We've all seen in recent weeks the cruelty of hurricanes uprooting houses as easily as trees, tossing cars into fields and reducing farms to rubbish heaps. Tropical storms go where they want, and anything less than monolithic masonry is a goner. Even with the damage they bring, however, hurricanes are kinder than freeways. Freeways rip through existing cities like steel cables snapping at high tension, leaving impassable barriers and divided neighborhoods. And unlike the damage caused by hurricanes, the dead space of freeways cannot be repaired. The devastation is permanent; it is part of the landscape. Only two exceptions are available to alter the impact of freeways: In the case of elevated roadways, we can take them down, as San Francisco did with the Embarcadero Freeway along the waterfront. And in the case of corridors located in trenches, we can build above them. The latter strategy is the gambit of Park 101, a proposal to build a half-mile-long green swath above the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. The proposal, designed by 40 students interns under the supervision of EDAW, the national landscape architecture and planning firm, is to "cap off" the roadway and cover it with a roof of grass. On first impression, the Park 101 design is naïve, over-reaching, romantic, hopelessly optimistic. The scheme looks as if the angels who originally let Ireland fall from heaven one day had gotten a little tipsy and spilled some surplus buckets of celestial turf upon the concrete and asphalt of downtown L.A., saying, in their best brogue, "because the dear souls of the diocese seem to need it so." After we get over the novelty of the design, we realize something else: Romantic and naïve or not, Park 101 is a great idea. The proposal remakes the ugly and unwalkable mess known as the Los Angeles Civic Center into a garden of delight. The new above-lanes walkway would create pedestrian links among a group of heretofore mutually isolated places – among them, the Los Angeles County buildings, the Los Angeles Cathedral and historic Olvera Street. The walkway also sends out its green tendrils to other open spaces, most notably the 18-acre Grand Avenue Park, which is currently in design development a few blocks south of the freeway trench. The scheme reminds me, albeit loosely, of Frederick Law Olmstead's "Emerald Necklace," a linear system of loosely connected parks in Boston, not entirely unlike a linear park built atop a freeway, connecting a series of other downtown parks and open spaces. The computer renderings of Park 101 remind me of those black-and-white optical tricks, in which the black lines and the white spaces around them trade places as foreground and background, teasingly asking us to choose which image is "real." Similarly, in Park 101 negative spaces of downtown, such as the dead air above the freeway, become positive green space, changing our mental image of downtown L.A. We can see spaces and spatial relationships previously unnoticed (at least by me), especially the way buildings located on either side of the Hollywood Freeway appear closer to one another when the chasm between them is filled in. As in the environmental art works of Christo and others, Park 101 takes a familiar landscape and makes it into something unfamiliar, and infinitely more attractive. The least appealing and least workable part of downtown could plausibly become its social center. This is not to say that some parts of Park 101 are not jejune or even downright silly. The intern designers envision an amphitheater, which is a favorite device of landscape architects who love the look of terraced semicircles merging with earthworks, even though small amphitheaters are usually met with indifference by park users. More questionable is an urban forest to be planted atop the cap, although Mike Williams, one of the EDAW project managers, told me that five-foot deep berms may accommodate some tree roots. More questionable still is a parking structure to be located beneath the enclosure, at the freeway level. This sounds dark and hard to secure. And about the proposal for a place-marker tower with a pencil-like profile, foreseen as the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It deserves to be crumpled up in design student's waste basket, as surely it will be. Engineering the enormous bridge seems the greatest challenge. Williams tells me there are precedents, although none as large as a half-mile long freeway bridge within the mile-long park. A five-acre, above-the-highway park exists in Seattle, and Williams said that EDAW's structural consultant, the Paris office of DMJM, has experience in designing analogous structures. Beyond the politics of traffic and parking in Los Angeles, which are considerable, is the matter of cost, which I don't pretend to know. A similar proposal a few years back to cover a portion of La Cienega Boulevard in south Los Angeles had an estimated costs of several hundred million dollars. Park 101 would almost surely cost more. (EDAW did a feasibility study for another over-the-bridge in Hollywood that might provide a basis for estimating engineering costs.) Charming or not, it would take the power of a gale-force wind to turn this scheme into something real beneath our feet. Transportation engineers must reroute much of downtown, where daytime traffic varies between slow and no-go. (Could an increase in foot traffic in the Civic Center reduce the need for cars?) The scheme would also require a long battle with entrenched interests (sorry, "stakeholders") although it is conceivable that the greenway would ultimately boost property values, justifying the public investment. In any event, we should begin troubleshooting this proposal immediately. Cities are impossible without freeways, and they are miserable places without walkable open space. Fanciful or not, Park 101 is worth building.

For more details on developments since the Fall of 2008, check out CP&DR's SB 375 Resources Page . SB 375, the anti-sprawl bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last night, is both more and less powerful than it's advertised to be, and whether it leads to sweeping change depends on how aggressively California's regional planning agencies implement it. It's more powerful than advertised because it contains potentially revolutionary changes in California's arcane processes of regional planning for transportation and housing – largely by mandating the creation of "sustainable" regional growth plans. And those changes could become more important on Friday, when the California Air Resources Board is expected to double the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that local governments must meet through land-use planning. It also has the potential to significantly rearrange the Regional Housing Needs Assessment process, and provides significant breaks under the California Environmental Quality Act for certain types of transit-oriented projects. But it's less than revolutionary on the land-use front, largely because it's incentive-based. Despite the headlines, the law doesn't "tie state transportation funding to land use;" it merely charges regional planning agencies, which are run by local elected officials, with making sure their own funding decisions are consistent with the new regional plans. Local governments don't have to comply with the plans . And no on-the-ground change is likely to be seen for at least three years – until the regional planning agencies actually adopt the "sustainable communities" growth scenarios called for in the law. The bottom line is that the law won't be sweeping unless the state and the regional planning agencies take it seriously. After all, California has adopted potentially sweeping land-use reform before – for example, AB 857 , which contains clear and broad-ranging anti-sprawl language – but that reform has simply not been implemented. And there is clearly enough wiggle room for the regional planning agencies not to take the law seriously if they choose. Schwarzenegger said Tuesday , "This legislation constitutes the most sweeping revision of land-use policies since Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act." Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said the bill "will be used as the national framework for fighting sprawl and transforming inevitable growth to smart growth. This is a historic day for California."  Schwarzenegger signed the bill only hours before the deadline on Tuesday – and with more suspense than anybody expected . At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last Friday, the governor was equivocal about whether he would sign the bill. Unconfirmed reports suggest that California's transportation lobby attempted behind the scenes to persuade the administration to veto the bill at the last minute – but those efforts failed. In the end, Schwarzenegger simply had to sign the bill, since it implements his much vaunted AB 32 and was endorsed by local governments, homebuilders, and environmentalists. The bill contains five important aspects that California planners should understand: 1. Creation of regional targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction tied to land use. 2. A requirement that regional planning agencies create a plan to meet those targets, even if that plan is in conflict with local plans. 3. A requirement that regional transportation funding decisions be consistent with this new plan. 4. Tethering together regional transportation planning and housing efforts for the first time. 5. New CEQA exemptions and streamlining for projects that conform to the new regional plans, even if they conflict with local plans. 1. Regional Targets Under the law, the California Air Resources Board has two years – until September 30, 2010 – to give each of California's metropolitan planning organizations a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction target for cars and light trucks – but only through changes in the development pattern. As many commentators have observed , reducing emissions from cars and light trucks is a "three-legged stool." One leg involves greater fuel efficiency from new vehicles – a requirement called for under former Assemblymember Fran Pavley's AB 1493, which is currently in dispute between the state and federal governments. The second leg involves reducing the carbon content of fuels – a requirement called for under Schwarzenegger's low-carbon emissions standards. The third leg of the stool is changes in the growth pattern that reduce overall driving. The regional targets will cover only this third leg of the stool. Under the CARB's "Scoping Plan," required under AB 32, about 20% of overall emissions reduction must come from cars and light trucks. But 1.2% must come from local governments – and that figure is likely to double with the release of a revised Scoping Plan. The process by which CARB sets the targets is technical, but the agency will be required to set up a "Regional Targets Advisory Committee" that includes all stakeholders, including local governments, builders, and planners. MPOs can propose their own target. The target will be revised every 8 years to conform to the new, unified housing and transportation planning schedule set up by the bill. 2. The Sustainable Communities Plan Requirement Once the MPOs have received the regional targets in late 2010, they will be required to create a "Sustainable Communities Strategy" that lays out how the emissions reduction will be met. Technically, this strategy becomes part of the Regional Transportation Plan – an important point, because it tethers the sustainable strategy to federal transportation planning law. The Sustainable Communities Strategy was the subject of major debate in the Legislature – and as these strategies are shaped by the MPOs (whether in 2011 or before)  they are likely to serve as a lightning rod for discussion about the future growth patterns in every region. But the way SB 375 came out of the Legislature, the Sustainable Communities Strategy isn't quite as bulletproof as you might think. It does incorporate the RHNA requirement to provide housing to accommodate all income groups – for the simple reason that, if housing targets weren't incorporated, the emissions reduction target could be met simply by cutting growth. But provisions requiring incorporation of resource and open space land considerations were watered down. And because it's part of the RTP, the Sustainable Communities Strategy is subject to certain provisions of federal transportation law that could undercut the anti-sprawl efforts – especially a provision stating that the RTP must be based on "current planning assumptions" in the region that take general plans into account. "If a certain type of development pattern is unlikely to emerge from local decision-making," League of California Cities lobbyist Bill Higgins noted recently, "it will be difficult for the regional agency to say that it reflects current planning assumptions." In addition, Higgins and other local government lobbyists succeeded in inserting language saying that the Sustainable Communities Strategy is not a land-use plan and SB 375 does not confer land-use authority on the MPOs. As Higgins said last week at the CCAPA conference in Hollywood, this means that local governments' own General Plans don't have to conform to this Sustainable Communities Strategy. As is typically the case in planning, the Sustainable Communities Strategy can contain only "feasible" measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If the end result doesn't hit the CARB target, the MPO must develop a second plan – the "Alternative Planning Strategy," which is technically separate from the RTP but nevertheless must lay out an alternative plan to meet the target. The alternative strategy becomes important in the CEQA exemptions below. 3. Transportation Funding Consistency Here is where the rubber meets the road – sort of. From the beginning, SB 375 has been advertised as the law where, at last, state transportation funding decisions are tied to land use. This is technically true – but only technically. Under 375, there are no state bureaucrats in Sacramento doling out transportation money to cities and counties based on whether the local anti-sprawl efforts are sufficient. Instead, the bill uses the existing system – which gives most of the power to make transportation funding decisions to the regional MPOs. So the only thing SB 375 says is that the Regional Transportation Plan has to be internally consistent – meaning the action items and financing decisions called for in the RTP must be consistent with the Sustainable Communities Strategy. This means SB 375 is subject to the same major structural issue as the RTP itself: Ultimately, the decisions at the regional level are made by MPO board members, who are local elected officials. And, as we all know, it's unlikely that elected officials sitting as regional planning board members will pull the trigger on each other. In other words, SB 375 talks tough about tying state and federal transportation dollars to land use decisions, but the bill does not alter the current regional planning structure, which delegates decision-making authority to local officials sitting as MPO board members. 4. Connection to Regional Housing Needs Assessment SB 375 also changes the state Housing Element law in important ways – and, for the first time, links regional planning efforts for transportation and housing. Under the bill, all transportation and housing planning processes are put on the same eight-year schedule – that is, the plans must be updated once every eight years. (There's a penalty for jurisdictions that don't meet the Housing Element schedule: They must prepare Housing Elements every four years instead.) The law also strengthens the language on required rezonings: If a local jurisdiction must rezone property as a result of the Housing Element, it must do so within three years and it must include minimum density and development standards for the site. Most important, however, is the fact that the RHNA allocation numbers must conform to the Sustainable Communities Strategy. This has important consequences for the RHNA process and Housing Element implementation. The regional planning agencies are required to provide local governments with a housing allocation representing their "fair share" of regional growth. But the Sustainable Communities Strategy is likely to concentrate future development around transit stops. The end result of the RHNA process in the future is likely to look something like what the Association of Bay Area Governments has recently done in this arena – cutting a deal among the local governments to allow more housing in transit-rich areas, and rearranging the RHNA numbers to accommodate that goal. 5. CEQA Exemptions and Streamlining In terms of planning practice, the most powerful provisions of SB 375 have to do with CEQA Exemptions and Streamlining. Under the new law, certain types of development projects are exempt from CEQA – or qualify for streamlined review – if they conform to the Sustainable Communities Strategy. And these projects qualify for streamlined review even if they conflict with local plans. Of course, such projects can't qualify for an exemption or streamlined review until a Sustainable Communities Strategy is adopted, which is likely about three years from now. But the list of caveats is long, meaning the eventual impact of the CEQA provisions may not be as significant as you might think. Two types of projects qualify for CEQA breaks under SB 375 – residential or mixed-use projects, and "transit priority projects". Under the law, a residential or mixed-use project that conforms to the Sustainable Community Strategy qualifies for CEQA streamlining. Specifically, the CEQA review does not have to cover growth-inducing impacts; and it does not have to cover either project-specific or cumulative impacts dealing with climate change. More significant is the "transit priority projects." These projects can qualify for either a full CEQA exemption or a streamlined environmental assessment if they meet certain criteria. "Transit priority projects" are projects that meet the following criteria: 1. Contain at least 50% residential use 2. Have a minimum net density of 20 units per acre 3. Have a floor-area ratio for the commercial portion of the project at 0.75 4. Be located within ½ mile of either a rail stop, a ferry terminal, or a bus line with 15-minute headways. Under the law, projects can qualify for a full CEQA exemption if: • They are no bigger than 8 acres or 200 units • They can be served by existing utilities • They will not have a significant effect on historic resources • Their buildings exceed energy efficiency standards • They provide ANY of the following:      - 5 acres of open space      - 20% moderate income housing      - 10% low income housing      - 5% very low income housing. Under the law, "transit priority projects" that don't meet these criteria still qualify for a truncated environmental assessment similar to the truncated environmental assessment permitted for residential and mixed-use projects specified above. – Bill Fulton

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acted on more than 200 bills over the weekend and went to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to commemorate the second anniversary of signing AB 32 – but those waiting for him to sign SB 375 are kind of like all those refugees stuck in Casablanca: They wait, and wait, and wait … At the Commonwealth Club on Friday , Schwarzenegger said: "We are not waiting for the federal government. We are continuing our push forward," Schwarzenegger said. "We are on the right track, not just for California, but for the country." Referring to SB 375 , however, Schwarzenegger said: "It will be a huge bill. The important thing is, again, that it is written the right way. I'm going to look at that bill very carefully, because in principle, I love that idea." Schwarzenegger has until Tuesday to act on the bill. The Sacramento Bee reported on Sunday that the bill's author, Darrell Steinberg, again promised whatever cleanup legislation is necessary in a Friday meeting with the Administration. He told the Bee that it would be difficult to get the SB 375 coalition together again next year. SB 375 would require California's regional planning agencies to create a future growth scenario that will cut greenhouse gas emissions and then provide a series of incentives, including transportation funding and exemptions under the California Environmental Quality Act, for projects that conform to those plans. It was a major topic of conversation at the California planning conference last week, with local government and planning lobbyists providing many details. Meanwhile, on Saturday Schwarzenegger signed well over 100 bills , including 10 dealing with wildfires. Tops among them was SB 1595 by Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, which cracks down on landowners in high fire hazard areas and requires them to create more "defensible space". But Schwarzenegger also vetoed almost as many bills, saying over and over again in veto messages: I am only signing bills that are the highest priority for California." -- Bill Fulton

In a major reversal, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that wireless telecommunications providers can no longer challenge local zoning regulations on the basis that the zoning has the potential to prohibit telecommunications services. Instead, providers will have to show that local regulation does in fact prohibit telecommunications services. The result of the decision is that it will be very difficult for companies to challenge entire zoning ordinances that regulate the installation of wireless telecommunications facilities such as cell phone antennas. Instead, the companies will have to contest how a local agency applies its ordinance in a specific instance. "There are going to be a lot fewer challenges to local government discretion over these facilities – how they look and where they go," said Thomas Bunton, the senior deputy San Diego County counsel who won the Ninth Circuit decision. In March 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court decision striking down San Diego County's 2003 ordinance regulating wireless facility location and appearance. Ruling for Sprint Telephony PCS, the court said the ordinance violated the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 because the ordinance's discretionary review provisions could prohibit wireless communications services (see CP&DR Legal Digest , May 2007 ). The decision was based largely on City of Auburn v. Qwest Corp. , 260 F3d 1160 (9th Circuit 2001), one of the first circuit court decisions in the country regarding the Telecommunication Act's pre-emption of local zoning. In Auburn , the court adopted a broad interpretation of the pre-emption and struck down an Auburn, Washington, ordinance requiring telecommunications companies to pay for use of the public right-of-way. Earlier this year, however, the majority of Ninth Circuit judges voted to reconsider the March 2007 ruling in the San Diego County case. An 11-judge en banc panel heard oral arguments in June and in September issued a unanimous opinion that said the Auburn decision was wrong. At issue were two different sections of the Telecommunications Act – 47 U.S.C. § 253(a) and 47 U.S.C § 332(c)(7). The former section prohibits state or local regulation that "may prohibit or have the effective or prohibiting" telecommunications services. The latter section specifically preserves local zoning authority so long as local regulation does not "prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting" the provision of wireless services. Although the two sections contained some identical language, the Ninth Circuit had been interpreting them differently. The Auburn line of cases read the federal pre-emption in § 253(a) broadly. However, in MetroPCS, Inc. v. City of San Francisco , 400 F3d 715, a Ninth Circuit panel provided a narrower reading of the federal pre-emption based on § 332(c)(7). In MetroPCS, the court ruled that local regulation runs afoul of the Telecommunications Act only if the regulation bans wireless service or actually imposes restrictions that amount to a wireless service ban. Last year, the Eighth Circuit dismissed the Auburn approach and concluded in Level 3 Commc'ns, LLC v. City of St. Louis , 477 F3d 528, that a telecommunications company "suing a municipality under § 253(a) must show actual or effective prohibition, rather than the mere possibility of prohibition." The en banc panel reconsidering the San Diego case said it found the Eighth Circuit's critique of Auburn "persuasive." "When Congress uses the same text in the same statute, we presume that it intended the same meaning," Judge Susan Graber wrote for the Ninth Circuit. "Our holding today therefore harmonizes our interpretations of the identical relevant text in §§ 253(a) and 332(c)(7)(B)(i)(II). Under both, a plaintiff must establish an outright prohibition or an effective prohibition on the provision of telecommunications services; a plaintiff's showing that a locality could potentially prohibit the provision of telecommunications services is insufficient." After throwing out the Ninth Circuit's case law, the en banc panel considered the San Diego County ordinance anew. Adopted in 2003, the ordinance established a four-tier system for granting conditional use permits for wireless facilities, with the level of review varying based on the location, visibility and height of proposed structures. The ordinance requires facilities to be compatible with adjacent uses, camouflaged when appropriate and consistent with community character. The court had no trouble finding the ordinance valid under the Telecommunications Act. "Sprint cannot meet its high burden of proving that ‘no set of circumstances exists under which the ordinance would be valid' simply because the zoning board exercises some discretion," Graber wrote. " equiring a certain amount of camouflage, modest setbacks, and maintenance of facility are reasonable and responsible conditions for the construction of wireless facilities, not an effective prohibition." Jonathan Kramer, a Los Angeles-based consultant to local government on wireless regulation, said the en banc decision "completely reversed the law in the Western United States." "It is a stirring reversal in the direction of the Ninth Circuit and after many years brings some common sense back into wireless citing," Kramer said. "The Ninth Circuit stood in splendid isolation from other circuits." A number of local ordinances in California and elsewhere within the Ninth Circuit's territory have been struck down when telecommunications providers challenged entire ordinances. However, said Kramer, most challenges to a local agency's application of its ordinance in a specific instance have failed. Yet under the en banc ruling, nearly all future lawsuits will have to be "as applied" challenges because it will be very difficult for a company to contest an ordinance its entirety, Kramer and San Diego County attorney Bunton agreed. "From a local government perspective, the pendulum has swing a little bit past center," Kramer said. The Case: Sprint Telephony PCS v. County of San Diego , No. 05-56076, 08 C.D.O.S. 12025, 2008 DJDAR, 14334. Filed September 11, 2008. The Lawyers: For Sprint: Daniel Pascucci, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo, (858) 320-3000. For the county: Thomas Bunton, county counsel's office, (619) 531-4860.

One of the things prominently on display at this year's California Chapter, American Planning Association conference was the evolution of the City of Los Angeles from a gargantuan suburb into a true "big city." New mixed-use and adaptive reuse projects are located all around the conference site in Hollywood, often within easy walking distance of a Red Line subway station. Conference attendees who ventured onto the Red Line encountered a bustling public transit system no matter the time of day. A breakout session on Tuesday explained the city's adaptive reuse ordinance and related programs.  But what the session highlighted was the re-birth of downtown Los Angeles as a desirable place to live for more than 10,000 people. Similarly, another breakout session on transit-oriented development focused on new development projects adjacent to transit stations along the Red Line and the Gold Line. But what that session highlighted was the re-birth of Los Angeles as a high-density big city where tens of thousands of people live in a setting more like New York or San Francisco than Los Angeles. The downtown adaptive reuse session, naturally, featured Tom Gilmore, the developer rightly credited with getting things turned around. A New York transplant, Gilmore in 1999 started acquiring properties east of Pershing Square. It was "an absolutely vacant" part of downtown at the time. Scores of buildings housed only pigeons, squatters and drug dealers. Tent encampments for homeless people lined the streets. Even most social service agencies had abandoned the neighborhood. But what Gilmore saw was first-rate Beaux Arts architecture, great location � and a world of potential. Gilmore deemed the area the "Old Bank District," a name he made up out of thin air. The name stuck. The city started to cooperate, people started to believe, and now people who could live anywhere choose to reside in these old mid-rise office, retail and industrial buildings that Gilmore and others have converted to residential uses. All of the presenters � Gilmore, downtown City Councilwoman Jan Perry, former city building official Hamid Behdad (who also worked in three mayoral administrations) and architect Wade Killefer � emphasized the need for vision and political willpower, because the usual processes and political inclinations are lined up against such ambitious projects. It's almost always cheaper and easier to ignore slums or to demolish decrepit buildings, and the situation with Gilmore's Old Bank District was no different. (Behdad: "If Jesus Christ came to the City of Los Angeles to get a permit to save the world, he would just say, 'Ah, the hell with it.'") You can see for yourself that downtown is on the rebound. Formerly frightful places feel almost inviting. Cranes are everywhere. Yet Gilmore warned that downtown needs another 10 years of progress before it is sustainable economically and socially. Meanwhile, Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) big shot Don Spivak and Housing Department head Mercedes Marquez talked about some of the biggest and most impressive transit-oriented development projects anywhere on the West Coast � especially in North Hollywood along the Red Line and at Gold Line stations between downtown L.A. and South Pasadena. Especially impressive are the Gold Line developments � many of them affordable � at virtually every station in the City of Los Angeles. These include more than 500 units at the Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park station on Avenue 26 and more than 100 units at the Highland Park station on Avenue 57. The Lincoln/Cypress station is three minutes from Union Station, while the Highland Park station is seven minutes from Union Station. The city is also developing more than 400 units at Taylor Yards, which � though a mile from the Gold Line � is located adjacent to the Metrolink line. No Metrolink station is currently open, however. Marquez said the Housing Department has been working with CRA, the Department of Transportation, and other city agencies to acquire land for affordable housing "ahead of the curve," before the presence of transit stations Marquez said the Lincoln/Cypress project is "the fastest selling condo complex in all of Southern California because of the money we put in for soft seconds." The Housing Department controls the largest housing trust fund in the country. Most of the units have deed covenants guaranteeing affordability. Up to now, most TOD along the Gold Line has occurred in the more affluent communities of South Pasadena and Pasadena. Gold Line ridership has generally been below expectations because the light-rail line is slow and travels through relatively low-density neighborhoods. However, Gold Line ridership has increased 26% during the last year, to 24,000 riders per day. This compares to a 14% increase on all rail lines in L.A. and only a 5% increase on the Orange Line bus rapid transit in the San Fernando Valley. Overall, more than 300,000 people a day now ride rail and BRT lines in Los Angeles. � Paul Shigley and Bill Fulton

In a decision bolstering farmland preservation, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled that Humboldt County can enforce updated land use regulations against a landowner whose original Williamson Act contract predates the regulations. The court determined that unless they are cancelled, Williamson Act contracts renew every year and therefore are subject to newly adopted regulations for agricultural preserves. Thus, Humboldt County regulations approved in 1978 applied to the land in question, even though the original Williamson Act contract was signed in 1977. The property owner argued that the 1978 regulations — which increased the minimum parcel size for some agricultural preserve lands from 160 acres to 600 acres — could not be enforced because the new parcel size restriction would be a unilateral change to the 1977 contract. The court rejected that argument. " s a legal matter, by renewing a Williamson Act contract on each anniversary date, the parties entered into a new contract each year," Justice Mark Simons wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. The California Farm Bureau Federation praised the ruling, which it said "strengthened and clarified" the Williamson Act. A ruling in the other direction would have converted the Williamson Act into a shield with which property owners could block the application of local plans and regulations, according to the federation. The litigation achieved prominence in Humboldt County because of longstanding controversy over rural land use regulations and because the two sides combined had reportedly spent about $4 million in legal fees. The litigation has received statewide attention because the ultimate outcome could impact Williamson Act implementation elsewhere. About 16 million acres in California, or about half of all privately owned land, are covered by Williamson Act contracts. Under the act, the owner of agricultural land receives a substantial property tax break in exchange for a 10-year commitment not to develop the property. Williamson Act contracts automatically renew every year unless the county or the property owner opts for non-renewal, at which point property taxes gradually increase over 10 years. In 1977, landowner Arthur Tooby signed a Williamson Act contract with Humboldt County covering 12,580 acres of his 13,700-acre ranch near Garberville. The following year, the county adopted new guidelines for land in the agricultural preserve. Among other things, the new regulations increased the minimum parcel size for Class B land from 160 acres to 600 acres to ensure agricultural viability. The Tooby Ranch lies in the Class B agricultural preserve. In 2000, local developer Robert McKee and his Buck Mountain Ranch Limited Partnership purchased 13,340 acres of the ranch from the deceased Tooby's estate. Recognizing the existence of a number of patent parcels on the ranch, McKee soon began applying for lot line adjustments so that he could sell off ranchettes. According to the court, McKee has since sold about 25 parcels to third parties. All of the parcels are at least 160 acres but smaller than 600 acres apiece. In December 2002, the county sued McKee and 47 third-party purchasers, arguing that the land divisions and sales violated the Williamson Act, the Subdivision Map Act, the Unfair Competition Act and posed a nuisance. The county sought to void the sales and halt future transfers. Three years later, Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Bruce Watson ruled the county could not apply the 1978 guidelines because doing so would violate state and federal constitutional provisions regarding contracts. He also ruled against the county on nullifying parcel conveyances. In early 2007, after the county had dropped its map act claim, Judge Watson ruled that McKee had not violated the Williamson Act or the 1977 Tooby contract. At the First District, McKee continued to maintain that the 1978 guidelines applied only to Williamson Act contracts consummated after 1978 and could not be applied retroactively to the 1977 Tooby contract. The county argued that the 1978 guidelines applied to all agricultural preserves, no matter when they were established. The court sided with the county, concluding that McKee's argument "would lead to an absurd result." "The final provision of the 1978 guidelines rescinds the 1973 guidelines, rendering them void and inoperative," Simons wrote. "If the 1978 guidelines were intended to apply only to preserves established from 1979 onward, as McKee suggests, then the passage of the 1978 guidelines would have left the county with no operative regulations for preserves established before 1979." Such a result, Simons continued, would be contrary to the county's intent and state law. After settling the question of the 1978 guidelines' enforceability, the court turned to the constitutional questions. McKee contended that permitting the county to incorporate the 1978 guidelines into the Williamson Act contract would amount to a unilateral amendment that is "unjust and inequitable." However, the court ruled that under the Williamson Act, the parties enter into a new contract every year unless one side provides notice of non-renewal. "Each year, a landowner bound by a Williamson Act contract has a choice: give timely notice of non-renewal, which preserves the current 10-year contract, or decline to give notice of non-renewal, which renews the contract for a new 10-year term. By choosing not to give notice of non-renewal, the landowner gains both the burdens and the benefits of a new 10-year contract," Simons wrote. "Because the parties to the Tooby contract entered into a new 10-year contract on February 1, 1979, all applicable laws and ordinances then in existence, including the 1978 guidelines, became part of the Tooby contract," the court ruled. "In the 22 years after the adoption of the 1978 guidelines, Arthur Tooby and McKee collectively renewed the original contract at least 22 times. The 600-acre minimum parcel size for divisions of Class B preserves imposed by the 1978 guidelines applied to the subsequent divisions of the Tooby Preserve." Not permitting counties to incorporate new regulations into Williamson Act contract renewals "would create substantial uncertainty, among both landowners and local governments, about what regulations apply to land under Williamson Act contracts," Simons wrote. "Land under contract could effectively be shielded from all subsequent efforts to regulate its use." The appellate court did not decide whether to nullify the land divisions and transfers, instead directing the trial court to fashion an appropriate remedy. Three weeks after issuing the decision, the appellate court rejected McKee's request for a re-hearing, setting up a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court. The Case: County of Humboldt v. McKee , No. A117325, 08 C.D.O.S. 10837, 2008 DJDAR 12897. Filed August 15, 2008. Modified September 10, 2008 at 2008 DJDAR 14313. The Lawyers: For the county: Kevin Brodehl, Morgan, Miller, Blair, (925) 937-3600. For McKee: David Blackwell, Allen, Matkins, Leck, Gamble, Mallory & Natsis, (925) 943-5551.

