I would like to buy Joel Kotkin a beer. I vote we try a gastropub downtown. Or maybe a rooftop lounge. I'll take the subway, and he can take a taxi. That way, neither of us has to drive. Wherever we'd go, I'd like to invite some of my urban planner friends along. That's because, judging by his new book, "The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us," Kotkin may never have met a planner before. According to Kotkin, planners today are "largely in favor of cramming people into ever-denser spaces." Kotkin describes contemporary planning trends so you can smell the body odor: "people clustering in ever more crowded cities, living atop each other, may fulfill the ambitions of corporate leaders, urbanist visionaries, and planners." Kotkin has long been a contrarian and critic of contemporary planning - sometimes a perceptive and welcome one, especially when urbanists, myself included, have gotten too cute or too smug. "The Human City" is probably his most comprehensive critique and surely his most off-putting.  Normally, provocative claims that form the basis of an entire book would warrant extensive citations, surveys, data, quotations, interviews, analysis, and literature reviews. Kotkin alludes to "scores of interviews and-survey data" but reports none of it but for occasional factoids. By keeping them "anonymous," Kotkin gets to mischaracterize planners and crusade against nonexistent threats. Kotkin digs at "creative class" theorist Richard Florida for being a "retro-urbanist" (whatever that means), and credits New Urbanists for favoring "a somewhat human scale." Most surreally, though, Kotkin suggests that the theories of early 20th century visionary Le Corbusier "are widely shared-by many urban thinkers today," as if everyone still wants to build towers in parks. That's what they were doing in the 1960s. In fact, legions of planners have been working for decades, by promoting infill and the like, to undo the damage that the Corbusians did. That damage has little to do with density per se; it has to do with the evisceration of street life. "The Human City" mainly concerns American cities, though it takes an early one-chapter detour into "megacities" of the developing world. This enables Kotkin to introduce a terrifying statistic: Dharavi, the densest slum in Mumbai, has 1 million people per square mile. Kotkin presents this as a cautionary tale, never blinking in his accusation that planners in the United States view Dharavi as a model. Never mind that Dharavi is an illegal settlement on nobody's blueprint. You'd have to be a serious antigovernment fanatic to think that any bureaucrat would favor that kind of cityscape. You'd also have to be terrible at math. If the entire population of the United States crammed within the city limits of Los Angeles, they still wouldn't achieve 1 million people per square mile. (Especially not with all the botox.) Interestingly, the density of Mumbai as a whole is roughly equal to that of New York City as a whole, at roughly 28,000 people per square  kilometer. And yet, Kotkin says that "planners" celebrate Dharavi's density. He includes Harvard's Ed Glaeser, who is actually not a planner but an economist and the kind of free-market thinker about cities that Kotkin ought to like. Kotkin doesn't actually quote Glaeser directly, though, so I emailed Glaeser. Glaeser confirmed that he believes in the economic potential of megacities. Kotkin just left out the part about how Glaeser "warn(s) of their dangers - the demons of density." As a gradient and not an absolute, density is relative. It's not like we have to choose only between formless void and black hole. To favor greater density in, say, Kansas City (1,474 people per square mile, in the center city, or one-tenth of 1% of Dharavi, ) or Jacksonville (1,142) means favoring "greater than what is already in Kansas City or Jacksonville." It doesn't mean "greater than Mumbai." (Kotkin proposes a breezy solution for India: it should develop its mid-sized cities. That's a swell plan, except that it ignores the ultra-corrupt, hyper-bureaucratic entity known as The Government of India.) But enough of the developing world. "The Human City" mentions it mainly to scare the bejesus out of "us" and make us thankful for America's abundance of bedroom communities. The "us" in Kotkin's divisive title refers to nuclear families: husbands and wives who dutifully bear sons and daughters. They are, claims Kotkin, the ones whom cities ought to serve. They have no use for monumental statements like towers and superblocks nor for fripperies like parklets, bike lanes, street festivals, and loft conversions. And they certainly don't want their children having to share personal space with "them," whoever "they" may be. Families are people too, though. It's not unreasonable to claim, "the question of what families need and prefer should be central." But Kotkin explores this question only as far as his preconceptions will let him. In asserting the preferences of some 122 million people (including many children who probably had no say in the matter), Kotkin makes no effort to distinguish desire from resignation. The status quo does not tell us whether they "want" to live in suburbs or whether they are merely willing to do so because that's where most housing units have been built over the last century. Kotkin's veneration of the suburbs centers on three reasons: typology, typology, typology. Kotkin insists that families inherently prefer a "small home in a modest neighborhood-where children can be raised." Adorable, right? To hear Kotkin tell it, a house in bankrupt San Bernardino is always more family-friendly than an apartment in booming Koreatown. I'm sure that's true for some parents. Others are happy for their kids to have ready access to culture, mobility, astounding diversity, and neighbors who are less likely to be cooking meth in their garages. In writing about suburbs, Kotkin is at his most appealing and most convincing when he's describing their hidden diversity or celebrating the small businesses that thrive there. He rightly points out that, with the dispersion of job centers, it's not all hour-long commutes on clogged highways. Meanwhile, he also has a legitimate critique of some progressive cities that "are actually becoming whiter and less ethnically diverse as the rest of the country, particularly suburbia, diversifies."  He's also written perceptively on America's coming population growth .  Kotkin undermines these observations by concocting a rivalry between suburbs and center cities - going so far as to proclaim "the war against suburbia"  -- and by equating suburban living with families while equating center cities with hipsters, singles, the wealthy, and the foreign wealthy. (He scarcely mentions the urban poor, many of whom also are families.) These are the inhabitants of cities that Kotkin calls, variously, consumer cities, legacy cities, elite cities, and, most damning of all, "luxury cities." Kotkin cites compelling demographic data indicating that in some of these cities - especially San Francisco and Manhattan - children are disappearing from the census data. Luxury cities are too expensive for families and, of course, they're too darn crowded. For a free-market guy, it's odd how Kotkin ignores the true meaning of high real estate prices: that demand is outstripping supply. Believe it or not, a great many people, families and singles alike, "want" to live in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City. If high prices are bad and density is bad, cities are in quite a pickle, aren't they? Kotkin clearly thinks that cities shouldn't build more high-rises and other multifamily dwellings. Of course, plenty of cities can accommodate more suburban-style houses, which is fine. But they aren't the cities that Kotkin is concerned about. He willfully ignores the predicament that the highly desirable like New York, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles are facing: They have basically no undeveloped land. Either they build multifamily or they build nothing at all. Kotkin imposes on them an impossible choice - and blames planners for failing to sort it out. Planners in center cities focus on downtowns, multifamily housing, commercial pockets, and certain amenities because, well, that's what they have to work with. Density is what a city  is  - especially "luxury cities." Being for or against density is a silly question. Managing density and making it work, for families and everyone else, is the real question. In truth, a suburban preference doesn't necessarily connote a preference for suburbs; it connotes a preference for things that suburbs tend to offer. No matter their densities, cities can, if they try hard enough, meet suburbs halfway, with better schools; affordability (per unit if not per square foot); safety (unban crime is generally down); and even "community" - as long as your definition of "community" doesn't equate only with "middle class white people." Americans might prefer suburbs less if they had more great cities from which to choose. By demonizing big-city planners, Kotkin ignores another crucial part of the housing story: they have nothing whatsoever to do with the production of suburban housing. Kotkin writes, "Urbanists would be far better off if they considered taking a more human-city approach: improve life not only in the core, but in the extensive areas that have developed around them." First, there's a contradiction here: if the suburbs are so great in the first place - such that families should always choose them over cities - then what exactly would make them "better off"? Second, Kotkin is entertaining another fantasy: he implies that we need to eliminate jurisdictions, hire region-wide planning directors, and give each of them enormous magic wands.  Many center cities are dysfunctional precisely because they have been competing with suburbs for decades - for population, development, jobs, and, of course, tax dollars. The suburbs have been winning by a landslide. As Kotkin points out, "between 2001 and 2011, detached houses accounted for 83 percent of the net additions to the occupied U.S. housing stock." Whether composed of palatial dream homes or acres of ticky-tack, the suburbs have prevailed for decades. So what, exactly, is Kotkin complaining about? Really, Kotkin isn't complaining so much as he is pandering. Kotkin could be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Instead, he has written a dog whistle to the supporters and consumers of sprawl. In fairness, Kotkin admits that "we need both geographies." It's just an odd thing to say at the end of a book largely bashing one of those geographies. If Kotkin likes families so much, he should love urban cores. He should love shaded sidewalks where people can catch each other's eyes. He should love bars where they buy each other drinks and share Instagram handles. He should love small apartments to which they can stroll arm-in-arm. If, a few years later, those same couples need another bedroom--well, good for them. And if those bars are too "crowded" with young singles for Kotkin's liking, I'll grab some friends and we'll drive out to Applebee's. The Diet Cokes are on me. The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us Joel Kotkin Agate B2 Publishing 304 pages $18.76 April 12, 2016

Whereas a Berkeley resident can cross from exuberance of Telegraph Avenue into the heart of the Cal campus in a few steps, UCLA is an auto-oriented campus surrounded by a moat of driveways, green space, and city streets. Its neighbors are some of the wealthiest and orneriest an institution could ever have the misfortune to live next to. The university, for all its academic heft, retreats from the city, and the city from it. UCLA was an ironically illustrative venue for a talk by Michael Storper, lead author of " The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies ," that I attended recently. Contrary to its expansive title, Storper's study concerns only Los Angeles and San Francisco. Given that both are booming Pacific Rim metropolises, it may be hard to figure out which is the "rise" and which is the "fall." Until you consider this: In 1970, the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas ranked, respectively, numbers four and one in per capita income in the United States. In 2009, after both areas grew by more than 50 percent in population, they were, respectively, numbers one and twenty-five. You don't have to have a Ph.D. to wonder: What happened? Some of the reasons for the divergence of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he defines by their multi-county metro regions, are obvious. L.A.'s aerospace industry crumbled along with the Berlin Wall. Steve Jobs happened to grow up in Cupertino. Et cetera. Hollywood is Los Angeles' superstar, except that it represents only 2.6 percent of the area's economy, compared with tech's 11 percent in the Bay Area. Those factors are just the start. For virtually any given job function, and controlling for all sorts of variables, Storper, who teaches at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, finds that a worker in the Bay Area makes more money and does more complex work than her counterpart in Los Angeles does. In other words, they're not just making more in the Bay Area. They're making better. This patterns holds for educated and uneducated, immigrants and non-immigrants, and it trickles down even to unskilled workers. These are the statistics that back up San Francisco's smugness . Riveting as they are, they describe the only effect but not the cause. The Intangibles L.A.'s and the Bay Area's divergence depends largely on what Storper referred to as the "dark matter" of public policy. Lurking behind every data point and every policy are forces like curiosity, relationships, open-ness, diversity, civic self-image, and values. These factors are often disregarded by short-sighted wonks and bureaucrats not because they're not crucial but because they aren't easily quantified. Storper argues that people in Los Angeles are lousy collaborators. Scholars in L.A. cite each other less often. Patents made in L.A. refer less frequently to other L.A.-based innovations. Los Angeles' great universities � UCLA, USC, and Caltech � are not nearly as entrepreneurial as Stanford, Berkeley, and UCSF. He cites L.A.'s Amgen as a successful, once-innovative biotech company but says that it's nothing compared to the Bay Area's biotech cluster . And it's in Thousand Oaks -- nowhere near a major university. Storper's analysis indicates that networks of civic leaders in Los Angeles are often mutually ignorant of each other. The Bay Area Council, the region's preeminent civic organization, is three times more "connected" than its closest equivalent in Southern California, the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. I know what Storper means. I've been to events at the Chamber, presided over by civic leaders of a certain generation. Storper said the phrase "new economy" appears in none of L.A.'s economic development literature in the 1980s. At the same time, San Franciscans were shouting it from the rooftops. Poverty & Pavement These attitudes are fatal in an era when ideas, and not Fordist production, are the order of the day. Echoing Enrico Moretti's theories about innovation economies, high-wage jobs generate a multiplier that tends to take care of the workers at the bottom. "If you play to weakness (i.e. poverty) you get a weak economy," Storper said. Interestingly, he said that there's essentially zero good data on the efficacy of any public-sector economic development programs of the last 45 years. He chided Los Angeles' leadership for its obsession with the low-paying logistics industry. A rising tide lifts all boats. Unless the boat is a container ship. If an individual, firm, or government doesn't have the knowledge or the capital to realize their dreams, so be it. But if they fail because they're not open to the wisdom, energy, diversity, ambition, and creativity of other human beings, well, that's something else. Los Angeles' economic failing is not just a business failing or a policy failing. It is a moral failing. What else do you call it when 25.7 percent of residents in the biggest county in the richest state in the richest country in the world live in poverty ? Storper didn't say so explicitly, but L.A.'s economics sins arise, in part, from our built environment. The two regions have plenty in common, especially in their outlying counties. But insofar as the center cities set the tone for their regions, the differences are striking. We have dingbats, setbacks, curb cuts, mini-malls, chain stores, McMansions, Pershing Square , streets like freeways, freeways like parking lots, and other elements of our landscape that push Angelenos away from each other. How can you collaborate with someone when they're in your way, making your drive longer, pouring pollution into your face? How can you feel as optimistic atop an asphalt sheet as you can strolling down a sidewalk lined with Victorians? How can you make friends when you can't walk to a watering hole ? Los Angeles is like a party full of beautiful people who have nothing interesting to say to each other. Atonement Atoning for our economic sins must include being a better Los Angeles. We might not be able to trade Facebook (headquartered in Menlo Park, with 10,000 employees) for Snapchat (headquartered in Venice, with 200 employees). Nor can we can we trade Google for Disney, or the Transbay Tube for the Sepulveda Pass. But we can emulate some of the Bay Area's urban sensibilities. We can use transit more often. We can build more mixed-use projects. We can embrace public space. We can build to the property line. We can plant trees. We can take advantage of our space rather than squander it. As our city changes, so can its culture. The great news is that improvement is afoot, with downtown development, new transit, new types of development, and an optimistic corps of young planners. By the time Los Angeles comes into its own, today's tech titans might be old news, just as Northrup Grumman and McDonnell Douglas are today. Something will have to replace them, and maybe they'll reside in Los Angeles. We just need to give them a better home. Postscript: Fortress Westwood UCLA being what it is, many people who should have attended Storper's talk � captains of industry, thought leaders, and everyday citizens interested in L.A.'s prosperity � are the ones who are least likely to actually have made the trip. Storper was preaching to a choir, mostly of fellow academics and urban nerds. After the talk there was a reception. Hors d'oeuvres, wine, the usual. It provided a chance to do some of that mixing and mingling that elude us in L.A. I would love to have stayed. Maybe I'd have developed new ideas or made new connections. But I had to go. My meter was running out.

