project developers. The City Council and the general public have raised concerns about such an unprecedented giveaway, and the Council is considering requiring new guarantees in the next iteration of the plan, such as establishing a minimum number of required affordable housing units. CP&DR Coverage: Santa Barbara Developer Sues in Federal Court over New State Law A Santa Barbara developer with a pending builder’s remedy project has sued the state in federal court, claiming a new law violates the developer’s constitutional rights. The root of the lawsuit is a proposal by The Mission LLC to build an eight-story housing project behind the iconic Santa Barbara Mission. Under AB 130, passed last summer, infill housing projects of up to 20 acres are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, but under SB 158, passed later in the session and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the infill exemption cannot be applied to the Santa Barbara project. The main argument in the new lawsuit is that SB 158 singles out the project’s developer in a way that violates both the federal and state constitutions, most notably the equal protection clause and the so-called “prohibition on special legislation” in the state constitution, which prohibits passing laws that target specific individuals or corporations. The developer’s lawsuit also names the City of Santa Barbara as a defendant, claiming that the city’s overlay zone does not conform with state Housing Element law. The overlay claim builds on a recent appellate court ruling from Redondo Beach. Quick Hits & Updates The Trump administration will reduce protections for threatened fish in the San Joaquin River Delta in order to divert more water into Central Valley farmlands. California officials including Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed opposition to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s plan, which plans to divert more water into the federally operated Central Valley Project aqueducts. Though some valley farmers who view the state’s water policies as prohibitive to business support the plan, state officials warn that the increased water demand would put significant strain on native species in an already limited water supply. Attorney General Rob Bonta's office warned the City of  Del Mar that its position on a proposed housing development legally untenable in a recent letter. The developer filed a builder's remedy application, but the city has maintained that the Coastal Commission's input was required for the application to be complete. The development in question is Seaside Ridge, a proposed 259-apartment complex with 85 affordable units, 42 of which are low-income, that would occupy the bluffs above Dog Beach. The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation reclaimed nearly 900 acres across the western edge of Yosemite National Park. The property was transferred from the Pacific Forest Trust, a nonprofit that purchased the property two decades ago when the area was threatened with the proposed development of vacation homes. The transfer takes place at a time of increased state-funded land exchanges and repatriation to native tribes by organizations including The California Natural Resources Agency, which provided $2.4 million in support of acquisition and maintenance costs. The Coastal Commission and PG&E reached a deal that will keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant online at least until 2030, in exchange for helping conserve 9,200 acres of land across three parcels. The plant was slated for decommission this year due to seismic safety concerns, but it accounts for 9% of the state's electricity, and state officials argued it was essential to keep it operating for the time being. The conservation efforts were pitched as compensation for continuing to perate the plant, which uses around 2.5 million gallons of ocean water per day for once-through cooling, killing an estimated 2 billion marine organisms per year. A report from Retirement Living analyzing U.S. Census data found that more people are leaving California than any other state. In 2024, California recorded an inflow of roughly 407,000 people, while 661,000 left, for a net loss of 254,000 residents. The report cited cost of living and the impact of wildfires as the largest likely causes for people moving away. California recorded the highest net loss of people in every age bracket, from the silent generation to Gen Z. The EPA confirmed that it will redefine the scope of the Clean Water Act t o confine the act's jurisdiction to "relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, such as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, along with wetlands that are directly connected to such bodies of water". The proposal is part of a large package of environmental regulation rollbacks being introduced by the EPA in the wake of a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that limited the EPA's authority to regulate pollution into wetlands. Developer AEG has filed plans to add a 49-story tower at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, featuring 364 residences, 334 hotel rooms, and multiple bars and restaurants, though construction won’t start soon due to current economic and labor conditions. The project is part of AEG’s broader investment in downtown, including co-developing the $2.6-billion Convention Center expansion. Hard Rock Casino Tejon , the new $600 million casino and entertainment resort, opened in November in Kern County. The casino, a joint bet by Hard Rock International and the Tejon Indian Tribe, promises 1,100 regional jobs, with future plans for a 400-room hotel and a concert venue. The owners of a Long Beach gas station wanted to add a car wash . But the property is adjacent to a school and in close proximity to several other gas stations, and Long Beach Unified claimed that the air quality analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act was inadequate. Now, in an unpublished opinion, an appellate court has agreed. On appeal, Justice Stephen Goorvich, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, concluded that the report from the Chambers Group “constitutes substantial evidence that the project would “compound or increase” the environmental impacts of the nearby automobile-related businesses.

