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Sending the first signal that he is open to re-establishing some form of redevelopment, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed changes to the Infrastructure Financing District law that would expand the allowable uses for IFDs and lower the voter threshold required to create them. But he would permit the expanded use of IFDs only for cities and counties that have settled out all redevelopment cash payments to other agencies and settled all redevelopment lawsuits against the state – moves that may accelerate the redevelopment wind-down process. The Infrastructure Financing District idea passed the Legislature in the early 1990s as an alternative to redevelopment, permitting the use of tax-increment financing for infrastructure without requiring a finding of blight. But the idea has rarely been used, primarily because they require two-thirds voter approval to be created. In the budget narrative accompanying his 2015 budget , Brown said he would support expanded use of IFDs as an economic development tool, but only if a city or county has completed its redevelopment wind-down process and resolved all lawsuits with the state over redevelopment. It was Brown's first cautious step toward reviving the use of tax-increment financing, which was eliminated in California two years ago at Brown's initiative. Since redevelopment was abolished on February 1, 2012, Brown has steadfastly refused to consider tax-increment financing in any form. Late in 2012 he vetoed a bill carried by Sen. Darrell Steinberg that would have permitted tax-increment financing in limited circumstances when consisted with an adopted sustainable communities plan. Steinberg stopped short of putting the same bill on Brown's desk again last fall, instead choosing to hold SB 1 over until this year. Brown's proposal would expand the use of IFDs beyond infrastructure to include military base reuse, urban infill, transit priority projects, affordable housing, and "associated necessary consumer services." "The goal is to maintain the IFD focus on projects which have tangible quality-of-life benefits for the residents of the IFD project area," said Brown's budget message. Presumably, "transit priority projects" means projects located inside transit priority areas, which local governments can create under SB 743 , the California Environmental Quality Act streamlining bill passed last fall. Brown suggested IFDs could be used in former redevelopment project areas, and also proposed that local government using IFDs for these purposes should be able to adopt IFDs with 55% voter approval. He called for retaining the current ban on using tax-increment from school districts, which means the state general fund would be held financially harmless. However, he also proposed placing strict limitations on the expanded use of IFDs, linked tightly to the redevelopment wind-down activities. More specifically, cities and counties seeking expanded use of IFDs would have to: 1. Have a "Finding of Completion" from the state, meaning the city or county has paid all unencumbered RDA cash assets to other taxing entities 2. Comply with with all State Controller's Office RDA audit findings. 3. Have no outstanding lawsuits against the state regarding the redevelopment wind-down. Local governments have literally hundreds of lawsuits pending against the Department of Finance over the redevelopment wind-down. By requiring that the cash be paid and lawsuits settled, Brown may be attempting to accelerate the redevelopment wind-down.

Are the days of "levels of service" as a performance measure under the California Environmental Quality Act numbered? Following up on t he passage of SB 743, the Governor's Office of Planning & Research is considering a variety of alternatives to vehicle "level of service" under CEQA, including vehicle miles traveled, auto trips generated, and multi-modal leve l of service. OPR plans to deliver final draft CEQA guideline revisions to the Natural Resources Agency by July 1. In a preliminary paper released last week, OPR declared unequivocally that SB 743 "marks a shift away from auto delay as a measure of environmental impact". Most specifically, OPR has proposed the following possible metrics: 1. Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), which OPR suggests "captures the environmental benefits of transit and active mode trips" and is easy to calculate 2. Automobile Trips Generated (ATG), already in use in San Francisco, which OPR suggests has many benefits but does not address the region of regional location of development projects. 3. Multi-Modal Level of Service (MMLOS), an spin on auto LOS, which creats an A through F grade for every intersection and roadway segment for every mode of travel. OPR notes that MMLOS could increase the cost of infill development by burdeningch projects with additional bike/ped facility costs. 4. Total fuel use, which OPR suggests would encourage infill development although it could sometimes add auto travel if road expansions and operations improvements (sometimes required to reduce idling or slow traffic) are used as mitigations. 5. Motor vehicle miles traveled, which OPR suggests could harm alternative modes by increasing vehicle speeds, thus making roadways less safe. 6. "Presumption of less than significant transportation impact based on location" – in other words, adopting the idea that infill development in transit-rich locations will affect the regional transportation network so differently than greenfield development that a "less than significant" impact can be assumed. The law dictates that OPR develop new transportation metrics to accomplish three goals: * Promote greenhouse gas emissions reduction * Develop multimodal transportation networks * Promote a diversity of land uses In the preliminary evaluation released last week, OPR announced that it would consider a number of other factors as well, including: * Maximizing environmental benefit and minimizing environmental harm * Efficient use of local government fiscal resources * Equity, meaning, among other things, equitable distribution of public facilities * Health, especially the health benefits associated with "active transportation" (biking and walking) * Simplicity * Consistency with a wide variety of other state policies, including the AB 857 priorities (infill development, compact greenfield development, and protection of open space) * Access to destinations – in other words, recognizing that the goal of transportation is to provide people with access to the things they need, rather than simply moving either people or vehicles. The OPR document can be found here: http://www.opr.ca.gov/docs/PreliminaryEvaluationTransportationMetrics.pdf Comments may be submitted to CEQA.Guidelines@ceres.ca.gov, using the subject line "LOS Alternatives". Staff lead at OPR is Senior Counsel Chris Calfee.