The February 9 Legislative Analyst Office report on California "serious housing shortage" ends on a decidedly depressing note: "Bringing about more private home building - would be no easy task, requiring state and local policy makers to confront very challenging issues and taking many years to come to fruition." The report, which focuses on low-income housing, follows a a March 2015 companion that officially - if obviously - summarized the state's skyrocketing housing costs.  Note the new report's use of "would," not "will." Experts agree that California suffers from a chronic underproduction of new housing that stretches back several decades: an estimated 180,000 to 210,000 additional units would be required in Los Angeles County alone, and 170,000 additional units in the Bay Area, to restore some semblance of a balanced housing market in the State's major urbanized areas. In a well functioning market, this kind of shortage would make new home production a foregone conclusion -- future tense -- not something to be hoped for in the conditional tense. Among the key challenges is the lack of incentive for cities to achieve their Regional Housing Need Allocations, the amount of new housing that cities would need to build to accommodate anticipated growth. Currently, there are no penalties for non-compliance with RHNA targets. For many cities, new residential uses are seen as a fiscal drag: capped by Proposition 13, property taxes increases do not keep pace with the cost of providing services to new residents. As a result, many cities are loath to approve the housing they need. In the absence of penalties, one logical solution would be to reward cities that achieve their RHNAs. It turns out that the state experimented with this elegantly simple approach through a pilot program launched in 2001.   Administered by Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the  Jobs Housing Balance Incentive Grant Program  (JHB) provided modest financial incentives to jurisdictions that voluntarily increased their permitting activity. To qualify for funding, cities were required to achieve a 12 percent increase over a baseline average in permitting activity from the previous 36-month period. If, say, an average of 1,000 units had been permitted annually over the prior 36 months and a given city that issued permits for at least 1,120 units during the pilot period would qualify for incentives. The pilot produced near-term, cost-effective results. A follow-up report on the JHB Program, issued in 2006 to the Legislature, estimates that participating cities permitted an additional 24,624 units of housing in 2001 compared to their rolling 3-year average. Eighty-six percent, or just over 21,000, of those permitted housing units had been built and occupied five years later. Critically, many coastal communities permitted more housing as a result of the JHB program. The per-unit grant incentives were relatively low - ranging from $500 to $1,300 per unit ($670 to $1,740 in 2015 dollars), with high-density employment counties receiving higher per-unit incentives. The total award pool was $25 million; the largest award of $3.5 million went to the City of Los Angeles. The JHB program allowed award recipients to spend the funds on new housing-related infrastructure and amenities, creating a virtuous cycle of investment in growing neighborhoods. We should put these numbers in the context of both the current depth of the state's housing need and the relative effectiveness of other housing subsidy programs: Proposition 46 of 2002 and Proposition 1C of 2006 together provided $4.95 billion for the construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of 57,220 affordable apartments, at a cost of over $86,000 per unit. Prior to their elimination in 2011, community redevelopment agencies produced only 10,000 affordable housing units over their multi-decade existence. The Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program spent $122 million last year to subsidize the construction of 1,924 units statewide, at an approximate cost of $63,400 per unit. The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has produced around 7,000 new rental units annually, at an average cost of $165,000  per unit in coastal communities.   Assemblymember David Chiu's (Dist. 17 - San Francisco) proposed AB 35, to expand the California Low Income Housing Tax Credit, would have spent up to $100 million per year to leverage an estimated $1 billion in additional funds. The bill passed but was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. Since subsidized affordable housing projects often receive funding from multiple programs, the total per-unit subsidy is likely higher than the amount shown for any single program. By comparison, the average cost per unit for the JHB program was around $1,180 ($1,580 in 2015 dollars) -- less than the state incentive on some electric cars. On the one hand, it's kind of amazing that cities would be willing to do an about-face on housing approvals for so little money. On the other hand, if that's all it takes, it could be a wise, efficient investment for the state.  Let's address two obvious arguments with these comparisons: The HCD follow-up report can't quantify how many of these units would have been permitted anyway due to the real estate upcycle then occurring in 2001, and how many of these permits were directly attributable to the incentives . True, but even if only a fraction of the total unit production were directly attributable to the incentives, the JHB program is still dramatically more cost-effective than its next closest peer. It is also more transparent and simple to administer. This comparison is a case of "apples and oranges:" the cost of permitting a unit of market-rate housing and the cost of producing a unit of affordable housing are not directly comparable or equivalent in their social impact . The Feb. 9 LAO report provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Increased production of market-rate housing would have broad-based affordability benefits for households at all income levels. Strikingly, the LAO report found that cities with abundant market-rate housing production were far less likely to displace low-income residents than cities with slow growth policies. While targeted subsidies for very low- and low-income households will continue to be both morally and economically necessary, everyone wins with an increase in overall supply of housing. This premise is at the heart of the JHB Program.  Whether rooted in NIMBYism, environmentalism, or the fiscalization of land use wrought by Proposition 13, many local governments are reluctant to approve new housing. The JHB Program shows that this reluctance, at least in the near term, may be most easily overcome with cold hard cash. There might even be greater receptivity to such an incentive program now than there was in 2001. In an era of dwindling state and federal assistance to cities, many communities-whether coastal or inland, affluent or low-resource-are highly motivated to pursue every discretionary dollar out there. In resuscitating the JHB Program, or creating a new program like it, the state wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel - there is already a statutory mechanism in place; it would just need a dedicated, sustainable funding source. While many sources could be considered, there would be a strong policy justification for using a portion of cap and trade funds for this purpose. The construction of new housing in job-rich areas would directly support shorter commutes, a reduction in household VMT, and hence a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. And, of course, new units means more property tax monies going back to the state, even if taxes are constrained by Prop 13. Ideally, cities should not have to be bribed into approving new housing. But we are not living in an ideal world. Given the urgency of California's affordability crisis, a program with the potential to produce near-term, cost-effective results deserves to be resurrected from the state's policy graveyard. Adam Christian is a senior consultant in infrastructure funding and finance at HDR, Inc and the founder of Urban Insights.

SGC has announced its timeline for applications for the 2015-16 Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program and has scheduled six statewide workshops.The schedule for the AHSC program is as follows:  Release of Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA): Friday, January 29, 2016 Concept Applications Due: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Notification of Invite to Submit Full Application: Week of April 20, 2016 Full Applications Due: Monday, June 20, 2016 Awards Announced: September 2016 The workshop schedule is as follows:  Fresno: Tuesday, February 2 Sacramento: Wednesday, February 3 Oakland: Thursday, February 4 Riverside: Monday, February 8 Los Angeles: Tuesday, February 9 San Diego: Wednesday, February 10 The workshops will include a presentation regarding the AHSC Program Guidelines and requirements for Concept Application, with a question and answer session after the presentation.  Staff will be available on the afternoon of each workshop for small group or one-on-one consultations on a first come, first served basis. The consultations will be 20 minutes in length and will be used to focus on projects that are ready to apply for the 2015-2016 AHSC Program, discuss project eligibility, and answer questions specific to the applicant's project. For consultation times, AHSC Program Staff will follow-up to confirm the exact time of the appointment. Applicants with projects in or benefitting Disadvantaged Communities (as defined by CalEnviroscreen 2.0) will be given priority for consultations. However, our goal is to provide consultations to all who request an appointment. Further workshop information and signup is available here (pdf).  See CP&DR coverage of 2015 AHSC awards.

Now that comprehensive legislative reform of the California Environmental Quality Act seems unlikely, all eyes are turning to the California Supreme Court - if not for reform, then at least for clarity that will make the world of CEQA a little simpler, a little cleaner, and a little more understandable. Good luck. Although the Cal Supremes have a heavy CEQA docket - and the justices are clearly putting a lot of thought into CEQA cases - the result is not exactly clarity. When the Berkeley Hillside case went before the Cal Supremes, everybody hoped the result would be clarity about when the unusual circumstances exemption can be used. But the result was a complicated two-step test that actually may strengthen the exemption but requires a lot more effort to do so. And when the most recent Newhall Ranch case  went up to the court, everybody hoped there would be clarity about how practitioners might approach the question of what percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be an acceptable target in CEQA analysis. In that case, the justices was pretty clear about what wouldn't be acceptable - simply using the Air Resources Board's regional number - but they weren't very clear about what methodology should be used.  What's going on? Shouldn't we be able to count on the California Supreme Court to provide clear lines? CEQA is an unusually complicated, mostly procedural law that is deliberately designed to be enforced through litigation. It's so ubiquitous and complicated that every county's superior court has a designated CEQA judge. Since its passage 45 years ago, it has evolved far more through court rulings than legislation. And that's not likely to change soon. Despite a lot of rumblings about comprehensive CEQA reform in recent years, the moment appears to have passed . Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is working through a big backlog of CEQA cases . But there a couple of other things going on here. First, CEQA litigation issues are getting ever more complicated and arcane. When I first started writing about CEQA lawsuits back in the -80s, the issues seemed, in retrospect, pretty clear-cut: Who had standing? Was an environmental impact report required? What level of independent judgment did a lead agency have to apply if the draft EIR was done by the applicant? And, later, were specific mitigations feasible or not. Yes, there were often legal debates about adequacy of the analysis, but there was also a lot of deference given to lead agencies. Compare those kinds of questions to the issue that came up in Berkeley Hillside : Did the City of Berkeley put enough evidence on the record that a very large proposed house was not unusual within the context of the city, and therefore the city's use of two categorical exemptions was not overridden by the "unusual circumstances" rule contained in the CEQA Guidelines. That is a long, long way from, "Do you have to do an EIR"? But there's another factor at work here, as veteran CEQA attorney Tina Thomas pointed out at last week's 30th annual UCLA Land Use Law and Planning Conference last week. It's the way the California Supreme Court works these days. Since he re-election as governor in 2010, Jerry Brown has reshaped the court to some extent, appointing three of the seven justices: Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, Stanford law professor Mariano-Florentino Cu-llar; and former deputy attorney general Leondra Kruger. Unlike a lot of Brown's selections back in the -70s, they're all solid choices. Along with Wilson and Schwarzenegger holdovers - including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye - they represent a lot of intellectual horsepower. And, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, they apparently work hard to reach consensus and avoid a lot of concurring and dissenting opinions.  Which, apparently, is the problem. "The justices go to great length to avoid scathing dissent," Thomas told the crowd of 300 people at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. "So they go out of their way to compromise. The result is sometimes complicated, nuanced ways of spiltting standards of review that are difficult for lower court to apply. You may want clear answers, you may not get them." This problem became immediately apparent after the Berkeley Hillside ruling, when the Third District considered the case of a rodeo fundraiser at the Santa Cruz Fairgrounds in Watsonville . The Supreme Court had concluded the lead agency must first review the record to see whether unusual circumstances exist and if so courts must use the "substantial evidence" test in determining the validity of an exemption under those circumstances. The court ruled that a categorical exemption can be defeated by a "fair argument" that supports a reasonable possibility that significant environmental effects will result from the "unusual circumstances." But it also held that "a party may establish an unusual circumstance with evidence that the project will have a significant environmental effect."  In the Santa Cruz rodeo case, the Third District said the environmentalist plaintiffs didn't meet either test. The plaintiffs are appealing the case but the Supreme Court hasn't decided yet whether to take it. Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity, another panelist at the UCLA event, said he feared that the Supreme Court's ruling would lead others to conclude that merely qualifying for an exemption would be substantial evidence that unusual circumstances don't exist. "That reads unusual circumstances out of the law," he said.  In some ways the latest Newhall Ranch case is even more confusing, because the court rejected the idea that Los Angeles County could use the Air Resource Board's regional estimate for required greenhouse gas emissions reduction (29% by 2030) as the standard against which to measure an individual project. But does this mean less deference to lead agencies? "Courts need to look carefully at the record to make sure that the record really connects the dot," said Bundy, the winning lawyer in the case. "The record needed to show the quantitative link between those two assumptions and it did not." But Thomas, who was the losing lawyer in the case, had a different view. "In my personal opinion, I've always understood the standard to be, good faith effort for full disclosure," she said, "and I didn't understand it to be mathematical precision." In a way, the disagreement between Thomas and Bundy may simply be a traditional disagreement between an agency lawyer who wants the courts to give deference to the agency and an environmental lawyer who wants the courts to push agencies harder for environmental protection. Or it may be a generational thing. Thomas, like me, came to CEQA maturity in the -80s, while Bundy passed the bar 25 years later.  But it reinforced one thing for me: It's not just that CEQA never going to get any simpler. (We crossed that bridge a long time ago ). It's probably not going to get any clearer, either.

With the economy humming along, innovative ideas sprouting up around the state, and, of course, the occasional dispute, 2015 was as lively a year for land use as any other in recent memory. To mark the new year, CP&DR presents its most-read stories of 2015. Four of these ten articles, including the top two, center on housing. It is the slow-motion crisis that encompasses literally every element of urban planning, from economics to demographics to policy and does so at every level of government from the largest metro areas to the smallest hamlets across California. Innovation also caught CP&DR readers' attention, with coverage of the tech economy, progressive legislation, and one of the great urban innovators of our state and our time: Prof. Don Shoup. CEQA gets in a few words edgewise. Tellingly, an article on Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts from 2014 made 2015's most-read list, revealing a continuing thirst for, an uncertainty about, the next generation of redevelopment policy. Here are the top ten, in order of popularity: Los Angeles' Slow-Growthers Have Gotten What They Wanted 6 April 2015 "Constrained supply and ever increasing demand equals  insane housing prices . In a typical industry, supply would never become this constrained. Firms would produce more, or consumers would seek substitutes. Equilibrium would be restored. But this is real estate, and those rules don't apply." Does Supply Create Its Own Demand? 27 July 2015 "Under some market conditions, more supply doesn't lead to market equilibrium because it actually creates its own demand. You can see this wherever the world's uber-rich decide to buy houses � New York, London, or, most relevant to this discussion, Santa Barbara." The Man Who Changed the Way We Think About Parking 19 April 2015 "Don Shoup has accomplished something every academic hopes to achieve and almost no one ever does: He has completely reframed an important public policy issue so that everybody thinks about it differently." Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts Legislation Passes in SB 628 31 August 2014 "The mechanism would be simpler, more focused on infrastructure, and more dependent on electoral approval, without the flexibility or protections for the existing urban public that were built and bashed into Redevelopment over the years." CEQA: The Cause of All Problems in California 23 March 2015 "Somehow, among all the laws, regulations, micro-, macro-, and global economic trends that impact on and emanate from our state, the overriding cause of California's malaise is � wait for it � CEQA." Is This The Right Meeting? Really? 2 December 2015 "Any greenhorn planner in the most podunk jurisdiction knows that he needs to keep a few audience-management tricks up his sleeve." Bill to Delay Implementation of SB 743 Gains Traction 25 May 2015 "A developers' group is promoting a new piece of legislation that would postpone implementation of SB 743 � the bill that would change traffic analysis to vehicle miles traveled in environmental review � for a year. The bill has apparently revealed a split among developers who say they focus on infill projects." Fair Housing: Talking Past Each Other About Cities and Segregation 30 August 2015 "On July 8 the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued  its final rule  on "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." Under the rule, state and local agencies receiving HUD funds must now do more than passively study barriers to fair housing: they must also make and follow genuine plans to reduce the barriers they describe." The Tech Housing Crunch's Fracking Dilemma 27 November 2015 "The dilemma of the tech housing crunch: If you build more housing for tech workers, won't those same tech workers just create new apps to disrupt the balance once again � to the benefit of well-off folks, at the expense of everybody else, including most of the tech workers? It's a little like the Gold Rush, when hydraulic mining was all the rage." California Cities and the Innovation Economy: Q&A With Enrico Moretti 6 April 2015 "Enrico Moretti, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, explains how cities promote innovation (defined not just as technology, but also as medicine, media, manufacturing and other sections that rely on constant improvement of products and services) and, importantly, how innovation affects cities' economies."

Boundless as cyberspace may be, the companies that rule the internet still have to take up real estate. And their employees still have to put their heads down somewhere at night. For whatever reason, the mysterious forces of the " innovation economy " have lured an outside share of those companies, and their employees, to Silicon Valley.  With all those likes, stock options, and organic cafeteria items comes, of course, a housing crisis. As absolutely no one is unaware, rents in Silicon Valley have gone up like Pets.com stock over the past few years.  Last week Facebook announced that it was going to make an investment in the crisis. Not an investment in housing, mind you. Just an investment in the crisis. Facebook is reportedly offering $10,000 to workers who relocate within a 10-mile radius of its Menlo Park headquarters. On face, there's something admirably civic-minded about this. For one, Facebook wants employees to reduce their commute times and, by extension, their emissions. That's something that pretty much every city in California is trying to do, (minus the $10,000 bonus). Let's put that in the 'like' column.  Let's, though, look at the real winners and losers from a policy like this:  Winner #1: Facebook Employees As long as the cost of relocation, including rent increases, is less than the $10,000 that the company is offering, then employees win with shorter commutes, lower transportation costs, and the charms of Foster City, Newark, and, if you're lucky, Woodside. Then again, if you live in Woodside, $10,000 probably doesn't even cover the cost of groundskeeping.  Winner #2: Facebook Let's do a little math. Facebook made $2.59 billion in revenue last year. It employs 12,000 people. Each employee represents $215,000 in annual revenue. If a $10,000 one-time payment keeps employees happy, loyal, and productive, then it's a bargain.  Winner #3: Landlords Several million people live within Facebook's magical 10-mile radius. The handful of Facebook employees who take advantage of this deal and decide to scootch in are hardly going to upset the valley rental market all by themselves. But there's something fundamentally perverse, and economically inefficient, about a wealthy company offering wealthy employees even more money so that they can cope with an insane housing market that the company helped create in the first place. Taken to its logical extension--whereby all Silicon Valley firms start offering these incentives � all rents will go higher and landlords will get richer. That's because it's a lot easier to print bonus checks than it is to build housing, especially if cities aren't encouraging it.  Neutral Parties: Cities If you're a city in the 10-mile radius, you don't care what Facebook does, because you don't collect more taxes when rents go up. Losers: Everyone Else If you're not a Facebook employee, you're livid, because you now have richer competition for rental units.  (Before we go any further, let's acknowledge the real losers here: cartographers. Clearly none of brilliant folks at Facebook has considered that drawing a circumference around a point is the worst possible way to prescribe a commute shed -- especially when the resulting circle is bisected by a body of water called the San Francisco Bay. A subtler map, assigning bonuses to employees who live along transit lines, or at least freeways and major roads, would have made a ton more sense. As it is, you could sail in from the Farallons more quickly than you can cross the Dunbarton Bridge on most mornings.) Tech firms too often seem blind to the civic problems that surround them, especially when it comes to housing. Companies in Silicon Valley and, more recently, in Los Angeles have built fortunes partly on the allure of their respective locations, but they've done little to support their host cities or even to lobby for policies that would benefit them and everyone else. Exhibit A, as I wrote in another publication, is the failure of Santa Monica's Silicon Beach crowd to even notice when the city was actively reducing its housing capacity.  At least Facebook is acknowledging the problem. But it's pursuing the wrong solution. Or, rather, it's pursuing a self-interested solution rather than a civic-minded solution. It kind of reminds you of those private buses that pick up Google employees. They've been a big hit.  These are companies that like instant solutions. If you want to build a widget these days, you don't need to spend months to design it, prototype it, and find a factory to produce it. You just whip up some code. if you want to address the biggest crisis in the country's biggest state, you write some checks. At some point, the laws of economics are going to catch up with today's high-flying tech firms. Stock prices are going to fall, and profit margins are going to even out. Maybe someday people will go back to old-fashioned socializing. The point is, companies like Facebook aren't gong to be able to throw money at their problems. They're going to have to acknowledge that they're connected to other entities, they're going to have to cooperate with their neighbors, corporate and otherwise, and they're going to have to reach agreements that serve the common good. They will, in short, discover what governance, policy, and democracy is all about. By that point, they may discover what most progressive planners already know: The way to solve a housing crisis is, amazingly, to build more housing. Build denser housing. Build housing near transit. Build housing near jobs. I don't think Facebook is entirely ignorant of this reality. In fact, I'm sure it has residential neighbors who are far more ignorant than the company ever is. But, so far, firms that consider a 3-by-5-inch screen to be their most valuable pieces of real estate have proven pretty ham-fisted when it comes to real real estate.  Maybe now is the time for tech firms to put innovation aside and learn the old-fashioned art of policymaking.