The realization is setting in among planners that climate change is going to affect planning practice – especially environmental review practice – very deeply. As a result, planners at this year's California Chapter, American Planning Association conference are anxiously seeking guidance.   At last year's CCAPA conference, planners embraced the issue of climate change this gusto. They clearly saw climate change as their issue, and the conversation was very enthusiastic, even somewhat heady at times. A year later, cold reality is setting in, and planners are full of questions. How does one actually address climate change in a general plan update? Which policies will truly be effective? How do I keep from getting sued by Jerry Brown? What the heck does my city do with the applications that keep coming across the front counter? How should an environmental review document address a project's potential greenhouse gas contributions? Can I still use a negative declaration? And what about the potential impacts of climate change on a project? This year's conference has numerous climate change sessions, and they are generally drawing upwards of 200 people apiece. But practitioners looking for hard answers are generally having to settle for suggestions and hints. The state of the art is evolving, state officials are still drafting rules and guidelines, and case law is nearly nonexistent. At one panel discussion, Terry Roberts, from the Governor's Office of Planning and Research, and Kirk Miller, general counsel of the Resources Agency, said right up front that they were not going to provide specifics. "It's in the works everybody. I don't have anything to show you today," said Roberts, eliciting both chuckles and sighs. At another panel, Sally Magnani, supervising deputy attorney general for the AG's environment section, emphasized the need to address climate change at the plan – rather than only the project – level. And she urged practitioners to be candid and forthcoming in environmental review documents. Magnani tried to downplay her office's role in climate change litigation, noting that the AG has actually filed only one suit himself – over San Bernardino County's general plan update. One reason the suit was filed, she explained, is that the county ignored a comment letter the AG filed regarding the county's dismissal of the climate change issue in the plan update and EIR. That was obviously a poor strategy. Since then, the AG has filed about 40 more comment letters. The clear implication from Magnani is that your agency better pay attention if it gets one. Anthony Eggert, science and technology advisor to the California Air Resources Board, said that the revised AB 32 scoping plan due out next week will call for more greenhouse gas emission reductions from land use and transportation than were in the preliminary scoping plan. How much he wouldn't say. If there is one thing that everybody agrees on it is this: Agencies may no longer dismiss a plan or large project's contributions to climate change as too speculative to study. "If you're not addressing climate change, you're going to get sued," said CCAPA Vice President for Legislative Affairs Pete Parkinson. – Paul Shigley

Can California and its communities fit together regional plans, local plans, state housing requirements, and new state requirements on greenhouse gas emissions reductions? Probably not, according to panelists speaking this morning at the California Chapter, American Planning Association conference in Hollywood. SB 375 – the regional planning bill designed to implement the state's greenhouse-gas emissions reduction requirements in the land use arena – does create closer ties between transportation planning and planning for affordable housing. But there's still a disconnect between regional plans and local plans – deliberately. The bill, which has passed the legislature and is currently sitting on the governor's desk, would require Metropolitan Planning Organizations to create "sustainable communities plans" that conform with greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets generated by the California Air Resources Board. The bill would then provide transportation funding incentives and truncated review -- or exemptions -- under the California Environmental Quality Act for projects that conform to the sustainable communities plan. There may also be better connections to the state's Regional Housing Needs Assessment process, which will now operate on an eight-year rotation rather than a five-year rotation, partly to match it up to the federally driven Regional Transportation Plan schedule. But local government lobbyists succeeded in including language protecting local land use authority. SB 375 specifically states that the regional planning process created under the bill does not usurp local land use authority. Translation: The regional "sustainable communities plan" and a city's housing element don't need to line up. "The regional plan could contemplate putting units in one location and the local plan could put those units in another location in the same jurisdiction," said Bill Higgins, land use lobbyist for the League of California Cities. Of course, under the terms of SB 375, if an affordable housing project conforms to the regional plan, it may qualify for a CEQA exemption – even if it conflicts with the local plan. And a project that conforms with the local plan may not qualify for a CEQA break if it does not conform to the regional sustainable communities plan.   Presumably, these provisions are supposed to encourage local governments to conform to the regional plan, even though consistency is not required. "We fought really hard to make SB 375 not just another top-down planning process from Sacramento," said Pete Parkinson, CCAPA's vice president for legislative affairs. However, Parkinson warned that local governments cannot simply ignore SB 375. The planning processes created by the bill  "place a huge responsibility on local governments to pay attention to this process," he said. -- Bill Fulton

California's planners are descending on Hollywood this week for their annual conference. Paul Shigley, Bill Fulton, and the rest of the CP&DR gang will be blogging daily from Sunday, September 21st, through Wednesday, September 24th on what's going on. Check it out at www.cp-dr.com/blog ! Begin with Bill's Sunday blog on the history of Hollywood as a real urban place -- as opposed to Hollywood the capital of tinseltown.   And if you're at the conference, be on the lookout for our special offer! Pick up a CP&DR conference postcard and use the promotional code to save 10% on a subscription or any other purchase on www.cp-dr.com !

