Articles

All quiet on the western real estate front? The silence is probably a result of California's property owners collectively holding their breath while listening for the other shoe to drop.

The City of Vernon has lost a case in which it alleged that the California Public Utilities Commission should have required environmental review of a proposed rail yard expansion. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Vernon failed to prove that the project was unreasonable. The case demonstrates the differences between projects controlled by the California Environmental Quality Act, and projects that fall under other sections of the state Public Reso

The latest round in the legal saga of an adult bookstore in Las Vegas has been won by the city. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the city's regulatory system for adult businesses after the city adopted measures to ensure prompt reviews of adult business license applications by city officials and state courts.

A Santa Barbara County special district had no standing to sue over the apportionment of property taxes from a resort development within the district's boundaries, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. And even if the district did have standing, its claim was filed after the 60-day statute of limitations for challenging a government agency's action under the Cortese-Knox Local Government Reorganization Act, the court held.

Charles Buki is the director of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Training Institute in Washington, D.C. The institute was created by Congress in 1978 to revitalize older, distressed communities through a network of local nonprofits. Buki is a former Loeb Fellow in advanced environmental studies at Harvard University. He has written and lectured widely on neighborhood revitalization and neighborhood dynamics, their interrelationship with the environment and implications for social equity.

Expanding the capacity of the nation's aviation system has quickly risen toward the top of the Bush administration's transportation priorities. Both Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey have spoken about the need to build more runways during the next decade, and they have suggested that speeding federal environmental reviews is one way to hurry along construction.

An advertising company should have challenged Caltrans' mid-1970s cancellation of billboard permits many years ago, the First District Court of Appeal ruled in March. The court rejected the company's attempt to revive the permits on grounds that the permits were not properly canceled in the first place.

The California Supreme Court has dropped its review of a business tax case from San Diego after deciding the court should not hear the case after all. The action means that the Fourth District Court of Appeal decision that exempted a tax on residential rentals from Proposition 218 remains in effect. However, the opinion will go unpublished.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court's ruling against the Mohave Valley Irrigation & Drainage District in a water rights battle against the Interior Department. At dispute was an allegedly ambiguous contract regarding the western Arizona district's Colorado River water rights.

Judy Corbett is executive director of the Local Government Commission, a nonprofit organization whose members include elected officials, and city and county staff members. The commission provides forums and technical assistance to assist local agencies in a variety of subject areas. In 1991, the commission, working with architects and planners, produced the Ahwahnee Principles for community and regional planning. The Ahwahnee Principles provide an alternative to what the authors see as decades of

The City of West Hollywood had the authority under the Vehicle Code to turn a through road into a cul-de-sac to accommodate a development, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court rejected project opponents' contention that the city had to prove that the street was no longer needed for vehicular traffic.

The railroad has been a force in American urbanism since the Iron Horse first pushed its way across the Western prairies and mountain ranges. Many Western towns, including Laramie and Cheyenne in Wyoming, were founded by the Union Pacific Railroad during the late 1860s on its drive to complete the Transcontinental Railroad. In other cases, small towns like Omaha, Nebraska, became big cities almost overnight, when thousands of men who worked for the railroad poured into town, followed by the peop

New conflict-of-interest rules promulgated by the Fair Political Practices Commission went into effect in February, and many changes affect public officials who make land use decisions. The rule changes come at a time when land use scandals appear to be at a new peak, with one staff planner pleading guilty to soliciting bribes and the planning director in another city facing a trial on bribery charges (see sidebar).