A Riverside County city will take the first steps to disincorporate itself in January, with the blame being pointed at Sacramento and state government decisions about how new cities are financed. Several other cities in the Inland Empire have discussed disincorporation, but no others appear to be close to taking such an action.   The city, named Jurupa Valley, could be any city in California. But most observers say the disincorporation is due to the fact that it was the last city to incorporate before state laws changed in 2011. Located north of the City of Riverside, Jurupa Valley has 95,000 people and encompasses 44 square miles – a jumble of homes, apartments, some manufacturing and commercial uses. For many years it was an unincorporated community, with voters only approving incorporation in 2011.  Those same city voters may soon have the final word on the city's disincorporation in an election. But first, the city has to jump through several hoops to actually disincorporate.  Jurupa Valley's City Council votes on January 16 to begin a study on disincorporation. That action may force the hand of Sacramento legislators and Governor Jerry Brown, since one outcome is that state legislators could vote to provide long-sought fiscal relief.   The city has about two years to complete disincorporation before it runs out of cash, according to recent press reports.  "Nobody connected with the city wants to disincorporate," said Mayor Verne Lauritzen. "We realize we have to take this action to meet the legal timeline." Jurupa Valley appears to be the only city in the state headed towards disincorporation. Two years ago, three other Riverside County cities were claiming they too would have to disincorporate, but all have backed away from that action. At the same time, other cities in San Bernardino County have also discussed the option. The last time cities disincorporated in California was in the early 1970s when two small cities did so.  Jurupa Valley's woes stem from passage of SB 89, a 2011 last-minute state legislative deal that diverted vehicle license fee money from city budgets, sending it instead to prison realignment. Its brunt was felt on new cities that had incorporated under a previous law that had sent VLF money to them to help jump-start their newly formed governments. Jurupa Valley lost nearly half the money it counted on for its new budget, and things have been tight ever since.  The other newly formed  Riverside County cities which felt the effects of  SB 89 and warned that they, too, might disincorporate were Eastvale, Wildomar and Menifee.  Carol Jacobs, city manager of Eastvale said her city is no longer considering disincorporation. It incorporated in 2010. "We got one payment of Vehicle License Fees of $3.2 million, just barely enough to get us over the fence,"she said. Jacobs explained that Jurupa Valley never got that early VLF money, and it is a bigger city than hers.  Wildomar is also not planning to disincorporate, said city manager Gary Nordquist.  "Disincorporation for the city is not forecasted, but a recovery to wanted municipal service levels is years away with the taking of revenues by the state," he said in an email.  Nordquist said police services have been cut in his city.  Menifee also is not planning on disincorporating due to significant commercial development, said George Spiliotis, executive officer for Riverside County's LAFCO. In San Bernardino County, Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, head of that county's LAFCO, has also spoken to local groups interested in disincorporation. Rollings-McDonald said she made a presentation about the topic to the city council of Grand Terrace, a city of 12,000. Rollings-McDonald also said that several cities in the northern part of the county have informally asked about it, but she declined to name them.   Grand Terrace, she said, is dealing with the end  of redevelopment and a long-ago failure to pass a utility tax. The city incorporated in 1978, making it a seasoned player compared to the newly incorporated Riverside County cities.  Rollings-McDonald said she made a presentation on disincorporation for San Berrnardino to a private civic group in that city, after that city went into bankruptcy in 2012.   Rollings-McDonald said disincorporation doesn't allow cities to walk away from obligations on things like bonds. Instead, cities lose their ability to renegotiate contracts under disincorporation. That's a major contrast to filing for bankruptcy, which allows such tactics.   "You negotiate through a bankruptcy process,"she said. "Disincorporation simply does away with an entity."   Another Riverside County city, Desert Hot Springs, has also recently discussed filing for bankruptcy after facing a budget gap of $4 million.  Dan Carrigg, legislative director for California League of Cities, said Jurupa Valley's case may preclude future incorporations of cities, a situation he laments.  "Incorporation is an example of local democracy in action," he said, noting it begins with local citizens who are concerned about government services and land use issues. "Incorporation is a really good form of growth management," he said, noting that cities are the most urbanized areas of the state and "densify over time."  Without incorporation, he said, "I don't know how that meshes with state goals of carbon reduction and preserving farmland and open space." Carrigg traces the problems of Jurupa Valley to the passage of SB 89, which took money from new cities. In a case of bad timing, Jurupa Valley was incorporated two days after the law went into effect. An attempt to fix the situation came via AB 1098 in 2012, which passed the legislature, but was then vetoed by Brown.  In the current legislative session, SB 56 is attempting to make the same legislative fix to VLF funding. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside. "I anticipate another effort to pass SB 56 in January," Carrigg said.  If SB 56 passes, Jurupa Valley will be saved.  But if it doesn't, a process begins in January that that will require votes on disincorporation by both LAFCO and the County Board of Supervisors, and then city's voters, said Mayor Lauritzen.  What happens if Jurupa Valley voters turn down disincorporation? "Nobody in the state has an answer to that one," said Lauritzen. Spiliotis of Riverside County LAFCO answers differently.  "If city voters vote no, it's up to city council to make a go of it with what they have," he said.  Most of the city's money goes to a contract with the Riverside County Sheriff for police services, Spiliotis noted.  "Public safety levels would be reduced," he said.

In an unpublished opinion, the First District Court of Appeal has rejected an attack on San Francisco's single-use plastic-bag ban, saying that the city did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act and that local plastic-bag bans are not overridden by the state's Retail Food Code. San Francisco adopted a single-use plastic-bag ban in 2012. The city concluded that the plastic-bag ban was categorically exempt from CEQA under 15307 and 15308 of the CEQA Guidelines, saying that the plastic-bag ban would have a net positive impact on the environment. The city was quickly sued by the Save The Plastic Bag Coalition, which has challenged plastic-bag ordinances around the state. The Coalition argued that the plastic-bag ban should not fall under the categorical exemption because life-cycle studies show that plastic bags are not as harmful to the environment as paper bags. The Coalition also argued that plastic-bag ordinances should be pre-empted by the state's Retail Food Code, which occupies the field of health and sanitation regulation. The First District did not buy the Coalition's arguments – and, in the case of the CEQA argument, was not persuaded by the Coalition's approach given the outcome of previous cases. In arguing that the plastic-bag ban should not be categorically exempt, the Coalition relied on the California Supreme Court's ruling in Save the Plastic Bag Coalition v. City of Manhattan Beach 52 Cal.4th 155 (2011).  The Coalition's argument relied heavily on the Supreme Court's statement in a footnote which noted that the plaintiff – the Coalition itself – argued that a plastic-bag ban required "comprehensive environmental review". In the San Francisco case, the Coalition concluded that "comprehensive environmental review" precluded the use of a categorical exemption. "In the present case," the First District wrote, "the Coalition's reliance on Manhattan Beach is perplexing. The fact that the city of Manhattan Beach was able to enact its plastic bag ban without preparing an EIR certainly does not strengthen the Coalition's position here. Furthermore, we find nothing in that opinion which supports the Coalition's specific contention that the City cannot rely on a categorical exemption in this case because it is larger than the city of Manhattan Beach. Indeed, Manhattan Beach was not a categorical exemption case at all; during the second step of its CEQA inquiry the city conducted an initial review which resulted in a negative declaration." The Coalition also argued that the Supreme Court upheld Manhattan Beach's plastic-bag ban partly because Manhattan Beach was such a small city and the impact of its ban on the global environment would be minimal – the implication being that a ban in a larger city would be prohibited. But the First District didn't bite. Indeed, the appellate court seemed somewhat miffed that the Coalition used the exact same arguments about life-cycle impacts in the San Francisco case that the Supreme Court had rejected in the Manhattan Beach case. The First District also noted that the San Francisco case was essentially the same case the court had already decided earlier this year in Save the Plastic Bag Coalition v. County of Marin , 218 Cal.App.4th 209 (2013). As for the Retail Food Code, the Coalition argued that because that state law pre-empts local regulation on health and sanitation of single-use carry-out items (plastic utensils and paper plates, for example), it also pre-empts a local plastic bag ban. Again the First District was not sympathetic. It affirmed the Superior Court's judgment that the plastic-bag ban is a regulation focused on environmental issues, not health and sanitation issues. The Case: SAVE THE PLASTIC BAG COALITION, Plain tiff and Appellant, v. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, et al., Defendants and Respondents.  A137056 (December 10, 2013).