I confess I have not read the book A Choice over Our Heads , but the resonant title of Lawrence Butler’s book chimed in my brain the other day, when I first hearing about Sequoia Village. The project is an attempt to combine affordable housing and the philosophy of co-housing, a semi-communal way of living in which people agree to contribute labor, such as cooking one day for a week in exchange for communal meals the rest of the time. This concept left me thinking about the dilemma of choice — or lack of it — in the standard model of low- and moderate-income housing. Now, I think the nonprofit builders who create housing for low- and moderate-income households walk only a little lower than the angels, given the extreme difficulty of financing and winning political support to supply one of society’s most critical needs. At the same time, I also think there is something unintentionally paternalistic, even authoritarian, about affordable housing as an institution. That is to say, working-class folks do not get many choices about where they can live. Homebuilders, understandably eager to stretch their scarce construction dollars, tend to build affordable residences in the form of “stacked flats,” which are two rows of identical apartments, separated by a hallway, with access to light and air from one wall only. In addition, you may not know your neighbors. Worse, you may have reason to fear them. But if you are on the list for an affordable unit, the builder says: “This is where you are going to live—and you should be grateful.” Given this mindset, co-housing may seem like an odd choice for affordable housing. In a co-housing arrangement, residents agree (as distinct from being obliged) to prepare communal meals on certain days and clean up on others. Co-housing participants may also commit themselves to other tasks, such as doing landscape work on common areas. But it’s all voluntary, as each unit is fully self-contained. The advantages of co-housing might seem obvious, at least to anyone who has been single, or a single parent, or part of a married couple that works full-time while raising children. Spending one evening a week cooking for a crowd is a great trade-off for communal meals the rest of the time (as long as you are not a salesperson who lives on the road, or an associate lawyer who works until midnight). It’s also practical to know your neighbors well enough to borrow a cup of sugar without embarrassment. The promised rewards of co-housing, however, go beyond the practical to the personal and ethical. Promoters of co-housing like to call these places “communities of choice” and people who live in this communitarian way of life typically seek it out. In other words, the communitarian way of life is an end in itself. Residents of co-housing place a high value on the idea (or ideal) of community, perhaps in memory of times when people tended to live in the same place for long periods of time and neighbors looked out for one another. Living in a tight-knit community may be a cure for isolation, even if not everyone has the commitment or the social skills to keep the communitarian ball bouncing. Located near the apple orchards of Sonoma County, Sebastopol is one city with the right set of factors to foster co-housing. One factor is a tolerant and open-minded populace. Another, arguably, may be affluence. “Sebastopol is a highly progressive place and seems to have a lot of people who are interested in issues such as healthy living, politics, and alternative housing,” said the city’s planning director, Kenyon Webster. The city is one of the few in the state to require, as opposed merely to allow, green building standards, including requirements for both capturing and partially purifying stormwater on-site. Given this forward-looking culture, it is not surprising that local government would have both the resources and the openness to lend a hand to non-standard housing types. A few years ago, Sebastopol contributed a portion of its housing monies toward the first co-housing development, Two Acre Wood, which contained market-rate units. The success of that project emboldened the city to take a further step, and in August the Sebastopol City Council approved the city’s first affordable co-housing project, the 45-unit Petaluma Avenue. The developer is Affordable Housing Associates of Berkeley. The council followed shortly with approval of the 20-unit Sequoia Village, to be developed by Burbank Housing Development Corporation of Santa Rosa. All units in both projects are rentals. Financing, the bugbear of many creative projects, turned out to be no problem. John Morgan, Burbank’s senior project manager for Sequoia Village, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the lack of opposition from lenders. “Once we explained the concept to them, they were fine with it,” Morgan said. “Their real concern was whether the single-family houses look attached.” The lenders were concerned about the very dense arrangement of single-family homes in the project, in which houses are separated from one another by only two inches, which must set some kind of record. The site planner and architect is Michael Black, who has been active nationally in promoting co-housing. The city contributed $1.6 million to the $7 million project. The city’s loan, which equals about $80,000 per house, will be paid back at 3% interest over a 59-year amortization. Morgan is hoping the units will be outfitted with photovoltaic cells for solar power if bond funding becomes available. Morgan is frank about the possible stumbling blocks of affordable co-housing. People who participate in co-housing have often already formed “intentional communities” before the housing is built. It is far less typical to invite or persuade new people who may not know one another to take part in the communitarian way of life. And there is no guarantee that the new projects will fully succeed on a communitarian basis, even though the projects have large communal kitchens and tenant associations to pay for property management and maintenance. I think the effort is worth the risk, though. In the worst case, this expensive Sonoma County city will have 65 new units of affordable housing, hardly a negative “outcome.” The more intriguing idea, however, is that affluent Sebastopol had enough respect for its residents to give them a choice in where and how to live. It is a risk worth repeating in other parts of California. Granted, co-housing may not appeal to everyone in our intensely private society, but I suspect its appeal is broader than just a few dozen households in Sebastopol.

