Articles

For the first time, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has included new land use policies in its regional transportation plan. Essentially, the plan calls for infill and redevelopment in urban areas, and compact growth in outlying areas. That type of development pattern would, at least in theory, let more people work close to their job sites, and increase the convenience of public transportation and carpooling.

The bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric Company has resulted in a stunning windfall for the state. As part of a bankruptcy settlement approved in April, PG&E agreed to offer conservation easements or title to 140,000 acres of land, most of which lies around the utility company's hydroelectric system.

With fewer than five months remaining in the 2003-04 session of the state Legislature, it appears that state lawmakers will approve few, if any, major land use bills. Still, there are scores of land use bills alive that nibble or even take big bites on the edges.

A state appellate court ruling that the loss of farmland resulting from development of a prison could not be mitigated has been depublished by the sate Supreme Court.

The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities - one Tucson and one in Orange County - illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service officially deemed the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment unworkable and unveiled a new version. Critics say the amended management plan is a barely disguised gift to the timber industry.

California voters approved $20 billion worth of bonds for school construction and rehabilitation in March. In addition to the $12.3 billion for schools contained in Proposition 55, voters in 52 school districts approved $7.9 billion worth of local school bonds. Since 1998, state voters have approved three school bonds worth a combined $34 billion for everything from kindergarten classrooms to university research facilities.

The philosopher Heraclitus once remarked that a wise man and a fool may look at the same tree and see different things. The observation also pertains to a reasonable person and a developer. A reasonable person, for example, would look at the Union-Pacific rail yard in downtown Sacramento and see 240 acres of dirt laced with a century of poisonous industrial byproducts. A developer looks at the same thing and sees a pedestrian-oriented urban district.

Three sweeping growth measures in three very different parts of the state - two measures seeking to tightly control development and one growth-friendly plan - all lost during the March 2 primary election. Voters in San Diego and San Benito counties overwhelmingly rejected growth-control general plan amendments. In El Dorado County, voters said no to approving an entire general plan via initiative. Elsewhere, Contra Costa County voters rejected a big-box law. San Marcos voters said no to Wal-Mart.

Like scores of California suburbs, Pomona suffered the death of its downtown during the 1960s and 1970s. And, as elsewhere, the death was little noticed at the time because there was a great deal of newfangled housing, retail and office development elsewhere in town. But, led by two brothers who grew up in town, downtown now thrives around the Pomona Arts Colony.

In his definitive book, City Center to Regional Mall, urban historian Richard Longstreth points out that in 1960, Southern California had 14 regional malls, located mostly in the southern L.A. County and northern Orange County suburbs that were emerging at the time. Although similar at the time, those malls have evolved greatly.

Anyone familiar with the operation of state and federal water projects in California recognizes that the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is the heart of the state's elaborate plumbing system. A recent federal court decision also places the Delta squarely at the heart of an intensifying debate over one of the nation's bedrock environmental laws, potentially throwing into question the protections afforded a host of threatened and endangered species throughout the water-short West.

The long-running Santa Clarita Valley growth war has entered a new phase. The Newhall County Water District (NCWD), which serves territory inside the Santa Clarita city limits and in unincorporated Los Angeles County, has issued a no-confidence vote for the valley's urban water management plan.

Land use in our society is generally an "either-or" proposition. Any given site is zoned for industry or housing or open space, but rarely more than one use at a time. And we compartmentalize one land use from another by drawing thick black lines on our land-use maps, often in a completely arbitrary way. That thick black line has grown a little thinner on 471 acres of land, nearly half of which lie underwater, owned by Dow Chemical in the city of Pittsburg.