CP&DR Vol. 24 No. 6 - June 2009

CP&DR Vol. 25 No. 10 - May 2010

CP&DR Vol 24 No.8 July 2009

In this issue: - Public Health Concerns Of Infill Development Confront Planners - Automated Parking Coming To Built-Out City Near You - State Supreme Court Rejects Housing Project's Water Analysis ... much more.

CP&DR Vol 24 No.16 - November 2009

CP&DR Vol 25 No. 4 - February 2010

CP&DR Vol 24 No.14 - October 2009

If building houses were as easy as drafting laws, California would have left its housing crisis in the dust long ago. With rents continuing to inch upward, legislators in Sacramento have introduced a myriad of bills intended to streamline, fund, and otherwise promote the production of both market rate and subsidized housing statewide. Even bills whose titles ostensibly speak to issues like zoning, redevelopment dissolution, and infrastructure development are concerned wholly or in part with housing.

The fifteen or so land-use measures on city and county ballots June 6 represent a cross-section of issues that California localities are facing. They include referenda on perennial questions like proposed developments (Pleasanton Measure K),  affordable housing (San Francisco Proposition C) funding for parks and infrastructure (San Francisco Proposition B). and, yet again, State of Jefferson secession (Lassen County).

Just when cities thought it was safe to sign on to notices of completion and put their long redevelopment nightmares behind them, a newly proposed bill yet again has put cities at odds with the state.

A typically diverse array of land use measures appears on the November ballot in a handful of localities around the state. Most questions ask voters to endorse or oppose specific developments, from a golf course redevelopment in El Dorado County to a park in San Carlos. Only the City of Modesto has a sweeping, citywide question, billed as a referendum on urban sprawl.

Another Newhall Ranch case goes to the Supreme Court. The winning environmentalists seek a rehearing in the big Newhall lvictorh -- mostly to clarify the nature of their win. And, on another front, an appellate court reheard a groundwater extraction fee case and didn't budget.