There's no question that Riverside County is still the single-family home capital of California. Between 2010 and 2013, more single-family detached homes were built in Riverside than in any other county in the state – a lot more. According to the Department of Finance Demographics Research Unit, the number of single-family detached houses increased by almost 9,000 in Riverside County – almost double the number in the No. 2 county, San Diego, and close to triple the number in any other county in the state. Other inland counties such as Fresno and Sacramento had comparable percentages of single-family home construction – about 75% of new units in each case – but Riverside's raw numbers are in the stratosphere. So, as it has been for 30 years, Riverside County is the mecca of affordable single-family housing in California, especially Southern California. The question is how much that's worth in the future. How big will the single-family market be? Can Riverside County continue to capture and outsized share of that market? And, if not, how in the world can a county with hundreds of thousands of post-1980 single-family homes – wide streets, three-car garages, cul-de-sacs, and so forth – compete in California's 21st-century housing market? Every indicator suggests that the market for single-family detached housing in California – and, indeed, throughout the United States – will be on the decline in decades ahead. The combination of demographic and economic change means that fewer people will want single-family houses and many who want them won't be able to afford them. The now-famous estimates of Professor Arthur C. Nelson suggest that the United States – and, by extension, California – already has enough single-family homes to meet demand for the next 20 or so years. Nelson's numbers are subject to debate, of course, and there's no question that some single-family housing development will continue. After all, even if there are enough houses theoretically available in the aggregate, there are probably still gaps in single-family housing type, size, location, and price. And as we all know, some people just like new houses and are willing to drive a long way to own one. But this segment of the market is in decline. Indeed, for the first time even, you can even begin to think of it as a niche. And that poses a problem for Riverside County. Indeed, the most recent Department of Finance statistics – which seem to tell the compelling story of Riverside County as the single-family mecca – also document the rapid decline in the single-family market. The six counties of Southern California – the five-county Los Angeles market plus San Diego – represent a discrete regional housing market. There's a lot of commuting within this enormous region, but very little commuting in and out of it. And this six-county area represents about half of the overall state housing market. Between 2010 and 2013, according to DOF, this region added about 59,000 housing units. Of these, only about 38% were single-family detached homes. More than half were apartment and condominium buildings of five or more units. The rest were either single-family attached units or small multi-family buildings such as duplexes. Of all the single-family homes built in this six-county region between 2010 and 2013, almost 40% of them – 8,600 – were built in Riverside County. Riverside County built more single-family homes than Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties combined. Think about this for a minute. Riverside County – with about 2.2 million people in 2013 – has about 12% of Southern California's population. Riverside has 11% of the region's housing stock, and – all told – about 13% of the single-family homes. Yet during the recent upturn in the housing market, the county captured almost 40% of all single-family construction. In other words, the county kept growing – but only by capturing an enormously large share of a declining market segment. To some extent, this pattern will probably continue indefinitely. There's definitely a market for new detached single-family homes in Southern California. There aren't very many other places in Southern California where such housing can be built affordably. And there's a long-standing pattern of self-selection within this market segment. For decades, single-family homebuyers have shown a willingness to move to Riverside County and commute long distances – to L.A, Orange County, and San Diego – in order to to maintain that lifestyle. So there's no doubt that Riverside County can continue to capture a large share of the single-family market in Southern California. It's got brand-name recognition and can probably continue to increase its market share even as the market segment continues to decline for the foreseeable future. But what happens when Riverside County hits the wall? After all, the remaining available single-family land in southwest Riverside County – along the I-15 and I-215 corridors – is being gobbled up quickly. And even if Riverside doesn't hit the wall soon, does it have to diversify its housing stock in order to remain competitive? Because underneath all the numbers and trends, there is one intangible: People. Will the people that Riverside County needs to prosper want to live there if the only choice is single-family living? And can the people who live in the county's single-family neighborhoods now – who are getting older and older – continue to live in their houses indefinitely? The two biggest drivers of the housing market these days are Millenials and aging Baby Boomers. Both are necessary for a region's prosperity. And both are trending heavily toward urban living – in other words, both are trending in the complete opposite direction of Riverside County. So Riverside County faces a choice: focus on the self-selected suburbanites and remain a bedroom suburb; or diversity its housing stock and its selection of neighborhoods to become more competitive with the people who can bring jobs and broader prosperity to the county. It's worth remembering that, not so long ago, Orange County faced a similar challenge: It was the quintessential bedroom suburb in a rapidly changing world. But Orange County had some advantages that Riverside does not. Jobs were decentralizing into suburban Edge Cities (that's not happening anymore) and the county had a few large landowners willing to move heavily in the direction of employment centers and master-planned communities (which Riverside does not). Is Riverside up to the challenge? Maybe hip neighborhoods will emerge in certain locations – near the University of California in the City of Riverside, for example, and a few other locations. Maybe aging homeowners stuck in their subdivisions will become creative – doubling up, sharing kitchens, selling each other goods and services in an informal economy, and so on. Or maybe Riverside County will follow the same pattern as many old brand names in mature industries – mining a declining customer base for as much short-term profit as it can extract before the mines are played out.