It' s understandable that California planners will focus at their Hollywood conference this week on "planners in tinseltown" – as evidenced by everything from the conference organizers' spoof of "The Office" to the chapter's "Lights … Planning … Action!" motto for the conference.But Hollywood has a many-layered 120-year history that dates back before the invention of the movies and includes a series of real estate booms and busts that have shaped the urban district that planners will see this week. Most important, Hollywood the place is not the same as "Hollywood," the name used worldwide as shorthand for the entertainment industry. Many years ago, while still working as a journalist, I made an almost fatal faux pas while getting ready to interview a famous studio chief. Chatting with the studio flak ahead of time, I noted that the executive had spent most of his career outside of Los Angeles working on the distribution side of the movie business in places like Buffalo. I asked her whether she thought it changed his perspective that he had not spent most of his career in Hollywood. She looked at me as if I was from another planet. Of course the executive had worked his whole career in "Hollywood". To her, everybody in the movie business worked in Hollywood no matter where their geographical location, just as everybody in the financial business works on "Wall Street". How Hollywood became "Hollywood" is a long story dating back to the first big real estate speculative boom in Los Angeles in the 1880s, when this agricultural area adjacent to the foothills at Cahuenga Pass – warmed by a typical Southern California microclimate – was first subdivided by developer H.J. Whitley A townsite was laid out and, once the inevitable real estate bust had passed, banks and stores were built to serve the local lemon grovers. The name came from a place name his wife had heard near Chicago – "Holywood" – and the religious reference was not an accident. Hollywood's founders envisioned a teetotaling paradise of hard-working farmers. In 1910, Hollywood was annexed to Los Angeles in order to obtain a reliable water supply. (If you really, really care to learn more about this era in Hollywood, go to a library and read an article I wrote long ago on this topic: "Those Were Her Best Days: The Streetcar and the Development of Hollywood Before 1910," Southern California Quarterly, Fall 1984, pp. 242-252. It's not online anywhere.) The movies came to Hollywood right around 1910, when the first makeshift studios were carved out of the lemon groves as moviemakers searched for roomier shooting locations than were available in downtown L.A. In the long run, only Paramount built and maintained a major studio in Hollywood – on Melrose near Gower, where the famous "Paramount Gate" still stands after 96 years. (If you want to see a startling recreation of what Paramount must have looked like when carved out of lemon groves, rent "Chaplin" staring Robert Downey Jr.) Most of the other major studios went over Cahuenga Pass to Burbank and vicinity, or to Culver City on the Westside. Universal Studios was built atop Cahuenga pass and is now easily accessible from Hollywood via the Metro Red Line. Hollywood really became "Hollywood" in the 1920s, when Hollywood Boulevard emerged as the critical business district serving the movie industry. Starting in about 1918, the major movie palaces moved from Broadway in downtown Los Angeles to Hollywood Boulevard, leading to the famous "Hollywood premiere" at places such as Graumann's Chinese Theater (built in 1927). Restaurants along the Boulevard such as Musso & Franks (still in business after 89 years) became movie star hangouts. Hollywood also became a major office center for banks, talent agencies, and the like. The ‘20s office buildings – one of which has semi-precious gems built into the cornice – are still spectacular today. The Hollywood sign didn't hurt – even though it originally said "Hollywoodland" as a promotion for a real estate development and isn't really located in Hollywood. Since its heyday in the 1920s, Hollywood has had an up-and-down history. The radio star Fred Allen once called Hollywood "a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars". The tourists would come to Hollywood – but, of course, the movie stars were either filming at the studios or at home in places like Beverly Hills. Hollywood did enjoy a bit of a renaissance in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when both NBC and CBS broadcast national entertainment programs "live from Hollywood". Even in these days, Hollywood still had streetcars, street life, and the occasional star sighting. One of the most amusing urban legends I ever heard about those days was a woman who recounted walking down Hollywood Boulevard in the ‘50s, only to encounter an enormous crowd standing on the sidewalk. They were outside a barber shop watching Ricky Nelson get a haircut. Despite a variety of well-known promotions – including the Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Christmas Parade – Hollywood languished as seedy and rundown until the late 1980s, when redevelopment efforts began to take shape. The Walt Disney Co. made a major contribution by purchasing and renovating the decrepit El Capitan Theater in 1991, once again making Hollywood a location of movie premieres. The Red Line arrived in 1999, connecting Hollywood to downtown, the Wilshire District, and the San Fernando Valley. With considerable assistance from the L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency, the Hollywood & Highland project – of which the conference hotel is a part – was opened in 2001. Hollywood today is not what it was back in the 1920s, when all that brand-new movie money was invested in the buildings along Hollywood Boulevard. But neither is it the completely faded district I first encountered in the early ‘80s while researching that article about Hollywood's history. It has a subway, several renovated movie palaces, a couple of spectacular redevelopment projects – and, by the way, a newly renovated Hollywood Bowl just up the street as well. In that sense, it's an excellent subject for California's planners to examine this week.  -- Bill Fulton

Only three weeks after insisting that California should encourage dense development near transit lines, state lawmakers have approved a budget that yanks funding from transit and redevelopment. And that might be the nicest thing that anyone can say about the spending and revenue plan approved after last call on Monday night (Tuesday morning, actually). All the budget really does is permit the state to pay its bills a while longer. "All we've done is roll the problem over to the next Legislature," State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) conceded. Among the provisions in the budget is a shift of about $1 billion in the transit fund to the general fund, supposedly to pay for transportation programs. A second provision shifts about $350 million in redevelopment agency tax increment to schools and community colleges. (You can find out how much your local redevelopment agency will lose here .) As best I can tell, these are not loans. The state is simply re-allocating the money. The shifts appear to be one-time acts. Three weeks ago, state lawmakers approved SB 375 (Steinberg) , a complex bill that insists developing dense, mixed-use communities with good public transit will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make California a better place. Yet public transit requires public money, especially in areas that have grown up without good transit infrastructure. And dense, mixed-use development near transit nearly always involves some level of redevelopment. When SB 375 passed, more than a few people said the measure would be effective only if state spending decisions follow suit. Well, the first spending decisions have been made. Business as usual. – Paul Shigley