Th e California Environmental Quality Act does not apply in reverse, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Overturning the First District Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that, with a few exceptions, CEQA analysis must be limited to the project's impacts on the environment (and, by extension, the project's environmental impacts on its own population) but not  the environment's impact on the project. Among other things, the ruling would seem to suggest that a CEQA analysis cannot analyze and mitigate the effect of future sea level rise or other climate change effects on a proposed project.  e conclude that agencies subject to CEQA generally are not required to analyze the impact of existing environmental conditions on a project's future users or residents," wrote Justice  Mariano-Florentino Cuellar for the unanimous court. " But when a proposed project risks exacerbating those environmental hazards or conditions that already exist, an agency must analyze the potential impacts of such hazards on future residents or user. In those specific instances, it is the project's impact on the environment -- and not the environment's impact on the project -- that compels an evaluation of how future residents or users could be affected by exacerbated conditions.  Cuellar, a longtime Stanford law professor and expert on administrative law, was appointed to the court last January by Gov. Jerry Brown. The court carved out exceptions to the "No-CEQA-In-Reverse" rule for airport-related safety hazards and noise problems (Public Resources Code Section 21096), schools locatd in close proximity to hazards, waste, or freeways that might emit hazardous substances (Section 21151.8), and housing developments located close to hazardous substances and sites subject to wildland fire, seismic, landslide, or flood hazards (Section 21159 and Section 21155.) The case, California Building Industry Association v. Bay Area Air Quality Management District , can be found here . A fuller CP&DR writeup is pending.

For the past three years, California's cities have been like beachcombers, waving metal detectors over miles of beach in the hopes of discovering $5 billion. They haven't had much luck -- until recently. In the past year, though, Sacramento has bestowed upon the state's cities two new funding tools that, while they don't replace redevelopment, have given cities, developers, and other institutions reasons to salivate.  First came Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts. The tool is as complex as its name implies. Allowing for a tremendous number of conditions and caveats, EIFD law (2014's Senate Bill 628) enables jurisdictions to set up special districts from which they can harvest marginal tax increment and use the increment to fund a broad range of investments. Investments include everything from hard infrastructure to affordable housing to any number of projects that support Sustainable Communities Strategies.  To many people's surprise, EIFDs have a new friend as of this year: Community Redevelopment Investment Authorities. The product of AB 2 (see CP&DR coverage )  - which evaded veto, to much surprise - CRIA's evoke the spirit of the old redevelopment law, to the extent that they focus on distressed areas. These areas are defined not by blight - a definition that was often stretched to the point of abuse - but rather by socioeconomic indicators, such as poverty rates among residents. They are subject to several safeguards, including popular approval, so as not to fall prey to abuse and cronyism, as redevelopment was frequently accused of doing. Neither of these tools promise the riches that redevelopment did, in part because they both exclude would-be school funds. And neither has been put into practice extensively. Nonetheless, it's interesting to consider the environment into which these tools are being introduced. If the world was fresh and new, jurisdictions might see them as curiosities with potential. Instead, there's that $5 billion. It's hard not to imagine that every city in the state is eying some combination of CRIAs and EIFDs to restore the natural order of things.   Not so fast.  I recently moderated a panel on CRIAs and EIFDs featuring an all-star cast: former Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency Director Cecilia Estolano, former Los Angeles City Council Member and current General Manager of L.A.'s Workforce and Development Department Jan Perry, and veteran land use consultant Larry Kosmont. The event was sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  Each exuded a combination of enthusiasm and sobriety.  Kosmont has the EIFD sales pitch down pat. He spoke energetically about the circumstances that warrant EIFDs, the benefits they confer, and the political hurdles and hoops that stand in the way. His exuberance is infectious. Estolano focused largely on the benefits of CRIAs; she has clearly moved on from the days of RDA. The great thing about EIFDs is that essentially anyone can conceive one. Redevelopment was always orchestrated by a redevelopment agency. An EIFD can be set up at a city's behest, of course. But it can also be the brainchild of a nonprofit, a developer, a special district, or anyone else who has a vision for an area and is willing to do the legwork necessary to get everyone to sign off on it. They can be top-down, bottom-up, or somewhere in between. And they can focus on any number of issues: housing, mobility, sustainability, economic development - you name it.  Ideally, cities, counties, and special districts might be able to rally around a cause and recognize each other's mutual benefits. That's the ideal case. Los Angeles Council Member Mitch O'Farrell joined the panel briefly to outline a vision of an EIFD for the Los Angeles River revitalization, which is a long-sought dream in Los Angeles and other river-adjacent cities. While you can summarize these programs in a few slides and imagine all the benefits, the political realities are daunting. In particular, EIFDs require that multiple jurisdictions "learn to play nice," as Kosmont put it. That's because EIFDs require cooperation of all jurisdictions and taxing entities affected by a proposed EIFD zone.  I mean, what are the odds that say, a city council person and a county supervisor don't see eye-to-eye? Exactly.  Ironically, EIFDs might be easiest to set up in places that need them the least. Imagine a developer in a rural area who needs a sewer line or a street grid. He might need to lobby only a single county supervisor and - poof - he'll have his increment. Meanwhile, the competing interests and rivalries that often arise in distressed inner city areas might make consensus impossible for an EIFD or a CRIA.  That's one reason why L.A. Council Member O'Farrell's Los Angeles River plan may not hold water. The 11-mile stretch of river flows through more than 10 jurisdictions. Estolano recommended that cities pick specific goals and from a comprehensive CRIA/EIFD strategy to realize them. One example is the city of Los Angeles' well publicized interest in forming "innovation districts." Otherwise, you can imagine dozens of well meaning entities in a single city running around trying to set up special districts willy-nilly, each meeting with little success. If nothing else, they'll tick off county supervisors left and right. That's why cities can't frantically try to reclaim their share of former RDA money as if it's there for the taking. EIFDs and CRIAs will never generate RDA money, and there's no bureaucratic structure. While jurisdictions will, eventually, get the hang of it, for now, each of these districts requires its own strategy, its own justification, and its own negotiations. It's surely a daunting prospect for cities. Then again, opponents of redevelopment long said that nothing's more daunting than the prospect of wasting $5 billion a year.