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL MEMO TO THE EDITOR OF CALIFORNIA PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT REPORT. WARNING: DON'T NOBODY ELSE READ THIS. STRICTLY "ENTRE NOUS." STAY OUT!  Dear Colleague: Something has happened to the American sports venue. Despite their great cost, stadiums and arenas  have become as disposable as the paper wrapper on yesterday's tater tots. The latest example, of course, is Atlanta Fulton Stadium, the current venue of the Atlanta Braves. This 17-year-old has-been was built as a venue for the Olympics, and converted a year later for major-league baseball. It's publicly owned. But the stadium is not perfect. It does not connect easily to public transit, and parking can be hard to find. Plus, the downtown location is this "minority-majority" city (no dog whistle here!) is not optimal for the majority of Braves fans, who live in the northern and western suburbs. (Did you hear a high-pitched squeal? Me neither!)  The stadium may need $150 million in repairs, the Braves management claims. "Who's gonna pay for that?" they appear to say, without using those exact words. "Us? We don't think so."  Anyway, after 17 years of pre-recorded electronic organ accompaniments to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," the Braves are looking for a greener pasture. That new pasture, depending on the will of local voter, may lie in suburban Cobb County, just 12.5 miles to the north. With little or no public input, the county supervisors have agreed, in principle, to contribute $300 million toward the $670 million stadium. Plus, the county has agreed to pay 50% (!) of future maintenance costs, without any ability to recapture that public money. That's not a problem, because county officials say the whole thing can be done without raising taxes! Taxes are tyranny, after all, and nobody treads on Cobb County (unless they're millionaires wearing cleats.)  And just so the deal won't be a total waste, the Braves brass say they want to spend another $400 million on 1 million-square-feet  of "sports entertainment" sprawl, replete with bars, restaurants and impulse retail; the team is reportedly shopping for a developer to go halves with them. Some Cobb County residents have reportedly complained that the planning process has been conspicuously, uh, absent. Well, if there's one thing you learn from living in the South, it's that you can't please everyone.  As for the 17-year-old stadium in downtown Atlanta, they'll find something to do with it, won't they? Just ask the folks in Irving, Texas, who demolished their 39-year-old Texas Stadium in 2010, after having been abandoned by the Cowboys for the $1.15 billion AT&T Stadium in nearby Arlington. The city has been trying to interest developers in the site. At last report, there have been no takers. This discussion reminds me of Sacramento, home town of bothThis Reporter and the Sacramento Kings. The Kings have played the past 26 seasons in the Sleep Train Arena, formerly known as the Power Balance Pavilion, formerly known as Arco Arena. After a well-publicized fracas this past spring, which involved a tug-of-war for team ownership between corporate meanies from Seattle and some Golden State billionaires, the National Basketball Association decided that the Kings should stay in Sac-town, as long as the new ownership would build a $477 million stadium, this time in a downtown area. (This time, the location is fortunate, because it replaces an underperforming retail mall. Although Sacramento voters rejected a proposal in 2006 for a $600 million stadium to be built on the public dime, there were fewer protests this time around for a public contribution of $250 million for the crucial task of bringing basketball to downtown Tomato-town.  As for Sleep Train Pavilion, well, we'll figure out something. ( At least the 1988-era arena is finished, unlike the half-built baseball stadium next door, which will never be finished, apparently, because somebody else built a ball park, Raley Field, in the meantime.   So clearly, colleagues, we can see that 1) teams need to move frequently and 2) stadiums have very short halflives. The cost of stadiums places an undue burden on both team owners and local governments.  Hell (pardon my language) stadiums can't even be converted to discount malls or low income housing!  So here's the plan, on the down-low, colleagues: We are getting into the stadium business. And w only have to build two or three of them. How, you might ask, eye brows raised and mouth agape in astonishment, would this be possible? Oh, just for 7,000-year-old Mesopotamian invention known as little rubber wheels.  Yes, colleagues, we're going to invent … the rolling stadium! Look, fellow planning journalists, it doesn't make sense for cities to spend to spend a half billion dollars every couple of years, just to watch the local sports heroes move to a newer stadium in another city. With our new proprietary CAL PLANNING ROL-ARENA ® we simply unlock the wheels underneath the thing, and push the sucker to the suburbs, or redeveloping downtown area, whatever. Granted, a stadium is a bit of a plus-sized customer for your standard super-freeway, so we would be wise to design the sports facility in 20-footwide segments, which can roll down the road, extra-wide-load-style. (Are you keeping up with me? I know I type pretty fast.)   Now, you may say, whoa there Rabbi, how do we freshen up the architecture for new customers? After all, each new facility needs a unique, new look to impress the folks in suburban I've-Got-Mine-ville USA. This is where you're lucky to have someone like me, colleagues. For each new location in which a CAL PLANNING ROL-ARENA  ®  is deployed, we will use a new WRAP-AROUND sheet of mylar imprinted with a new façade, just like the printed coverings you see on personalized automobiles used by plumbers and internet start-ups. The creative challenge here is to give each stadium an image based on local culture and history. Now, sports stadiums built in downtown areas of cities like Baltimore or Denver can reflect the look of historic buildings that surround them. Sacramento, for example, is a city with a rich railroad history, plus a brisk trade in vegetables. Imagine a stadium that is covered with a picture of an old locomotive, with the coal cars full of butternut squash! It will fit right in. Corporate identity is obviously another area of concern. Sleep Train Arena --is there a better-named facility anywhere in the world?-- has had to change its name three times in past quarter century. (I've known embezzlers who have changed their names less often.) I propose that each rolling stadium be equipped with a big sign with magnetic letters, like those by second-run movie houses and organic-food supermarkets. I have done reconnaissance on these establishments, and have observed that a single employee, equipped with a magnet on a long pole, is able change the wording on these signs fairly quickly. We simply remove the magnetic letters that spell out SLEEP TRAIN ARENA and re-arrange them to read, for example, FLOOD PLAIN INSURANCE SERVICES,  A Levee of Safety When Your Waters Are Rising. At $20 million a pop for naming rights, I think it's a worthwhile investment.  Now, colleagues, as I see it, the first hurdle we have to clear with this thing is money. For starters, I estimate-- (At this point, the computer freezes and the document is lost.)

