Movies, music and television have created a global image of California as the land of sunshine and surf. Like many caricatures, the mystique has a nugget of truth at its core: Californians do love their beaches.

Check out this month's installment of CP&DR's infamous in brief column, the only place to consult to keep abreast of the latest events shaping the land use stories across the Golden State!

In September, the San Diego City Council is scheduled to vote on "City of Villages," the new "strategic framework element" of the city's general plan. Designed to provide a foundation for revising the city's 1970s general plan, City of Villages makes all the usual politically correct statements about promoting smart-growth ideas.

State lawmakers appear to be accepting the longstanding argument that needed construction of condominiums and townhouses is being chilled by construction defect litigation, and legislators might be ready to pass a reform bill this year.

A City of Salinas fee to finance stormwater drainage facilities and system maintenance has been ruled unconstitutional by the Sixth District Court of Appeal.

As suburban-era cities have become "land poor," both planners and developers have advocated the recycling of underutilized commercial property for high-density housing. In particular, this solution has been under discussion throughout California and especially in Los Angeles, where housing production has been low and the supply of available raw land is dwindling.

This is the soundtrack of a person walking across a bridge above a busy street. The first sound we hear is the Doppler effect of a car approaching, then disappearing beneath the bridge, making a noise roughly like "eeee-UURRHH!!" A moment later, the same car emerges from beneath the bridge. "WHIFFF-urrrrh!"

State legislation that would lead to the creation of a planning and transportation "super agency" in San Diego County is moving forward. Capitol insiders and a number of officials in the San Diego region expect bills that address San Diego regional governance to pass in some form before the Legislature concludes on August 31.

Construction is underway on San Jose's Communications Hill, a 500-acre infill project that supporters are promoting as a large-scale, walkable, urban neighborhood. Early indications are that there is a great demand for the new houses, townhouses and apartments, but the easy access to transit and retail areas that might make the neighborhood truly walkable are lacking thus far.

A decade after the passage of the "revenue neutrality" law, the incorporation of new cities appears to be back as a major planning issue in California. Now, however, there is a somewhat different twist.

The state Supreme Court will hear a case involving a county's ability to regulate a water district's construction of a water treatment plant.

In Brief is CP&DR's monthly digest of land use news stories in the making, or follow ups to stories that we have run in the past.

To get some idea of how much San Francisco Bay has changed during the past two centuries, unfold a map and trace the estuary's amoeboid outline as it squeezes through Carquinez Strait into the Delta's confusion of sloughs and marshes. There, 33 miles inland from the Golden Gate but still bathed in tidewater, lie a pair of features named Grizzly Bay and Grizzly Island.

Generating economic activity at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino has proven to be difficult since the base closed in 1994. But Norton is now the scene of a proposal to replicate a successful airport in Texas that was built during the 1980s solely for industrial users.