Looking back at the environmental issues that grabbed headlines 20 years ago, it’s tempting to conclude that nothing at all has changed. Here’s a sampling of the environmental topics covered in the first few issues of CP&DR : threats to Lake Tahoe’s fabled clarity from development and pollution; dissatisfaction over the Coastal Commission’s regulation of land use in seaside communities; suggestions that developers should be required to mitigate the air-quality impact of their car-dependent malls and housing tracts; alarm over plans to bury flood-prone land in the Central Valley under suburban sprawl. Despite the superficial similarity of the controversies then and now, the past two decades have actually seen a significant shift in the debate over the fate of California’s environment. One of the most significant changes has been geographic in origin. During the 1980s, population pressures were focused on the state’s urban coastal counties. But the focus of California’s growth has shifted in the past 10 years, migrating into the high desert of Southern California, the Central Valley — particularly those pockets within commuting distance of the San Francisco Bay Area — and the Sierra Nevada foothills. Between 1986 and 2006, California’s population grew by 39%, as the state added 10.4 million residents. County growth rates were near or below the statewide level in the traditionally populous urban coastal counties. In the Central Valley, however, rates were higher than the state as a whole, ranging from 48% over 20 years in Tulare County to 92% in Madera. In the foothills, it was higher still: Placer County grew by a whopping 124%, Amador by 70%, El Dorado by 75%, Calaveras by 89%. But it was the Inland Empire that saw the most dramatic population influx: San Bernardino County has added about 900,000 residents since the first issue of this newsletter was published, growing by 82%. And Riverside County has more than doubled its population, adding about 1.1 million people. With these geographic shifts in population have come increasing conflicts over inland air quality, as the Central Valley’s smog, soot and dust have pushed it ahead of perennial pollution powerhouse Los Angeles for the dubious title of most unhealthy air in California. That’s led to crackdowns on nontraditional regulatory targets, such as farm and construction equipment — a dramatic shift from the focus on Los Angeles auto traffic that was the subject of a story in one of the first issues of CP&DR (see “Clean Air Act Legislation May Affect Development,” August 1987). It has also pushed the Central Valley into novel regulatory terrain, as the region attempts to reshape its urban fabric to reduce smog-causing emissions from automobiles. New conflicts related to endangered species and habitat loss have accompanied the rapid expansion of urban development in the state’s interior. Desert-dwelling species such as tortoises and lizards have joined the roster of high-profile critters in peril, as have vernal pool plant species on once-remote rangeland and even creatures once thought to be relatively safe from potential extinction because they were so widespread, such as the red-legged frog. Accompanying the growing list of imperiled California species has been a fundamental shift in the way such creatures are protected. Species-by-species recovery plans have been supplanted by comprehensive agreements that attempt to balance development and other habitat-wrecking activities with landscape-level conservation of entire ecosystems and multiple species. The foundation of this balancing act is the habitat conservation plan (HCP), an idea born in California and subsequently exported nationwide, through which landowners promise to preserve and manage sufficient habitat to protect sensitive species in exchange for regulators’ permission to destroy other habitat. The first such plan was negotiated during the early 1980s to protect a Bay Area butterfly, and it established the template for most of the HCPs that followed. Despite persistent criticism, the HCP process has become enormously popular. It was formally written into federal law in 1982 as an amendment to the Endangered Species Act. When CP&DR began publishing, only two HCPs had been negotiated in California. Now, there are more than 100 species plans in effect in California — more than a fifth of all the HCPs nationwide. California not only has more of these agreements than any other state, it also has the largest one ever negotiated, an ambitious plan encompassing a tenth of the state and covering more than 100 sensitive species in the Mojave Desert (see CP&DR Environment Watch , May 2005). Like the growing importance of HCPs, which reflect a significant retooling of a landmark Nixon-era law, another far-reaching shift in environmental regulation over the past 20 years in California has involved revision of a statute dating from the 1970s. The regulations are known as total maximum daily loads, or TMDLs. They are a way of addressing water pollution from “nonpoint sources” — the diffuse runoff from agricultural fields and urban storm drains that, unlike emissions from factories and sewage treatment plants, lacks an identifiable discharge point where pollution controls can be installed and monitored with relative ease. Although authorized under section 303 of the Clean Water Act of 1972, TMDLs and nonpoint pollution were largely ignored by state and federal regulatory agencies until relatively recently. The EPA did not even adopt implementing regulations for them until 1985, refining those standards further in 1992. And it has only been within the past decade that enforcement has begun, largely a consequence of a barrage of lawsuits by environmental organizations seeking to force the EPA and the states to adopt TMDLs for impaired streams and lakes (see CP&DR Environment Watch , February 2005). The consequence will be to spread the pain of Clean Water Act compliance from factories and coastal sewer plants — the primary targets during the 1970s and 1980s — to everyone else. That’s something Californians probably should get used to. As the past 20 years have demonstrated, the state’s enormous population growth has meant intensifying pressures on ecosystems and natural resources, even those once considered safe because they were either too abundant or too remote to be troubled by human activity. Those pressures in turn have translated into a heavier and more broadly shared regulatory burden, as laws drafted a generation ago have been updated to reflect new concerns about the state’s air, water and wildlife. As there is no evidence to suggest California’s population will stop growing or spreading anytime soon, the 40th anniversary edition of CP&DR will probably carry a story very much like this one.

Back in the early 1990s, regionalism was the hot planning topic. Championed by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, regionalism sought to organize a range of planning functions traditionally managed at the state and local levels into newly defined “regions” that would better reflect actual human activity and social function. In its fully actualized form, regionalism would have handed many regulatory and planning powers from local government to new regional governments that in many cases crossed county lines. However, regionalism was felled by a combination of political turf protection and legitimate questions about defining the regions. Within a few years of the initial fanfare and conference chatter, the idea plummeted like a lead balloon. This episode is a telling one about the endless quest for purpose that defines the planning profession in California. Despite its name, planning is a profession that spends a good amount of time looking in the rear view mirror to confirm its bearings. The abrupt collapse of the regionalism movement is indicative of how the profession can deftly relegate out-of-favor ideologies to the dustbin with nary a staff report. This trait has likely evolved as a defense mechanism. From urban renewal to high-rise blocks of public housing, one planning theory after another has been pilloried by the drift to market-based culture and away from government-led central planning. Largely speaking, planning’s professional culture of self-doubt is a fate wrought by circumstance, for planning is shaped by client success — and planning’s client is the culture at large. Trying to order the physical and social world in a market economy is akin to having a tiger by the tale. So it has been interesting to watch planners warm to the biggest development trend of the last 10 years: new urbanism. In fact, the planning establishment so embraces the concept that it can be considered a core concept of urban planning — an amalgam of the previously named neo-traditional town planning with a dash of transit-oriented development (TOD) thrown in for balance. Not atypically, both branches of new urbanism were originally devised by architects rather than planners: neo-trad by Andres Duany, and TODs by Peter Calthorpe. After witnessing these architects dismantle Euclidean zoning and promote these seductive concepts during the early 1990s, planners essentially had to buy in. But given past scrapes with trends that went south, it would behoove planners to promote new urbanism with a critical eye and to understand the movement’s philosophical underpinnings. Planners should recognize that neo-traditionalism plays to society’s pursuit of comfort derived from the past, and is ultimately a backlash against post-war modernism. Illustrative models almost uniformly hearken to urban morphology of a century ago, even physically mimicking architectural styles and describing social interactions from a romanticized civic life of yore. The TOD school has grown into the urban variant of the small-town neo-trad model. More system-based in methodology, the TOD model is open to modernist architecture but adopts the form-based, mixed-use pattern of neo-traditionalism, albeit at much higher densities. Planners have been joined by trend-watching land developers to sell the movement, and this partnership has largely met with success. This too is important to understand. Today, planners work fervently with developers to get new urbanist projects in the ground, commonly abandoning their traditional role of skeptical regulator looking out for the public good. In fact, many planners are beginning to view regulations as bad, perhaps not remembering that the regulations were originally written to protect the public welfare. The placement of faith in the market system and the adoption of the architect’s sensibility that good design solves all problems should raise eyebrows. But, at least for now, it appears that planners have hitched their carts to the popular horses. In many parts of California, new urbanism seems to be working. One must attribute some of the success to the rise of an urban and suburban elite whose tastes correspond with new urbanist design themes. This success, in other words, is owed in part to the emergence of urban space as a lifestyle choice. The urban economy of the late 1990s shifted to a focus on the creative, digital and wireless sectors. The gen-Xers who fueled this sector were motivated by lifestyle. The suburbs and all they represented were — and remain — definitively passé. By contrast, urban was — and is — “in.” Thus, abandoned early-20th Century warehouses and factories were transformed into lofts and mixed-use platforms of the new urbanites. And because old buildings remain rooted in their original urban morphology, their vernacular is well suited to pedestrian life, public transportation and human scale. Center cities and older towns have benefited from the latest urban lifestyle choices. The comeback of rail transit, revitalization of downtowns and resurgence of pedestrian districts all over the state have been uniformly accepted as positive cultural developments. Planners, at least for the moment, have hit pay dirt. Equally as dramatic as planners’ acceptance of new urbanism has been their neglect of the valuable, customary planning subjects of housing and environmental quality. The exit of government as the leading provider of housing for the lower economic classes has been dramatic during the last 10 years – and its effects are deep. The production of affordable housing has shifted largely to nonprofit groups, whose good works are able to provide for only a fraction of the need. Homelessness and overcrowding have become permanent and accepted fixtures of our communities. As acknowledged in numerous public opinion polls, California’s interest in environmental issues has been supplanted by concerns about terrorism and — in planning parlance — public safety. Planners have followed this trend too, essentially relegating debate over environmental planning to CEQA documents. This focus on public safety explains in part why concepts like alternative energy, gray-water reuse and cisterns for rainwater collection are barely on the agenda. How long will planners be content with remaining primarily occupied with implementing new urbanist strategies to the exclusion of other topics? If present housing market trends continue, we may have an answer soon. For planners, success with the latest development trend has required a new partnership with developers. Planners simplify regulations, and developers finance new urbanist projects. But new urbanist successes have depended on an unusually strong housing market. If profits dwindle, as many vanguard homebuilders are already reporting, planners may run out of projects to champion, requiring a shift back to other pressing matters. It looks today like new urbanism has plenty of steam left. In the meantime, though, it would be worthwhile to integrate diversified housing and environmental sustainability into projects. There could be great benefits to incorporating some of urban planning’s more traditional concerns into this retro new world. Stephen Svete, AICP, is president of Rincon Consultants, Inc., a Ventura-based consulting firm.