In a new opinion, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has unraveled a confusing set of events surrounding the certification of the environmental impact report for San Jose's new general plan, concluding that an environmental group exhausted all administrative remedies and can sue over the EIR. The California Clean Energy Committee sued over the certification of the EIR, saying that it should not be penalized because of the confusing way San Jose certified the EIR. The Sixth District agreed. Under the San Jose municipal code, the city planning commission is empowered to certify EIRs. However, the CEQA Guidelines, § 15025, subd. (b)(1), say that the decisionmaking body for a project cannot delegate the authority to certify the EIR to an "inferior" body. There's no conflict on most entitlements, where San Jose's planning commission is the final decisionmaking body and applicants have the right to appeal to the city council. But in the case of the general plan, the planning commission's role is advisory. The decisionmaking body in that case was the San Jose City Council. Nevertheless, in approving Envision San Jose, the city at first followed the procedure called for in the municipal code. The draft EIR was released and comments by groups such as the California Clean Energy Committee were presented to the planning commission. The committee's letter  covered a wide variety of topics, including traffic, energy conservation, and the city's ability to finance all the proposed actions. Following the municipal code, the planning commission certified the EIR. But of course the planning commission didn't have power to approve the plan. Rather, the commissioners made recommendations to the city council. Subsequently the city council approved the general plan. However, the council also certified the EIR. The Clean Energy Committee subsequently sued, claiming the EIR was inadequate and should have been recirculated. The city argued that the Clean Energy Committee  had not exhausted its administrative remedies because neither the committee – nor anyone else – appealed the planning commission's certification of the EIR. The committee argued, essentially, that it was not possible to appeal the EIR certification because, under the municipal code that certification was final. The committee also argued that the planning commission certification was not legal and that the city council's certification was done with knowledge of the committee's comments. The Sixth District ruled for the committee. "We conclude that the EIR was not properly certified by the planning commission, as the planning commission could not be delegated the duty to certify a final EIR given that it is not a decisionmaking body with respect to the Envision San Jose project," the court wrote, adding: "We conclude that CCEC exhausted its administrative remedies with respect to the challengest o the sufficiency of the EIR and CCEC?s argument that the draft EIR should have been recirculated, as these points were adequately raised with the city council via CCEC?s comment letter." The San Jose case was a good example of a case in which one side – the city in this situation -- had to make a tortured argument in order to defend its actions.  Under Section 15090 of the CEQA guidelines. certification of a final EIR requires the lead agency to certify that: 1. The final EIR has been completed in compliance with CEQA;  2. The final EIR was presented to the decision-making body of the lead agency, and that the decision-making body reviewed and considered the information contained in the final EIR prior to approving the project; and  3. The final EIR reflects the lead agency's independent judgment and analysis.  The municipal code states that once the planning commission has certified the EIR, it may then either act on the matter at hand or make recommendations to the city council. In court, San Jose made the argument that certification in the case of the Envision San Jose plan was bifurcated. The planning commission, the city argued, provided certification of #1 above, while the city council provided certification of #2 and #3. The court saw through this tactic and basically concluded that the municipal code did not comply with the CEQA guidelines. "For all intents and purposes," the court wrote, "the certification of the final EIR by the planning commission is meant to be final for the purposes of CEQA, as the San Jose Municipal Code provides that after the planning commission ‘certifies the final EIR, it may then immediately act or make recommendations on the project associated with the EIR.'" The court added: "An alternate reading of the municipal code would produce a strange result where the planning commission has made only one out of the three required findings under CEQA Guidelines section 15090, subdivision (a), for all projects requiring CEQA approval, with no provisions for further CEQA certification by the planning commission or the lead agency. Logically, the planning commission would not be able to ‘immediately act' if it did not make all three of the requisite findings under CEQA Guidelines section 15090, subdivision (a)." The case (unpublished): California Clean Energy Committee v. City of San Jose, Sixth District Court of Appeal Docket # H038740

Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley, is going to keep growing. The question is, in which direction?  City leaders who are dealing with issues of leapfrog development, declining neighborhoods and strained city services, would like to keep growth inside city limits as infill projects – as the city's recently adopted general plan suggests.   But local counties, including Fresno and Madera, are happy to encourage some of that overflow growth as it moves beyond the affluent north side of Fresno. Both counties have many developments planned for the region near the San Joaquin River, which is the border between the two counties. This has led to years of environmental litigation between the large city and the counties.    Fresno recently settled a lawsuit against Madera County over the large Tesero Viejo planned community. But the city is still involved in other litigation, and is appealing a recent decision against Fresno County's plans to allow 2,500 homes at Friant Ranch.   Amidst the litigation, the city and its two county adversaries recently met with a  mediator from the state's Strategic Growth Council to discuss some of the longstanding issues. The meeting was required in the settlement of Fresno's lawsuit against over Tesero Viejo, and Fresno County was also invited.  "We started talking about ways to talk about planning from a regional perspective," said Jennifer Clark, Fresno' new planning director.  The next step, she said, is "the state will participate at whatever level we're interested in." "We are at a fairly early stage of discussions and anticipate some additional meetings," said state Office of Planning and Research director Ken Alex via email. "We are helping the parties explore the issues, the possibilities of more regional planning and development, and various connected issues of sprawl, agricultural land preservation, transit-oriented development, and restoration of downtown Fresno." Norman Allinder, planning director for Madera County, said the planning directors plan to meet again.  Clark said regional cooperation has been hindered in the past by the size of the region. She contrasted the Fresno area with Houston and Galveston, Texas, where the regional council of government covers 11 counties in an 8,500-square-mile region. Fresno County alone, in contrast, is 9,000 square miles, and has its own council of government.   "I think regional collaboration is a much better model than litigation," she said.  That sentiment is not far from Allinder's view. "My outcome, lofty or not, is that they not sue us," he said.  Allinder said Madera County, with 164,000 residents, wants some of the amenities that exist in Fresno, including more shopping. "They've always acted as if they're the only ones who should have urban development," he said. "And  all the surrounding communities stand by while they develop their economy while we don't develop our own." It's a view shared by Alan Weaver, Fresno County's planning director.  "There are 14 other cities (in the county) that all have the need to grow and be self-sustaining as well," he said.   Allinder says that Madera County wants the same kind of smart growth in its county that is being championed in Fresno. He points to plans for the Rio Mesa area, which encompass many of the proposed developments in the south county. "The Rio Mesa plan of 1995 embodied the principles of smart growth prior to that term being common," he said.   Rio Mesa could be home to 250,000 people, according to the Fresno Bee.  Among the projects are Tesero Viejo, a proposed 5,200 home development and Gunner Ranch West, a proposed 2,800 unit development. There are supposed to be jobs and retail at both locations so residents won't have to drive far.  But critics of the project, such as Fresno land use attorney Sara Hedgpeth-Harris, contend that until those developments are built out, many of the residents will commute into Fresno, adding to traffic and air pollution difficulties in a region that already has the worst air quality in the nation. Fresno sued over Tesero Viejo, and settled the matter in May after an agreement was reached for the city to receive a $1,600 per home impact fee. But Hedgpeth-Harris is continuing with litigation over that project on behalf of environmental groups such as the Coalition for Clean Air.  She said in total, 80,000 new housing units are proposed for Madera County.  