Articles

The City of Rancho Palos Verdes does have the authority to regulate placement of radio antennas, but the city cannot deny a use permit for an antenna solely because the antenna would be used for commercial purposes, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

A doughnut shop owner who remained in his place of business for six years after the city acquired the property for redevelopment still qualified for relocation benefits as a "displaced person," the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

A school district may charge only limited mitigation fees on a redevelopment project in which new houses replace demolished residential units, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has concluded. The court held that the Tustin Unified School District could levy fees only on the difference in square footage between old apartments and the new houses that replaced the apartments.

A City of Cotati lawsuit against mobile home park owners who challenged the city's rent control ordinance was not a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), the state Supreme Court has ruled unanimously.

In canceling a Williamson Act contract, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors did not need to find that the cancellation was consistent with the county general plan or that an emergency situation existed, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The county only needed to find that "other public concerns" substantially outweighed the need to protect farmland, and that no other suitable land not subject to the Williamson Act was available for the proposed development.

Among the articles of faith that urban planners hold as self-evident is this: Land use planning is a local endeavor. Many planners even espouse that a town's general plan can influence the "quality of life" through land use regulation. This theory has been at the crux of New Urbanist arguments for revamping development codes.

Make sure to check out CP&DR's monthly installment of the latest up and coming news and events in land use planning in California.

Three counties in the eastern Bay Area are in position to capitalize on a predicted boom in the biotechnology industry, according to a new report. Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties, in fact, could be in better position than other locales in the Bay Area to accommodate manufacturing and distribution of new biotech products.

A ferocious debate that has raged for more than three decades over the fate of a river in the Sierra Nevada foothills appears likely to end soon with a whimper.

Twelve years ago while running for governor against a knowledgeable growth management ex-mayor, Democrat Dianne Feinstein scribbled the word "growth" on her hand so she would not forget to bring it up in her debate with Republican Pete Wilson.

An infrastructure fee shortfall for an 1,840-acre project in the City of Modesto could reach into the tens of millions of dollars and has become a major controversy in the Central Valley city.

A new requirement that nearly every California development project built with any public subsidies — including many affordable housing projects — must be constructed with prevailing wage labor appears to be having an impact. But the effects may not be as substantial as some people fear, at least not yet.

Some people react almost viscerally to the suggestion of combining schools with shopping centers, and with some reason. Education and retail are fundamentally different activities. Schools — at least our mental picture of them — are protective and cloistered, while shopping centers are bustling places wide open to the entire public. Like chocolate and onions, the two just do not seem to go together.

Landowners who filed a lawsuit contending that Santa Cruz County's second unit ordinance conflicted with state law should have filed suit when the county most recently amended the ordinance, not when the county applied the ordinance to conditional use permits, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled.