Articles

Though the economic prosperity and real estate boom of the past decade may seem like a distant memory, it wasn't more than two or three years ago that planning departments around the state were buried in paperwork. From sprawling subdivisions to loft renovations, developers sent them all the work they could handle. Some planning agencies even complained that attention to case processing prevented them from actually planning.

Today, planning departments are as overburdened as ever, but for completely different reasons.

A state appellate court has upheld the environmental impact report for expansion of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It found that project opponents had forfeited most of their claims because they had failed to raise them at the administrative level. The court also ruled that the range of project alternatives that the lab considered, within a carefully articulated range of project objectives, was adequate.

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Not long ago, when California's economy was booming and concerns about rising seas were mounting, California tapped into its environmentalist traditions to pass popular laws that promised to lead the nation in greenhouse gas mitigation. While there are no sure signs that the global climate has cooled, the same cannot be said for the state's support of anti-climate change legislation. 

One of the least scenic ways to visit Napa Valley is to enter from the south, through the industrial zone between the cities of American Canyon and Napa. The congested traffic and office parks near Highway 221 are a long ways from the idyllic pastoral stretches to the north.

In supporting the City of Stockton's refusal to accept a lawsuit filed by a citizens group against a proposed big-box store, the California Supreme Court has, for the second time in two months, made clear that if a public agency provides notice of a California Environmental Quality Act decision, legal challenges to that decision may be barred by the shortest statute of limitations, among several that the CEQA statute provides for, applies to legal challenges regardless of the context of the challenge.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that a project's air impacts are to be measured against existing ambient conditions, not against a permitted level of operations for the emitter.

This month more Census forms will arrive in California mailboxes than in those of any other state. And, while anxieties about response rates and undercounts persist nationwide, it is likely that California will fill out and submit more of them than will any other state. In its rawest state, the resulting data will give planners their most fundamental piece of data - the sheer number of people the state must accommodate. >>read more

Covered by chaparral and dry brush, the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties are at a perennial risk of wildfire. And when the seasonal Santa Ana winds sweep through, they bring Apocalyptic storms of fire and ash that rain down on, and sometimes consume, the communities that press up against these slopes.

In planning, as with anything else, the progress does not arrive merely with the flow of time. The enthusiasm and ideas that swept over these pages in the first decade of this century -- smart growth, downtown revitalization, AB 32, SB 375, and all the rest -- are now met with delay, deferral, and, in some cases, bankruptcy.

California has a yet another seismic threat to prepare for, thanks to a set of new maps that depict a ferocious line of water that may, if earth moves in just the wrong way, someday surge inland along the state's coastline. Experts are saying that these new maps should be used to plan for emergency evacuations, not changes in land use planning. In at least one case, however, the Coastal Commission is already considering policies that would take tsunamis into account when approving developments.

Upholding a 27-year-old California Supreme Court determination, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that local agencies may impose a fee for the filing of an administrative appeal of a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) decision.

The old saying in government is that in order to understand what's going on, you've got to follow the money. In local planning throughout California, that's becoming increasingly easy to do. Local government revenues - property tax, sales tax, development fees, redevelopment funds - are in steep decline.