Approval of Gunner Ranch West, meanwhile, has been held up by the Madera County Board of Supervisors because the developers have failed to identify a water source. Critics of the project include the Madera County Farm Bureau, which has sued the county over development and water issues in the past.  This time, though, the county seems to be paying more attention to water, said Anja Radabaugh, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau. "We're hopeful,"she said. "One of the more encouraging things we're noting is the county supervisors are much more cognizant of the water situation that they were ten years ago."  Attorney Hedgpeth-Harris agrees, saying Madera County is updating their water management plans.  "The county of Madera has done a lot more in terms of gathering information,"she said.   Still unresolved in the latest talks is a separate suit  between Fresno and Madera County over El Paseo, a project  along Highway 99 in Fresno.  Madera officials sued in June to stop the 75-acre commercial project, according to the Fresno Bee.  In Fresno County, officials are looking at more development near Millerton Lake and other northern sections. Plans for Millerton New Town date from 1984, Weaver said.  The Fresno County Planning Director said that new development is compliant with SB 375, which seeks to reduce global warming.  "We go through the CEQA process, " he said. "If we fall short, we mitigate. It's no different than development that would occur in the city of Fresno."  Attorney Hedgpeth-Harris described Fresno itself as "the epitome of sprawl," but said a new general plan being written there is attempting to change that direction. "The whole idea is to end sprawl," she said.  Hedgpeth-Harris said the cities and the counties are both looking for new tax revenue from development, money that has been taken away by the state and by Proposition 13.   She summed up the problem the city faces:"it's difficult to do the infill development ..if the tax base is leaving to go into the county." Contacts: Anja Radabaugh, Executive Director, Madera County Farm Bureau, (559) 674-8871 Norm Allinder, Madera County Planning Director, (559)675-7821 Sara Hedgpeth-Harris, attorney, (559) 233-0907 Jennifer Clark,  Director of Fresno Development and Resource Management, (559)621-8003 Alan Weaver, Director of Fresno County department of Public Works and Planning, (559)600-4078 Ken Alex, Director, Governor's Office of Planning and Research (916)322-2318

Where is Robert Bruegemann when you need him? A few years back, Bruegmann wrote Sprawl: A Compact History, an exaltation of low-density growth. It called for cities to double-down on all the conventions and mistakes of the previous 50 years. It was a disturbingly anachronistic, but it was provocative, and it was passionate. It seems that these days there's still plenty of in urbanist literature, but, for better or worse, provocation is getting harder to come by. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design , by Charles Montgomery, pulls up the rear in the urbanist canon. Happy City argues for the right things: everybody would be happier if they lived in denser, more attractive, less auto-dependent, more human-centric cities. Montgomery defines happiness as the Aristotle's concept of eudemonia: self-acceptance, navigation of your own environment, positive relations with others, personal growth, sense of purpose, feelings of autonomy. A city, contends Montgomery, can make or break all of these virtues: "we all translate our own ideas of happiness into form....it is impossible to separate the life and design of a city from the attempt to understand happiness, to experience it." Montgomery couches Happy City in psychological terms, matching new science with Classical philosophy. Presumably inspired by trends such as positive psychology movement, "gross national happiness," and ratings of happiest and saddest countries, Montgomery explains why the human brain is wired to enjoy itself more in certain types of environments and certain modes of getting around (e.g. pedal, foot) and why driving, subdivisions, and all the other accouterments of sprawl are not stressful because of the behaviors they induce or the people that they attract but in fact because of the actual, formal structure of the environments. Cities must strike a balance between "privacy, conviviality, and biophilia"�the latter being love of nature.   Unfortunately, too many places embody the opposite. While expediency, and economics, may require us to convince ourselves that the office, the freeway, or the grocery store are OK (perhaps because there are no other options in some places), the human brain, which was raised in the forest and trained to distrust open places, knows otherwise. "Places that seem too sterile or too confusing can trigger the release of adrenaline and cortisol, the hormones associated with fear and anxiety," writes Montgomery. "Places that seems familiar, navigable, and that trigger good memories, are more likely to activate his of feel-good serotonin, as well as the hormone that rewards and promotes feelings of interpersonal trust: oxytocin." The most feel-bad environments? Big boxes with long blank walls, and "sharp architectural angles light up the brain's fear centers much like the sight of a knife or a thorn, releasing stress hormones," writes Montgomery. In other words, anything designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. Montgomery is great at explaining pop science. But he is not a psychologist himself, and he loses the scientific thread as the book goes on. He makes occasional nods to endorphins and such, but he does not analyze the built and moving environment with the authority or focus of a true scientist. (Even so, a lot of the recent attempts to apply neuroscience to the "real world" to be redundant at best. Surely there are fascinating physiological processes going on in our brains, but we don't need a doctor to tell us how much freeway congestion sucks.) Traditionally, the great urban books have been written by scholars, practitioners, or activists. Montgomery is none of these. A travel journalist best known for a first-person ethnography of South Pacific tribes , Montgomery does not use his outsider status nearly as powerfully as he could. Maybe  Happy City 's publisher, the venerable Farrar Strauss & Giroux, finally decided to go looking for something on cities, and they figured Montgomery would suffice. It's tantalizing to think what Montgomery would have produced had admitted that he came late to the game and had instead pursued an expose of, say, the homebuilding industry or political conservatives, both of which seem to have doubled down on the suburban myth. Even sticking with his theme, he could have done the world a tremendous service by comparing the supposed "preferences" that lead people to live in suburbia with those urban forms that science says is actually healthy. Montgomery tosses a few barbs at the Tea Party's fierce anti-urbanism and notes that "a nation that that celebrates freedom and weaves liberty into its national myth rarely gives regular people the chance to shape their own communities." With this claim, Montgomery is not criticizing planners per se but rather lamenting the power structure in which they have to operate. He implies that Tea Partiers' roiling frustration with government, and distrust of smart growth schemes, stems in part from the fact that "It's hard to find an agora in the dispersed city. You can't hold a demonstration in a Walmart parking lot or inside a Starbucks." His best dig at sprawl comes at the expense of the nearly godlike power that many fire departments wield, noting that "sprawl's wide streets and big lots take up so much space that cities can't accord to build fire stations close by, so it takes fire trucks longer to reach each blaze." But, for the most part, Montgomery approaches the faults and promises of the contemporary urban condition with a combination of earnestness and "gee-whizz" curiosity. Happy City relies mostly largely on observations and anecdotes, which are exhausting and globe-trotting. Montgomery describes a host of delightful innovations that are supposed to increase happiness. They range from Enrique Penalosa's Ciclavia to Jamie Lerner's buses to Janet Tsadik-Kahn's pedestrian plazas to Lee Myung-bak's daylighting of the Cheonggynecheon River to Paris and its Velib bike-sharing prorgram -- to, of course, Portland's, Vancouver's, and Copenhagen's overall swellness. To illustrate how the 20th