Blogs

It's possible to reduce greenhouse gas reductions in Southern California 7-9% per capita by 2020 with a mid-range growth scenario that "achievable and ambitious," Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, said Thursday.

In a long-awaited presentation to the SCAG General Assembly in La Quinta, Ikhrata said SCAG would convey the estimate to the California Air Resources Board, which is scheduled to provide SCAG and other regions with a per-capita GHG target in June under the terms of SB 375.

Ikhrata's presentation was clearly an effort to influence the ARB's draft target. Elected officials in the SCAG region and elsewhere have expressed concern that ARB will establish a target that is beyond the reach of communities to hit. "Before ARB gives us a target we want to tell them what we can do," Ikhrata said. 

The Legislative Analyst's Office released possibly the most obvious report in its history last week. The LAO said it's a bad idea to spend one-time revenues on ongoing expenses, and it's an even worse idea to generate those revenues by selling things you're going to need for many years.

The LAO concluded that the Schwarzenegger administration's plan to sell 11 state-owned office complexes to help balance the state budget was a "poor fiscal policy." The state would get a pile of money from the sale, but then it would have to spend more piles of money in future years to lease the office space from the new owners.

Yeah, no kidding. The idea is not akin to cleaning out the garage and selling a bunch of junk to pay the light bill. It's more like selling your dishes and flatware to pay for groceries. You'll have food, but you'll still need something with which to eat it.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Last year shopping mall giant Westfield floated a proposal for a 49-story tower in Century City, part of a master plan to reinvent one of the great prototypical edge cities.

One Yuba County developer whose subdivision project was defeated in a referendum should buy lunch for everyone who voted against him.

Is this the year that CEQA goes down in a flaming pile of EIRs and writs? The year when unwashed masses of tree huggers watch helplessly as greedy developers pave paradise to put up parking lots? Probably not, but there is no doubt the California Environmental Quality Act is under attack these days.

Legislation to weaken CEQA is pending in Sacramento, and a ballot measure that would prohibit citizen lawsuits based on CEQA has received clearance for signatures. The CEQA haters argue that the law is stifling California's economy. (You can swap "AB 32" or "SB 375" into that sentence if you want, but that's for another article.)

0-and-4. That's the Third District Court of Appeal's record in California Environmental Quality Act cases at the state Supreme Court since 2007.

Earlier this month, in Stockton Citizens for Responsible Planning v. City of Stockton (see CP&DR Legal Digest, March 15, 2010), the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Third District ruling regarding the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit that challenges a city's notice of exemption from CEQA review.

Say George Clooney went to Nobu last night and ran into Diddy in the valet line, where they discussed their mutual affinity for Kiton suiting. How do we know? Photographs, of course. Why do we care? Not sure, but USC Planning Professor Elizabeth Currid has taken a stab at it. 

What appeared last fall to be a major win for property rights advocates may have been a fleeting victory. Earlier this month, an en banc panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to rehear a rent control case from the City of Goleta, meaning the earlier ruling in favor of the property owner is wiped out.

Regional planning has just won a round in its age-old battle against local prerogative.

Earlier this month, an Alameda County Superior Court judge struck down voter-approved housing caps in the City of Pleasanton and ordered the city to zone more land to accommodate the city's fair share of housing. Judge Frank Roesch sided with affordable housing advocates, who have pressed Pleasanton for years over what they consider exclusionary housing policies.

The hottest web meme of the past two days -- in urbanist circles at least (I shudder to think of what the hottest overall meme is) -- is the chart of the most photographed cities and landmarks in the world.  Last year a team of Cornell researchers assumed the guise of part Web trawlers and part econometricians and, with the help of photo-analysis software, identified every photo on the Flickr photo-sharing site that could recognizably be associated with a city.  It ranked the top twenty-five cities and then the top seven most commonly photographed subjects in each. 

Gov. Schwarzenegger is going around the state urging lawmakers to approve a measure that would provide $200 million in tax credits for homebuyers. The governor claims the measure will save or add thousands of construction jobs.

His claim is hardly new. But is there any real basis for it?

The primary takeaways from last week's California Redevelopment Association conference was unambiguous: stakeholders and public officials alike must know the true impact of reduction of redevelopment funding in communities and statewide.  Panels on the final day of the conference sent attendees home with some idea of the steps that both local agencies and the state association must take to achieve this goal and keep the state's redevelopment agenda on track.

Sometimes one has to leave the conference hall and go and check things out for oneself -- it wouldn't be a redevelopment conference without a nerdy redevelopment tour.

For many cities, redevelopment relies on public-private partnerships, innovative financing, and design integrated with existing surroundings which, in turn, often support the hot topics of smart growth, transit-oriented development, and climate change adaptation.