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, the American Planning Association's Burnham Award will go to Dr. Elizabeth Vaughan. She will be recognized for, among other accomplishments, forcing improvements to a mega-development on Manhattan's West Side, elegantly creating more affordable housing, and making peace with anti-gentrification activists.  A former professor of planning, Vaughan is exacting, keeping an entire Census' worth of data in her head and crunching numbers on the fly; she analyzes every alternative in her head and sees demographic and social trends long before they take place. She has the toughness, intellect, and resolve of Janette Sadik-Kahn. She also has the awkwardness, self-doubt, and nonexistent dancing skills of Elaine Benes.   If Elizabeth sounds like an improbable character, it's because she is. She is fictional. Even so, as the central character in the Broadway musical "If/Then," currently on a national tour that begins in California, Elizabeth Vaughan may be the most famous urban planner in the country.   Played by Broadway megastar Idina Menzel, Elizabeth is the quintessential child of the 1990s (she celebrates her 39th birthday onstage). She and her cohort weathered urban decay, stayed healthy through the early AIDS crisis, made the country (or at least New York) a more tolerant place, and survived life before iPhones. She and her friends are spirited, liberal, and diverse to a fault. Matrices of gay couples, straight couples, biracial couples portray a colorblind and gender-neutral culture. It's a sanitized version of the cosmopolitanism that flourishes in many American cities even as intolerance and fear rises in the hinterlands. Their world is chaotic yet comfortable; they are not quite yuppies, but they're doing OK. They enjoy New York City for all it's worth, from strolls in the park to soliloquies on the fire escape to the chance to bump into 8 million other fascinating humans in any one of the 525,600 minutes that make up a year. Maps and architectural renderings hang over pillow talk between Elizabeth (Idina Menzel) and half-husband Josh (James Snyder). Photo Credit: Joan Marcus If "If/Then" sounds like "Rent" all grown up, that's because it is. It shares both cast members (including Menzel) and creative team members with the original 1996 Broadway production of Rent. And of course it shares a city. But, whereas New York was but the backdrop for the Rent kids to explore their Bohemian anguish, the city takes center stage in "If/Then." A literal "sidewalk ballet" is on display in song-and-dance numbers -- in parks, on balconies, in offices -- that celebrate urban life with full throat.  Menzel has just enough humility to play Elizabeth with humor and self-awareness. Perhaps too much self-awareness. Elizabeth constantly enumerates her flaws, chief among them is her ability to make "poor choices." Elizabeth is happiest when she is analyzing the tendencies of 8 million data points. When she has to decide for herself -- work for the city vs. teach college; go to a party or go to a protest; sleep with her boss or marry the handsome Army doctor -- she is nearly paralyzed. She wonders constantly, obsessively about the sidewalk less traveled.   In many cases, the world ends up choosing for her.   "If/Then" operates on a clever, if overwrought, narrative conceit. Like the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, it follows two storylines at once, with scenes and their alternatives weaving in and out of each other. The people, places, and relationships remain the same but the choices are different. And, of course, so are the outcomes.  If Elizabeth, who is "Liz" in one storyline and "Beth" in the other, chooses to marry the handsome doctor, then her best friend, Lucas, marries the doctor's best friend David. If she takes the job with the city, Elizabeth doesn't marry the doctor but instead ends up in halting friendship-romance with the same Lucas. Taking cues that date back to Sophocles, "If/Then" wonders, pedantically and entertainingly, whether we are governed by ourselves or our stars. Or by our city.   Whatever choices "If/Then's" mere mortals make, they take place on the foundation of New York. Whereas "Rent" celebrated urban life, "If/Then" celebrates the city as such. "Urban planner" isn't just a convenient backstory for Elizabeth. It's a focal point of the plot. Amazingly, we see Elizabeth "doing" urban planning in scene after scene. When Elizabeth isn't actively guiding the city's future, she and her friends are out there living in it. One of its best scenes has Elizabeth's irrepressible friend and obsessive matchmaker Kate serenading gentlemen in a subway car, quite unlike the common panhandler.   Menzel has a colorful supporting cast, but the story revolves literally around her. She is the fulcrum between which head and heart balance. Her choices are the ones that determine whether her friends are gay or straight and whether they take one job or another. By the time she becomes Director of the Department of City Planning, her choices are also the ones that determine where thousands of New Yorkers will live, how their public spaces will look, and whether Penn Station will finally get exhumed.   If ever a character has romanticized the planning profession, it is Elizabeth. She is the consummate pragmatic idealist. She understands the joy that pulses through a great city while she keeps the numbers all in their rows. Elizabeth and her colleagues speak honestly about gentrification, demographic trends, tensions between developers and stakeholders, political alliances, housing costs, and everyday things like bike lanes and sidewalks. Planning -- if we take it in its purest form, serving the masses and making life better on average -- is the ideal foil for the messiness and uncertainty of individual existence.   As much as "Rent" romanticized the creative loafing and angst of the 1990s (while its predecessor, "Angels in America" revealed the horrors of the AIDS crisis), "If/Then" is a celebration of professionalism. It's a little forced, but it's a refreshing change from Broadway's obsession with meta-drama. (Think "A Chorus Line," "The Music Man," "Cabaret," "Gypsy," "42nd Street," "Phantom of the Opera") "If/Then" is not quite dancing about architecture, but it's close, and it works.  Brian Yorkey, who wrote the book and lyrics, did his homework. Though Menzel's black mane would have to go silver before some of her signature projects actually got approved, it's a reasonable portrayal of basic planning. Terminology is used correctly, the issues are genuine, and even the places in Manhattan, right down to a thinly veiled Hudson Yards, are real, illustrated with street maps and images of landmarks. If only all planners were as passionate as Elizabeth is, or as dazzling as Menzel is. Indeed, there seems to be an intentional chasm between Menzel's celebrity and talent -- though occasionally nasal, her voice is crisp and powerful -- and the anonymity and bureaucratic tendencies of her character's career. Whatever choices we may face, we cannot all be Broadway stars.   As a musical about place, it's hard not to think about "If/Then's" audiences. When performed in a theater encircled by the city it portrays, the urban themes must have been obvious. On Hollywood Boulevard, "If/Then" reveals urban possibilities about which Angelenos are becoming increasingly aware but from which they still sometimes recoil. San Diegans may have to consider the battles they've waged over regional planning. Folks in Orange County may glimpse a world they'd prefer to experience on stage than in real life.   