Metrolink is one of California's true public transit successes. But it's cobbled together from old freight lines – many of which are out of date operationally. Can we afford the upgrades necessary to make a truly 21st Century system? Can we afford not to make them? I'm a pretty frequent rider on the Metrolink Ventura County line – the line where a Metrolink train crashed head-on with a Union Pacific late Friday, killing 25 riders so far.  Every week or two, I ride all the way from the Montalvo station in Ventura (the end of the line) to Union Station for meetings in downtown L.A. I know the faces on the train and, occasionally, I know the people as well. It's gotten more crowded as gas prices have gone up, because why spent $20-30 on gas and $20 to park downtown when, for just one crisp $20 bill, you can take the train? I'm more than familiar with the sharp left turn coming out of the Chatsworth Station just before the Santa Susana Tunnel where the crash occurred, though I have to admit that I'm not always paying attention. Like most people, I'm usually working on my computer or talking on my cell phone. And that's because, like everybody else on the train –indeed, like public transit advocates everywhere -- I take a safe arrival for granted. Often while driving, I worry about how easy it would be to get into an accident. While traveling on the train, it never occurs to me that I am hurtling forward at a very fast speed in a heavy and enormous projectile, entrusting my life to the engineer. Friday's crash reminds us all of the pros and cons of the Metrolink system and the way it works. Overall, Metrolink really is one of California's most remarkable public transit successes. It was created from a standing start 16 years ago when the five county transportation commissions in Southern California got together and created a joint-powers authority to run a commuter rail system. (One of those five is the Ventura County Transportation Commission, on which I sit as the City of Ventura's representative.) Metrolink isn't cheap; it cost more than a billion dollars just to put together and many millions more in tax money per year to operate. But it's been successful. In recent months, the system has been carrying a million people a month – not as much as a freeway, but not bad. The Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange County lines often run on 20 or 30 minute headways – remarkable for a heavy-rail system. Daytime and suburb-to-suburb services is so good that I have begun to use it to get to and from business appointments in the Inland Empire. But in order to get this far this fast, Metrolink had to take one short-cut – which was to balance itself on the back of the Southern California freight system, one of the busiest in the country. Metrolink was put together because Southern California was not moving far enough or fast enough to build a comprehensive passenger rail transit system, like BART in the Bay Area. BART currently operates in four counties and is planning to penetrate a fifth. It's a heavy-rail subway system, though it runs above-ground in some places. It operates on its own right-of-way in a seamless fashion. L.A. rail transit system, on the other hand, has been stitched together with a motley combination of rights-of-way and technologies. There's a backbone subway line (the Red Line), but there are also a lot of incompatible light-rail lines. And building new lines to the outlying counties has, up to now, simply not been in the cards. So in order to provide effective commuter rail, Southern California had no choice but to use the freight lines. As L.A. Times' "Road Sage" blogger/reporter Steve Hymon pointed out on Saturday , Metrolink was put together during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s because the freight railroads were interested in unloading their right-of-way. (By the way, Hymon – who in a mid-career break from journalism picked up a master's degree in geography from USC – has been one of the most useful and insightful sources of information about the Metrolink system and the institutional reasons behind the crash.) Today, Metrolink and its member agencies owns a lot of the right-of-way, which allows the agency to gives its own trains priority over freight trains. (This means they don't often pull over and wait forever for a freight train to pass, as Amtrak trains must.) But it also means that Metrolink has huge operational challenges coordinating with freight corridors, which in the Los Angeles area are among the busiest in the nation, thanks to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This is especially true because so much of the L.a. rail system -- unlike the Northeast and elsewhere -- is single-tracked. This seems to have been a particular issue in Ventura County. Through the Valley and into Ventura County, Metrolink and Amtrak alike have been plagued with conflicts between trains and cars and trains and people. This is largely because through the Valley and into agricultural Ventura County, the rail line is not a sealed corridor. A few years ago, I was riding on an Amtrak train just short of the Moorpark station when it struck and killed a pedestrian, apparently one bent on suicide. And everyone remembers the 2005 crash in Glendale that killed 11 people, when a suicidal motorist got smashed by trains going in each direction -- one on the Ventura County line, one on the Antelope Valley line. As we were tragically reminded on Friday, the rail line through Ventura County and northward is only a single track in most places. North of Ventura, things get even worse: In many locations, engineers still must get off the train and operate switches manually, just as they did in the 1920s. Upgrading this line will be extremely expensive – hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least. It's more than just putting safety devices. A true upgrade will also require double-tracking huge chunks of Southern California and also making basic improvements in switching and signaling. (In some other parts of the country, the green-red signal is actually received in the locomotive itself, rather than alongside the tracks, making it harder for the engineer to miss it.) Los Angeles has major money for transit and may soon have more if Measure R passes in November, but also has a lot of competition even for rail dollars. And outlying counties may not be willing to put money into the system. In Santa Barbara County, the cost of upgrading the Ventura-Santa Barbara rail line to serve commuters – hundreds of millions of dollars – was one of the things that sunk Santa Barbara's transportation sales tax ren ewal in 2006, which contained major dollars to upgrade the rail line north of Ventura. Ventura County has no transportation sales tax but may go for one at the ballot box in 2010. Even so, the county does not have the tax base of the other Southern California counties, meaning the tax revenue realized will be much less. I'll continue to ride Metrolink whenever and wherever I can. But in the wake of Friday's crash, I will always recognize that there is a risk in doing so. And when I complain about schedules and headways, I will also recognize that unless and until a lot of these operational problems are solved – a very expensive proposition – there's an upper limit to what Metrolink can accomplish. – Bill Fulton