Thesis: Cities are dynamic places, where different forces constantly push against each other. Among those many forces are the desires of local residents to maintain a “sense of place,” or in some cases create that sense de novo in locations where it does not already exist. At the polar opposite from that tendency are the sophisticated methods that national retailers use not only to capture local sales, but to control the landscape, as well. Will the branding of national companies control the image of our fast-growing cities, or will that role fall to the forces of nostalgia and manufactured charm? Case History: The midtown area of Milpitas, a city of 65,000 people in Santa Clara County is our chosen example, although many other cities have similar stories to tell. I chose Milpitas because it provides a dramatic, direct contrast between the branded environment and the kind of development often described, in a cringe-making way, as the urban village. Exhibit No. 1: The Great Mall. Representing the branded environment in our exercise is the Great Mall of the Bay Area, an enormous outlet center that occupies a former auto assembly plant in this city on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley. The Great Mall is a large, anonymous-looking building with all the usual backlit signs. Nearly all these signs are familiar to any person who has lived in America for more than six months: These are the brands of merchants so ubiquitous in American life they could be called the Fifty Famous Names. In the Great Mall, those famous names include McDonalds, Starbucks, Calvin Klein, Cinnabon, Dave and Buster’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, Brooks Brothers, Mrs. Fields Cookies, Gap Outlet, Hot Dog on a Stick, Zales the Diamond Store. These brands give meaning and identity to this big, dumb building. The problem with the branded environment is that brands have meaning that extend far beyond the local. A McDonalds sign does not refer simply to a single fast-food restaurant, but to the entire universe of McDonalds and its firmly rooted place, like it or not, in American culture. For that reason, those Fifty Famous Names tend to overwhelm most commercial streets, drowning out the local merchants, even if the latter might offer food or goods or services that are more tied to the traditions and history of a particular place than a company with a billion-dollar line of credit with Morgan Stanley. At risk is the unique sense of place that each city potentially offers. This unique sense of place — whether it is based on the architecture, the landscape or the local industries — in many cases is the reason why people have chosen to live in a particular community. Exhibit No. 2: The urban village, here represented by the Parc Place and Park Metro housing developments. In 2002, the Milpitas City Council approved the midtown specific plan, which called for filling in the midtown area with 4,800 new housing units and more than 1 million square feet of new office and retail space. The design of the housing shows the influence of the new urbanism and its affinity for the quaint, vaguely historicist detailing favored by that doctrine. Among the notable goals of the plans are 48 acres of new parks and open spaces, together with a network of wide, walkable sidewalks, and easy pedestrian access to surface rail and a possible future BART station. The coherent neighborhoods are a clear contrast to the former state of midtown Milpitas, described in these pages in November 2003 as having “extensive strip commercial development with abundant surface parking, numerous mom-and-pop retail and service businesses, some vacant parcels, and a mishmash of housing.” Inspiring the change, of course, is the popularity of such traditional-looking places as the Kentlands in Maryland and Seaside in Florida, both designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zybek. Criticized by some architects and planners for their strident pronouncements, Duany and Plater-Zybek re-introduced the notion of a hierarchy of open spaces, while emphasizing the importance of being able to walk to services, especially shopping and transit stops, within a quarter mile or so of home. Better still, the doctrinaire duo found a way of controlling the rampant branding, by subjecting all signs to strict ordinances. If the new urbanists could not extinguish the proliferation of brands, at least they could tame them. One emphasis of the new urbanism is a gentle, nostalgic architecture, which in part recalls the past and in part reinvents it with a golden halo. True, style is a secondary issue when the goals are preserving open space, bringing housing and transit into close proximity and creating comfortable ways for people to do their daily tasks on foot. In my view, one strong impulse of the new urbanism is to create a sense of place—a sense both of domestic comfort, familiarity and uniqueness, as opposed to the everywhere-in-general-and-nowhere-in-particular character of the branded environment, which is always familiar but rarely comforting. For Americans, who are generally conservative in their housing tastes, something that looks venerable and old might look like home. Conclusion: Even if the steeply pitched rhetoric of Duany et al. sets some architects’ teeth on edge, the new urbanist movement has been a net benefit to urban America. A set of humane values has come to challenge the unexamined practices of sprawl, neglect of open space and lack of genuine social centers and public space. At the same time, we must also acknowledge that the soft, derivative new urbanism that has trickled down through the marketplace is also a product—generic, placeless, often as blind to local culture and customs and traditions as McDonalds and Tommy Hilfiger. Home builders customarily speak of housing as “product,” and in Milpitas as elsewhere, the urban village is a product. It is a much better product than strip development, unregulated sprawl or the branded environment. But it is still not authentic urbanism. That is, the urban village is still not a reflection of our unique moment in history and culture. Perhaps the kind of neighborhood that acknowledges both global change and local culture, in which the buildings are designed less for style than for the convenience and health of their occupants, and where public spaces might encourage social interaction among people who would otherwise disappear inside their cell phones does not yet exist. If the urban village is a positive step forward, it falls short of being a unique, local place. The genuine urban neighborhood of our time remains to be discovered.