Articles

An appellate court has found the state liable for costly damages to property in Yuba County as the result of a 1986 Yuba River levee failure. The decision arrived within days of Gov. Schwarzenegger's reduction of $105 million from local flood control project budgets, and the decision comes as construction of thousands of homes in the same floodplain proceeds.

The booklet titled "Accessory Dwelling Unit Manual" may not hit The New York Times bestseller list any time soon. But this unprepossessing little booklet is dynamite because it promotes the least popular type of housing in California.

The Davis administration has come and gone with little to show in the way of changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines, a document that carries the force of law and dictates how public agencies are supposed to implement CEQA. About 30 minor guideline changes were issued in September, but those changes could be put on hold or cancelled by the new Schwarzenegger administration.

A new attempt to build another airport to serve San Diego is underway, with proponents working toward an airport siting measure for the 2006 ballot.

Rivermark has been praised as a progressive project for providing some New Urbanist-inspired architecture, affordable housing and open space. However, Rivermark is an uneasy amalgam of urban and suburban.

Voters in two Solano County cities on the edge of the Bay Area approved urban growth boundaries during the November election, providing two major victories for slow-growth advocates. Overall, however, local land use balloting in November demonstrated neither a slow-growth nor a pro-growth bent among voters.

The administration of new Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger started coming together in November, but Schwarzenegger's appointments were as difficult to peg as the new governor himself. Schwarzenegger has sprinkled his administration with moderates and Democrats, and he counterbalanced those appointments with business-oriented veterans of the Wilson administration.

The largest development project along the newly extended 210 freeway at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains is finally proceeding after years of planning and financial difficulty. However, all is not smooth sailing for the Colonies Crossroads project, as a November appellate court order halted grading on a portion of the site because of a fight over flood control facilities.

Developers are building residences in California at the fastest pace in years. From recent economic reports suggesting a slowing economy, the construction might appear to be risky. But builders are banking on two irrefutable facts: There is no end in sight to the state's population growth, and all of those people need a place to live.

Competing desalination projects - one public, one private - have been proposed to serve the thirsty Monterey Peninsula.

The most famous definition of architecture comes from Vitruvius, the ancient Roman writer, who said the word applied to structures that are (in my inexpert translation) beautiful, useful and well-built.

After more than four years of taking a timid approach to land use, the Davis administration is going out with a flurry.

Interest in smart growth varies by state and region, but many communities located in disparate parts of the country, whether or not they are growing rapidly, want to implement at least some aspects of smart growth. And

The last project in the re-creation of downtown Anaheim is scheduled to break ground before year's end. The project will bring about 1,000 full-time residents to a district that has blossomed with private sector offices and government facilities during the last 25 years.