Articles

In November 1986, California Planning & Development Report was born as a four-page "sample." We haven't missed a month since. >>read more

Looking back at the environmental issues that grabbed headlines 20 years ago, it's tempting to conclude that nothing at all has changed. >>read more

Back in the early 1990s, regionalism was the hot planning topic. Championed by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, regionalism sought to organize a range of planning functions traditionally managed at the state and local levels into newly defined "regions" that would better reflect actual human activity and social function. >>read more

Thesis: Cities are dynamic places, where different forces constantly push against each other. Among those many forces are the desires of local residents to maintain a "sense of place," or in some cases create that sense de novo in locations where it does not already exist. >>read more

Several pieces of land use legislation have been vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, including two bills aimed at affordable housing and a bill that would have decreased local discretion over the siting of emergency shelters and group homes. Meanwhile, state lawmakers and lobbyists are already starting to prepare housing bills for the 2007 legislative session. >>read more

After five years of planning, dozens of public meetings and a couple advisory elections, Humboldt County has abandoned a plan to establish redevelopment project areas in rural communities spread around the county. >>read more

Construction has begun on an eight-block project in central Ontario that city officials and developers say will be a cornerstone of downtown revitalization. >>read more

One of the largest takings awards in California history has been thrown out by a state appellate court, which ruled that preliminary airport planning and traffic circulation changes by the City of San Diego did not amount to a taking of a developer's property.

Hundreds upon hundreds of real estate developments, planning efforts, economic development projects and related matters have received coverage in the pages of CP&DR during the past 20 years. We present here an update on some of the most important, and some of the weirder, stories from that period — while keeping in mind that most of these stories still have not ended.

A plan that would overhaul the San Diego Bay waterfront in Chula Vista with a convention center, large hotels, as many as 2,000 housing units in towers up to 17 stories tall, and extensive parkland may be headed toward final approval after more than three years of work. >>read more

Changes to redevelopment law that are short of sweeping but still significant enough to stir the industry won legislative approval this year. The measures tighten blight requirements, ease challenges to redevelopment decisions and potentially limit use of eminent domain, but the bills do not go as far as originally proposed. >>read more

Lake Berryessa, a 30-square-mile federal reservoir in the hills northeast of the more famous Napa Valley, may be California's most secret lake. But a new land use and management plan could change that by promoting a more high-end tourist activity than the lake has seen in the past. >>read more

- AB 1387 (Jones). Expands a CEQA exemption for urban infill to projects of up to 100 units with a minimum density of 20 units per acre. The projects also must be within half a mile of a transit stop and comply with the local circulation element. Signed by governor. >>read more

I confess I have not read the book A Choice over Our Heads, but the resonant title of Lawrence Butler's book chimed in my brain the other day, when I first hearing about Sequoia Village. The project is an attempt to combine affordable housing and the philosophy of co-housing, a semi-communal way of living in which people agree to contribute labor, such as cooking one day for a week in exchange for communal meals the rest of the time. >>read more