The production must be prepared for a chilly reception when it goes to Tempe Jan. 12-17. One of Elizabeth's more regrettable choices was spending 12 years in Phoenix with her then-husband. With its sprawl and its air conditioning, the city bears the brunt of some genuinely unkind jokes in a musical that is otherwise sweet and forgiving. The creative team may have had no problem unloading on the city of Joe Arpiao and the state of SB 1070. Let us, then, stop for a moment to contemplate that this review is about a major Broadway musical that is about urban planning. It is a first and probably a last. Whether this means that the profession has come into its own or whether it means that a single creative team got a whim and ran with it is anyone's guess. Planners should enjoy the spotlight while it lasts. And maybe they can even learn from it.  Understandably, neither Menzel nor her production won a Tony Award. The clever first act, which sets up the relationships and amply explores Elizabeth's dilemmas, devolves into melodrama in the second act. The music is not memorable enough, and the whole thing stumbles when it goes from light fun to grave seriousness. And yet, if "If/Then" can get audiences to think more deeply about cities and even get planners to discover (or rediscover) their inspirations, maybe Elizabeth will deserve that Burnham Award after all.   'If/Then' Selected Tour Dates  ifthenthemusical.com Dec. 8 - Jan. 3, Pantages Theater, Los Angeles  Jan. 5 - 10, San Diego Civic Theater  Jan. 12 - 17, Gammage Auditorium, Tempe, Arizona  Jan. 19 - 24, Segerstrom Center, Costa Mesa

The staff of the Strategic Growth Council has early Christmas presents in store for some projects that had applied for Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grants earlier this year. Staff have recommended that eight formerly rejected projects receive a total of $32.5 million in grants. The fall funding round was open to eligible projects that had scored at least 60 in the initial round but were shut out in part because of jurisdictional caps when the program announced its grants in June. That round included $120 million in total funding, awarded to 28 projects. Projects were evaluated according to their original applications. Some criteria were re-scored according to revised guidelines, focusing on projected greenhouse gas reductions and leverage of other funds. The re-scoring make some projects more attractive than they originally may have been. The most contentious issue in the first rounding round centered on geography. SGC staff were accused of unfairly disregarding projects from the SCAG region and disregarding projects because of jurisdictional caps. In this round, four of the eight projects are in the City of Los Angeles; two are in San Francisco, and one each are in Walnut Creek and San Leandro. The SGC board is expected to confirm staff recommendations at its December 17 meeting. Resources AHSC Fall 2015 Award Nominations (pdf) AHSC Fall 2015 Recommendations (pdf) Prior CP&DR Coverage of AHSC SCAG Wins in AHSC Grant Funding Recommendations Cities Hustle for $120 Million in Funding from SGC

If NIMBYs are, proverbially, planners' worst enemies, then planners are sometimes their own second-worst enemies.   Monday morning I attended one of a dozen or so workshops and listening sessions, this one in Los Angeles, put on by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to publicize and solicit input into the new draft General Plan Guideline s. It's a momentous occasion for planners in California. Legislative, demographic, and cultural forces have forged a different world in the 12 years since OPR last updated the guidelines.  Cities that update their general plans, usually to the tune of hundreds of pages, need all the help they can get. That's why it's so important for OPR to clearly explain what it has in mind and to hear what planners and citizens need to make the magic happen.   Some citizens, though, see nothing magical about, well, anything that planners do.   The meeting in Los Angeles was attended by 40 or so people (compared to the 100-plus that organizers said had RSVP'd). About one-quarter of them were self-described "interested citizens," or something of the sort. The rest came from various public agencies.  The two OPR representatives who led the meeting � and shall remain nameless -- had their talking points and their slideshow . The agenda called for a presentation in the first half of the session and a "targeted discussion" in the second half. What it didn't include was a way of preventing a small minority of audience members from co-opting the meeting.   Did these interested citizens attend so they could share their excitement about the use of vehicle miles travelled metrics? Did they have invaluable suggestions for ways cities can articulate the relationship between their mobility elements and their health elements? Not exactly.   Instead, they came with an earful about woes. They bemoaned offenses like the adulteration of neighborhoods, raucous parties on rooftops, over-bulding in Hollywood, and greedy developers who are turning a sleepy seaside town into, well, a major world city. One audience member railed against the evils of "urban infill," on the premise that homes "filling in" pristine ridgelines in the hills were environmentally destructive. No one had the heart to explain to her that this is the opposite of urban infill.   Above all else, the citizens lamented the deafness of public officials. They said they have raised these concerns time and again and, according to them, no one has listened.   Maybe that's because they're going to the wrong meetings.   You have to sympathize with citizens who are frustrated with government. Then again, you don't have to be James Madison to understand how hierarchical jurisdictions work. No matter how unresponsive, oblivious, or indecisive a local official or bureaucracy might be, shouting at a state agency with zero legislative authority in a meeting about a program that serves a purely advisory function is the epitome of futility.  Unfortunately, those citizens will probably go home and, seeing no result, will only grow more frustrated.   Meanwhile, the timidity of the planning profession was on full display. Yes, the public must have a chance to speak, and planners must listen. But, still, there's only so much time and so many ears.   Time and again, audience members interjected with little resistance. The presenters, looking weary as can be, issued some tepid reminders about jurisdictions. Then citizens went on with their rants. One slide stayed up for over a half-hour, hovering excruciatingly above the lectern, while the discussion went this way and that.  Any greenhorn planner in the most podunk jurisdiction knows that he needs to keep a few audience-management tricks up his sleeve. Why veterans of the state's most important planning-related agency don't is beyond me. Any number of trinkets � a gavel, a microphone, a conch � would have helped. Even better: stick to the agenda and that "targeted discussion."   I respect the OPR representatives for their patience. Then again, public meetings involve an unfortunate asymmetry: what's polite and patient to one group is rude to everyone else. I, for one, was there to hear about the General Plan Guidelines, and so was almost everyone else.  Ultimately, my disappointment here is twofold. The "concerned citizens" were wasting their time by speaking to the wrong people. Meanwhile, OPR wasted its time because they failed to convey much of the information that they were there to convey. I'm sure they didn't get much useful commentary either. Some very smart people in the audience had very little chance to get words in edgewise.   Thus, in one fell swoop, stakeholders and local officials both grow more frustrated and less informed. If I'd heard anything interesting or coherent at the meeting, I'd be writing about it, and not about this.   So, I don't know what the final General Plan Guidelines will end up looking like. If we're lucky maybe it'll include a chapter on holding effective public meetings.