century got into its mess, he also takes a familiar tour from the Greek agora to the to Broadacre City, to Futurama, to the Plan Voison, and then to the cul-du-sac. The High Line is in there somewhere, and Disneyland too. Happy City is, by all accounts, amiable, insightful and informative. Unfortunately for Montgomery, he writes at the end of decade or two that have produced Walkable City, Triumph of the City, Straphanger, Human Transit, Green Metropolis, Traffic, This Land, Rise of the Creative Class, the Geography of Nowhere, and Suburban Nation , among many others. Just look at Planetizen's annual list of Top 10 books to see the incredible body of work that has arisen around smart growth, environmental responsibility, center-city revitalization, and pedestrianism. Encouragingly, no matter the perspective -- Edward Glaeser: economics; Jeff Speck: aesthetics and personal health; David Owen: environmentalism, Jarrett Walker: transportation; Florida: subcultures; David Byrne: cycling; James Kunster: sheer incredulity -- many of these authors arrive at nearly identical, or at least complementary, conclusions. Agreement may be satisfying, but it's a little dull. As nice as it might be to read the occasional Molotov cocktail thrown by Kotkin, Bruegemann, or Wendell Cox, it seems that progressive planning has finally won. It almost seems that Montgomery hasn't been paying attention, and that he's writing for readers who have been similarly oblivious. Then again, who could blame them? All the famous innovations that planners are familiar with are, on the ground, few and far between. Most people have not experienced them firsthand, and most people, including himself, have not spent their lives dreaming about nicer, happier cities.  At its best,  Happy City signals the maturation of the discussion about how to improve cities. Not that cities don't need improvement, or that there's not room for more books or for new ideas (if there are 16,000 books on Abraham Lincoln, then surely the world's cities can lend themselves to a few more). If his book inspires some readers to crawl out from their SUV's and read about smart growth with fresh, eager eyes, then more power to him.   The real challenge that Montgomery, and everyone else who writes about cities (myself included), faces is that of time. Unless you are at the controls of a wrecking ball, an atomic bomb, or a city hall in China, it takes a lot longer to create a city than it does a book. So, while we wait, we write. Now these ideas are making their way into plans, projects, and the public consciousness, planners have to make sure that the reality matches up with the rhetoric. And they have to make sure that the triumph of the city -- to borrow Edward Glaeser's phrase -- on paper does not make them complacent, arrogant, or, indeed, too happy. There's a lot of work to be done.  Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design Charles Montgomery Farrar, Strauss & Giroux $28.00 400 pages

This week the Huffington Post ran a concerning piece about the recent shooting at Los Angeles International Airport. In it, an attorney representing the Transportation Security Administration described his fear TSA personnel are "all sitting ducks." He, like many others, seems to be wondering whether they should be equipped to fire back. You have to sympathize with anyone who works at an airport, in light of what happened last week. I do not wish to minimize the horror of last Friday's attacks. I am particularly horrified, and self-interested, because I fly out of LAX several times per month. But I don't think anyone should exaggerate the significance of Paul Ciancia's rampage for either public safety or the task of airport screening.   If merely being in an airport makes one a sitting duck, then so is every other American, in every other public place. TSA screeners are not police. They are supposed to identify suspicious behavior and activities so that the real police can take action. In this effort, they protect the planes and their passengers. They are not trained or charged with protecting anyone or anything beyond that security wall. And what is beyond that security wall? The entire world -- at least the entire world up to the Mexican and Canadian borders. Airports are special, not because they are targets, but rather because they are gateways. Every Angeleno should cherish the economic contributions of LAX, and we should be proud that LAX cements our status as one of the world's truly great cities. At the same time, you have to wonder what an American city really is if we cannot get comfortable with, and in, public space. The hysteria surrounding the LAX shooting has included calls to arm TSA agents and otherwise militarize airports; the shooting itself resulted in the closure of half the airport and the disruption of hundreds of flights long after it became apparent that Ciancia was not a terrorist as such. This response says as much about many Americans' attitudes towards public space as it does about their attitudes towards air travel. Too often, we fail to acknowledge that public life is messy, sometimes tragically so, but that the freedom and comity can, and should, more than compensate for messiness. The roadways, curbs, and ticketing areas of the world's eighth-busiest airport are no less public than are a mall, a sports stadium, a college campus, or the sidewalk in front of your house. Those are all places where people of good faith can congregate and enjoy each other's company -- so long as they trust each other. And yet, so many Americans go about their business silently, walking with heads down, driving with their windows up. We do not gain by encouraging "more,"tighter," or "heavier" security. As recent history has proven time after tragic time, the savage combination of mental instability and readily available firearms can unleash itself anywhere. It can happen in offices, malls, and movie theaters, not to mention military bases, university campuses, and elementary schools. The fact that one of these incidents -- perpetrated not by a terrorist or hijacker but by one of America's garden-variety assassins -- can also happen at airports is almost beside the point. It's no exaggeration to say that the average TSA agent faces more danger on the drive to work each day than he faces in his entire career at the airport. Naturally, some of that danger, however faint it may be, comes from enemies. They are real and they are nefarious. To them, we have responded with both sensible measures and stentorian bombast. Meanwhile, we greet with relative silence some of the true tragedies of our age: the drug war, the education crisis, suburban discontent, and the 39,000 traffic fatalities annually, all of which dwarf anything that happened last week at LAX. In American street, we cannot shake our fists any anyone in a turban or a throbe, whether they deserve it or not (most likely not). Instead, all too often, in almost every corner of America, the enemy is us. We sell each other junk food, we crash our cars into each other, and, on occasion, we shoot our own neighbors. Even under normal circumstances, we rush past each other, unblinking, en route from the Walmart door to our car across the tarmac. What saddens me is that the LAX shooting has led to calls for "security." But what about comity, and what about trust? What about recognizing that all Americans should be equally safe -- and equally confident -- in all public spaces. We should not have to insist that the airport be safe while, otherwise, we hole up in suburban houses trembling, out of fear or bloodthirst, at the prospect that a bad guy might one day come knocking.   Of course, some parts of America are doing well. Certain parts of certain cities are becoming more walkable, pleasant, and, hopefully, more safe. They are becoming more like the types of places that inspire Americans to get on a plane in the first place (for a dream vacation to Europe, for example). In considering the nature of American public spaces, it's impossible to avoid Jane Jacobs, who said it best, long before the advent of X-ray machines, porno scanners, and Al Quaeda. Security does not lie in the police, the military, or the TSA. And it certainly does not lie in guns. While we need law enforcement and the military -- when they are well trained and when they execute their jobs -- true safety, of the sort that prevails in the best of our cities and neighborhoods, lies in something else. It lies in trust, good faith, and "eyes on the street." Or, in some cases, eyes in the terminal.

