Blogs

If you're in a big hurry to build a road project, environmental review can get in the way. As Bill Fulton reports in this month's Insight column, the state budget pact exempted eight Caltrans projects from the California Environmental Quality Act so that they get built quicker. But some folks in Tehama County are saying, "Hey, wait a second"

Need to know where you can find the Timberland Productivity Act in state law? How about the statute governing specific plans? Want to know what the heck the Mills Act really offers to owners of historic properties? Can't figure out where to locate an appellate court opinion that was issued in 1999?

A few months ago, leaders of the California Building Industry Association started using the term "depression." When you look at the numbers, it's hard to argue that the homebuilding industry is not in a depression, rather than a recession. That's why builders are flogging a new, $10,000 state tax credit for purchasers of new homes.

We may be witnessing the end of the auto mall as a cash cow for cities.

Auto sales nationwide are half what they were a year ago. Perhaps as many as half of all auto dealerships will go under in the current economic downturn. Car buyers have shifted their browsing to the Internet with amazing speed. And they're buying cars from anybody they don't have to haggle with – no matter where the sellers are.

Urban planners want America to look like Amsterdam, but Americans don't want that lifestyle. So says The New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Twice in the last month, I have used rail transit to get to a big-deal event that would have been a huge hassle to get to any other way. And that experience has reminded me of one of the most often-overlooked advantages of a public transit system: It helps move people to and from special events better than any other method of transportation.

Stockton is the most miserable city in the United States, and Modesto is fifth in misery. So says Forbes magazine in one of its typically provocative lists.

The Forbes rankings are actually based on metropolitan statistical areas, so all of San Joaquin County and Stanislaus County may wallow in the misery. But it's the two county seats that get the attention in Forbes and in the national media.

A couple weeks ago, one local government official said she was getting tired of hearing about SB 375. Couldn't you write about something else, she politely asked?

Yes, we could and will write about other subjects. But love it or hate it, SB 375 shifted the ground underneath planners' feet, and the true slipping and sliding is only now beginning. We're going to be writing about it for a very long time.

Remember way back to the days when climate change and greenhouse gas emissions didn't dominate every discussion of land use and economic development in California? You know, way back in … 2005.  Well, Dan Logue sure does.

Senate Bill 375 dominated this year's UCLA Land Use Law and Planning Conference. While there were few comments about the merits of the new law, there was extensive discussion regarding the law's impact and implementation.

If there was a common theme, it was this: SB 375 has the potential to change dramatically both California's land use planning system and growth patterns, and the law is very much a work in progress.

Although it was largely unsaid, the implication is that the era of the large-scale, low-density, single-family housing tracts has passed.

When Barack Obama took the oath of office Tuesday, he tried to strike a delicate balance between the soaring rhetoric he is famous for and an almost dour message about how much work and sacrifice will be required to put America back on its feet. Nowhere will that balance be more difficult to strike – or more important – than in the vast combination of federal policies that help to drive growth and development patterns around the country.

Senate Bill 375 needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed this year. So says Rick Bishop, executive director of the Western Riverside Council of Governments.

Bishop is not an advocate of sprawl-and-pavement über alles, which is the way many SB 375 opponents have been painted. In fact, Bishop has no gripe with the intent of SB 375, which is to reign in low-density, segregated use sprawl and to encourage public transportation spending that best serves higher-density, mixed-use areas (that's my description, not his).

Planning and Conservation League & PCL Foundation
Annual Environmental Legislative Symposium
Steps to a Sustainable California    
Saturday, February 7, 2009 – 9:00A – 4:15P  
Downtown Sacramento