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The big camp on Coyote Creek north of Story Road in San Jose is familiar to Sandy Perry and Pastor Scott Wagers, leaders of an activist ministry known as CHAM. But during the past couple of years they have been amazed to see people pour into the place from elsewhere in the city -- some of them evicted from an embarrassingly visible camp near the airport. What was a mere few tents now fills a broad open space on the creekside below Story Road and continues along the west bank of the creek. Tents are pitched every few yards, many in tiny courtyards fenced with sheets, tarps and pallets.

On December 21, the Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, deployed a suite of communications satellites, and, in impressive fashion, came back down to Earth. Using its engines to dull the force of gravity, it survived re-entry and hit its football-field sized landing pad like a Tesla backing into a garage. The Falcon 9's return from the heavens was an early Christmas miracle, courtesy of Elon Musk, one of the world's few celebrity engineers. It is a product of SpaceX, Musk's pioneering private space-travel company based in Hawthorne. He can now add space to the list of fields - from electric cars, to battery power, to credit card payments - that his ventures have conquered. (A similar launch Jan. 17 didn't go quite so well.) Next, Musk hopes to revolutionize long-distance transit. That one may make rocket science look like child's play. For the uninitiated: Hyperloop is - depending on whom you ask - either the name brand or the generic concept behind the next generation of magnetic levitation technology. It's envisioned as either a train or as a set of individual pods that, unlike conventional maglev (which never really caught on, except on a 21-mile line in Shanghai), would run through depressurized tubes. Yes, tubes. As in under the ground. The technology makes intuitive sense. It uses the estimable power of magnetic propulsion while avoiding the mortal enemy of all moving things: air resistance. With potential speeds north of 600 miles per hour, the "hyper" is obvious; whether "loop" refers to the circular tube or to the idea that these things will be encircling us sooner than you can say " California High Speed Rail " is but one of its delightful mysteries.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday that he has selected Vince Bertoni as the city's new planning director, replacing Michael Lo Grande. Bertoni is currently planning director of Pasadena and a former deputy director in Los Angeles. Bertoni must be confirmed by the L.A. City Council.

Ever since Gov. Jerry Brown killed redevelopment in 2011, the conventional wisdom has been that eventually he would give it a second life - but only after he was sure the old system was completely dead, in a way that protects the state general fund, and probably after he himself won re-election to a final term.

The California Department of Food & Agriculture erred in preparing an environmental impact report for a program intended to eradicate with an invasive pest without examining the long-term consequences of an alternative program to control the pest rather than eradicate it, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a spiel by one of the founders of a new startup called Feastly , which is trying to pair up chefs with diners. Chefs wake up in the morning, go into their kitchen, prepare whatever they want, put out a call on the Internet - and if it's something you want to eat, you go to their house and dine. Feastly, in other words, turns every dining room into a restaurant.

Last week's unanimous, finely worded ruling by the California Supreme Court has spared builders their worst-case scenario in the long-awaited "CEQA in Reverse" case. It does not interpret the California Environmental Quality Act to require an environmental impact report whenever a project might attract more people within range of an existing hazard such as air pollution or earthquake risk.

Just before Labor Day, Rick Caruso, the savvy real estate developer from Los Angeles, used the "Tuolomne Tactic" to end-run the California Environmental Quality Act in order to get a shopping center approved in Carlsbad .

Punching a hole in the faith local governments and developers in California have placed in habitat conservation plans, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that federal wildlife agencies retain the discretion to designate additional land as critical habitat even after an HCP has been approved.

George Skelton, the venerable Los Angeles Times political columnist, recently came out in favor  of Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to eliminate redevelopment. Skelton's Exhibit #1 is the Dive Bar, a hangout on derelict K Street in downtown Sacramento that is now one of the city's hottest night spots -- complete with a mermaid tank -- thanks partly to the redevelopment subsidies provided to the project's developer.

So, redevelopment is back, sort of. How much of a difference it will make remains to be seen.

For the moment, equilibrium has been more or less restored in rivalry between Northern California and Southern California � at least as far as urban planning goes.