Articles

Though scarcely acknowledged, urban planning is in the midst of a fundamental shift in professional focus. The public is demanding the change. It's a simple idea, as well as an old one: Planners need to understand design. This is because urban planning in America has followed the larger culture into an era where style is substance.

Del Paso Heights is a neighborhood frozen in time. With its large lots and streets without sidewalks or storm drains, the 1,500-acre neighborhood has a kind of shabby charm that recalls its former role as the suburban fringe of the long-gone City of North Sacramento. The neighborhood seems suspended at the moment just before a rural or quasi-rural area undergoes urbanization — that is, when large lots get subdivided for single-family housing, when streets get paved and the casual "house here, hous

Water bonds are as familiar as summer reruns to California voters, who have considered at least 16 of them on statewide ballots since 1960 — the year voters narrowly approved spending $1.75 billion to build the State Water Project. On November 5, however, the electorate is likely to consider a water bond measure that is different from all predecessors.

Opponents of a proposed expansion of a hazardous waste dump in rural Kern County took the proper steps to earn a hearing before a state-appointed appeals board, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled in one of its rare published opinions.

The State Supreme Court has accepted for review a Proposition 218 case from Shasta County. All seven justices voted to review the decision in Richmond v. Shasta Community Services District, No. S105078 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, April 2002).

CP&DR's In Brief section contains short news notices and notes.

WASHINGTON _ A U.S. Supreme Court decision tentatively upholding a Los Angeles zoning ordinance banning multiple adult businesses at the same location left lawyers for both sides predicting victory at an eventual trial.

Sacramento County properly used 1997 conditions as the baseline for the environmental review of an airport project, even though the general aviation airport had been operating and growing without county permits since the early 1970s, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The City of Palm Springs added improper conditions to a subdivision map approval when it considered a property owner's proposal to subdivide a mobile home park so that the park could be converted to resident-owned, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

the full text of the Nevada County 2002 "Property Owner Reimbursement Process Initiative" is contained in this article. For context on the article, make sure to see Paul Shigley's featured article in this same June 2002 edition of CP&DR, entitled "Local Takings Initiative Heads to Ballot."

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service cannot ignore the one-year deadline to decide on a petition for protecting a species under the Endangered Species Act, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

One of the cardinal rules of ballot-box zoning in California is that ballot measures beget ballot measures. That is, once the concept of making land-use decisions gets embedded in the local political culture, there is no getting rid of it — it only burrows deeper and deeper into the political landscape.

Where do housing unit need projections come from? If you answered, "from population projections," you are only partly correct. The little-understood and unappreciated "headship rate" translates population projections into units. Small changes in headship rates could result in significant changes in housing need projections.

While discussing a proposed downtown baseball stadium and adjoining redevelopment project, the San Diego City Council repeatedly violated the California open meeting law because the council's descriptions of closed door negotiations were too general and because some topics should have been discussed in public, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The appellate court also ruled that a trial court judge was correct to issue an injunction detailing how the council should comply with the law in the f