After a 30-odd-year delay, the Governor's Office of Planning & Research has released a working draft of the Environmental Goals & Policies Report – a document that OPR is supposed to produce every four years. Titled, " California's Climate Future ," the draft is a high-level document laying out overall policy goals, focusing especially on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. It's the first time an EGPR draft has been released in 35 years – since the last time Jerry Brown was governor, when OPR released the "Urban Strategy for California". The new document focuses on the prospect of California with a population of 50 million as well as the stresses of climate change. But the draft shows how difficult it is to set hard metrics in the world of land use and transportation compared to the world of energy conservation. The EGPR also sets an ambitious goal for greenhouse gas emissions reduction: 80% by 2050, the same figure that was included in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2005 Executive Order. There is no state statute containing that goal – the only statutory goal is a reduction to 1990 levels by 2020, contained in AB 32 – although litigation against the sustainable communities strategy in San Diego has successfully used the Executive Order's target as a de-facto state goal. The EGPR contains specific sub-goals for energy conservation, but only general descriptions of desirable goals and metrics regarding land use. The proposed EGPR is organized around six high-level goals: A strong economy Thriving urban areas  Prosperous rural regions  A clean environment  Clean and efficient energy system  Efficient and sound infrastructure  This is fine rhetoric – and not surprising – but the EGPR also seeks to set up a series of metrics that would measure the state's progress toward the goal. The metrics call into five categories: 1. Decarbonize the State's Energy and Transportation Systems  2. Preserve and Steward the State's Lands and Natural Resources  3. Build Sustainable Regions that Support Healthy, Livable Communities  4. Build Climate Resilience into All Policies  5. Improve Coordination Between Agencies and Improve Data Availability Each of these five areas of measurement contain a set of more specific targets. For example, the "decarbonize" goal calls for a 33% renewable energy generation by 2020 (already a state law) and 1.5 zero-emission vehicles by 2025. Targets #2 and #3 above – natural land and sustainable communities – have a direct impact on the planning and development world in California. But the metrics in these areas contained in the EGPR are not as quantitative as those for the energy sector.  In the case of natural and agricultural lands, the proposed metrics are: 1. Land conversion  2. Land protection status  3. Water consumption  4. Use of recycled and reclaimed water  5. Bioenergy development and use  Though the draft EGPR includes some information about the state's measurement of conversation of agricultural and natural land for development, it does not include or propose specific metrics. Similarly, Target #3 -- Build Sustainable Regions that Support Healthy and Livable Communities – includes some broad discussion of possible metrics but not a whole lot of specifics in the way of metrics. This target contains four specific goals, including environmentally sensitive infrastructure investment; a transportation investment strategy that focuses on walking, biking, and safe routes to school; and better education and workforce training. Perhaps the most interesting specific goal under Target 3 is "Build a redevelopment program that allocates funds in alignment with environmental goals as evidenced through some of the following activities". At first glance, one might think that this is pretty earth-shattering: The Brown Administration is endorsing a new "redevelopment program". But because it's a high-level document, it's short on specifics. As possible strategies it lays out the following  1. Alignment of local General Plan with regional sustainable communities strategy (where ?applicable). 2. Coordination with school districts on long-term planning issues.  3. Natural resource protection plans that reflect long-term environmental goals.  4. Adoption of climate change or sustainability plans that address emission reduction as well as steps to build climate resilience.  5. Develop plans to help communities manage planned retreat from rising sea levels. And it contains no specific proposals for metrics that would suggest how to measure progress toward these goals or targets.  The EGPR was required as a result of a law carried by then-Assemblyman Pete Wilson in the early 1970s. Since Brown's 1978 "Urban Strategy," no governor has released an EGPR, though both the administrations of Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger worked on drafts that floated around Sacramento.  The 1978 Urban Strategy  was similarly lofty to the current draft in its goals and aspirations, but – unlike the current draft – it did contain a detailed "action plan" of specific steps the state should take. Among the proposed actions: A CEQA exemption for housing in infill locations.

A couple of weeks ago, the Cupertino City Council approved the long-awaited, 3.2-million-square-foot Apple Campus 2. Approval means that the building, notable for its purely circular footprint, is to arise on an open field north of Interstate 280, with completion expected in about two years. Designed by architectural luminary Sir Norman Foster, the main office building is notable for a purely circular footprint. Both Apple and the architect suggest that the horizontally oriented, four-story building will be gentler on Gaia than a tall building. The campus, which is roughly four times larger than Disneyland, will include additional buildings for a gymnasium and a 1,000-seat auditorium; the latter is the only public venue on the 275-acre site. Even if the landscape scheme does not coordinate with the building designs in any obvious way, the site plan is positively fuzzy with greenery, so that is another plus. On one level, the circular building – which was personally unveiled by its principal proponent, the late Apple Chairman and Co-founder, Steve Jobs, about 18 months ago – is a continuation of the elegant, minimalist design esthetic that has made Apple a consistent standout in industrial design. It's hard not see the building as a kind of overscaled funerary monument to Jobs. Immense, solemn and symbolic with a capital "S," the new Apples headquarters is reminiscent of the "The Cenotaph of Newton," a monumental scheme by the French architect Etienne Boullee (1728-1799). Never built and probably impossible to construct, the Centotaph consists of an immense empty globe, topped by a dome larger than that of the ancient Pantheon in Rome.  So the new Apple office building is the Cenotaph of Steve, with some of the arrogance and visionary power of the Apple co-founder finding expression in this impressive, if ultimately irrational design. Architects love circular floor plans, in part because of the "infinite" or endless nature of the circle. The Romans built circular "tempietti" as well as the super-sized Pantheon. Much later, in the Italian Renaissance, architects became obsessed with the idea of designing circular churches, even though the circular floor plans did not accommodate themselves easily to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and were rarely built. Even more recently, circles beguiled that great genius -- and even greater crank -- Frank Lloyd Wright, who relied on circles in several of his latest, most eccentric buildings, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. One major difference between the circles in Renaissance design and the Apple campus is the Renaissance conceived circular spaces that were active, important places. (Many of the schemes place the church alter at the center of the circular plans.) One possible advantage of the circular plan is a continuous interface with the outdoors. Yet there is something empty about the garden scheme, at least as it stands: Rather than being a destination in itself, the center of the doughnut hole is negative space; it is an awkward condition to be mitigated. While Apple office workers will likely take advantage of the building's design to frequently spend plentiful time outdoors (and this is a big win), few will stray to the center of the doughnut hole. There's no reason to go there. It's an empty precinct filled with trees, or a type of "greenwash." Curved spaces may not be better than straight corridors for most people.  If long straight corridors are tiresome to walk, are curving corridors less frustrating? Curved hallways lack a visual endpoint, which is part of the way that we orient ourselves in space. Plus, most of us prefer to walk in a straight line, which is, after all, the shortest path between two points. Perhaps the doughnut is so large in scale that entire departments can all work together, all within the same view shed, without the desks of coworkers curving off into the unseen distance. If the building is meant to encourage communication among people working in different disciplines inside the same building, however, the circular design seems to works against that goal.  Some renderings of the office building interior depict an internal monorail system to deliver workers from one point to another within the circular periphery, which speaks to the difficulty of getting from A to B in this very large building. By the by, we noticed that the approval of the new Apple HQ was somewhat overshadowed by the Congressional vote the same day to re-open the federal government. Apparently, there was a train wreck with a really bad website that was trying to redistribute wealth to minorities by providing health care to sick people, or something like that. I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, some of our readers would like to know more about the new Apple headquarters, so we are providing the following Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Question: In what way is the U.S. Congressional delegation similar to the new Apple headquarters? Answer: They are both big zeroes. Q:  In what way do Congress and the Apple HQ differ? A: Congress is a waste of time, while the Apple HQ is a waste of both time and space. Q: What is the role of landscape in the form of this immense building? A: Uh… none. Why do you ask? Is that important? Q: How can such an immense building fit harmoniously with the rest of the surrounding city? A: What city? Do you see a city? (peals of laughter, followed by a sharp elbow to the ribs.) Q:  What does this immense monolith say to the people who work in it? A:  "You miserable little ants! Watch out I don't step on you!" Q: What does this circular oddity say about the late Steve Jobs? A: Overcompensation for his inability to throw a Frisbee? Q: How shall this building be known in the popular imagination? A: Maybe as Steve Jobs' Circle Works?