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Few symbols of the tech economy are more palpable or more massive than the Apple Corporation’s new headquarters, an enormous aluminum-clad torus that made landfall on the northern edge of Cupertino recently. Few symbols of the consequences of the tech economy are more palpable or more massive than Vallco Shopping Mall, a moribund 50-acre shopping center, just the other side of Interstate 280 from Apple. A standard-issue 1970s mall, once replete with Ice Capades, Orange Julius, May Co., and mountains of parking, Vallco has been wasting away roughly as long as the iTunes store has been in business. Developers have eyed the site for years, considering it an ideal location for redevelopment — in a city at the epicenter of California’s housing crisis, where an average two-bedroom goes for over $3,330. Due in large part to community opposition, redevelopment of the site has proceeded at a speeds more reminiscent of dial-up modems than 4G wireless. Developer Sand Hill Property Co. bought the property four years ago and proposed a mixed-use development for the site called Vallco Town Center. Sand Hill placed a measure on the 2016 Cupertino ballot that, if passed, would have enacted zoning to accommodate its proposed the project. Opponents put a competing measure on the ballot essentially calling for the downzoning of the entire site. Both measured failed, leaving stakeholders and the developer to prepare for a protracted battle. Last month, though, Sand Hill revealed a new proposal for a mixed use development with 2,400 housing units, two million square feet of office space, and the imprimatur of celebrity architect Rafael Viñoly. It also added a new killer app to get the project entitled: invocation of SB 35. Among the most prominent bills in the suite of 15 housing-related bills enacted last year , SB 35 attempts to add meaning to the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Traditionally, the Department of Housing and Community Development has set RHNA targets for housing production in every city in the state, but cities that failed to approve — much less zone for — the allocations essentially faced no consequences. SB 35 requires cities that are out of compliance with RHNA to streamline their approvals for certain housing developments by-right, provided that the developments include housing earmarked for low-income residents. SB 35 takes away a degree of local control. Some local stakeholders welcome it. Geoff Paulsen, chair of the Cupertino Planning Commission, said he is “pumped” about the Vallco proposal, and he “enthusiastically endorse(s)" the use of SB 35.  “We've been held hostage by the NIMBY element, which is just afraid of change,” said Paulsen, speaking as a private citizen and not in his official capacity as planning commissioner. “Let each city have its design input but not let each city have the control of stopping people from being afford a place to live." Earlier this year, HCD published a list cities that have not fulfilled their RHNA obligations. Only 13 cities and counties avoided the list while 378, including Cupertino, received some level of censure. The city’s most recent housing report shows that only 199 units of the 1,064 in the city’s RHNA have been permitted; the city has permitted none of its allocated 563 units for low- and very-low-income residents. SB 35 includes tiered streamlining categories depending on how far out of compliance a jurisdiction is. In Cupertino projects must include at least 50 percent affordability to qualify for SB 35 streamlining. The invocation of SB 35 not only bypasses the City Council and Planning Commission also exempts the project from analysis under — and lawsuits based on — the California Environmental Quality Act. Even so, environmentalists wary of development on the urban fringe hail the maneuver. “This is one of the most important opportunities to provide new homes in the heart of Silicon Valley to address our jobs-housing imbalance and take pressure off of the natural and agricultural lands of the region that are threatened by sprawl development,” said Matt Vander Sluis, deputy director of Greenbelt Alliance. Sand Hill’s “Revitalize Vallco” website insists that it still intends to go through the traditional planning process. Cupertino planners are currently drafting a specific plan for the proposed development. The city’s general plan already allows for a mix of uses on the site. SB 35 requires that at least half of a mixed-use project’s square footage to go residential development. Sand Hill’s proposal would dedicate 4.7 million square feet, or 68 percent of the project’s total floor space, to residential uses. Paulsen said he will advocate for design changes such as more green space but acknowledged that design issues are “minor” compared to the need to provide well located housing. Along with a small multifamily development in Berkeley (see CP&DR coverage ), Vallco is one of the first, and by far the largest, projects to use SB 35. Vander Suis called it a “wakeup call” for the cities of the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay. Many of them have waved for years in a discomfiting condition in which they are trying to retain their bedroom-community character while suffering (or benefiting from) astronomical real estate prices and the presence of some of the 21st century’s most successful corporations. “Communities have so many reasons to build housing, and SB 35 is one more reason,” said Vander Sluis. A recent informal poll conducted by residents group Better Cupertino found that, among five options for the Vallco site, just over 50 percent of the survey’s 2,555 respondents favored a mall. This despite the fact that the property is in dispute precisely because the community was not able to support the mall that is already there. "Some of these people want to go back to the 1970s and bring back Penney’s and Kmart and that kind of thing,” said Paulsen. “That’s just not going to happen. The world is changing. We need to shape the change, not resist it.” While homeowners have not been shy about opposing development, many of the companies and their employees have, traditionally, not gotten politically engaged. This deadlock has prevented many Silicon Valley cities from achieving their RHNA numbers. Now that they are vulnerable to SB 35 projects, they will either have to plan for growth and approve RHNA-supporting projects of their own accord — or be prepared to accept SB 35-compliants projects whether their plans and zoning call for it or not. Representatives of the Cupertino Planning Department and of Better Cupertino did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Contacts & Resources  Revitalize Vallco (Sand Hill Property Co.) Vallco Specific Plan Geoff Paulsen , Chair, Cupertino Planning Commission ,  gpaulsen@cupertino.org Matt Vander Sluis , Deputy Director,  Greenbelt Alliance ,  mvandersluis@greenbelt.org Image courtesy of Revitalize Vallco.

When California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016, they did not necessarily unleash an epidemic of cannabis use. Experts say it is too soon to tell whether legalization will lead to an increase in statewide usage over the former combination of black market and medicinal sales that has developed since the 1990s. What they did unleash, though, was a massive and multifaceted regulatory scheme that local and state officials — including urban planners — are just beginning to hash out.   January 1 marked the official start of legalized recreational cannabis sales statewide. State law permits cities and counties to embrace or reject legalized cannabis as they see fit. Since then, cities and counties have been considering a daunting range of policy options.  "It’s going to be a long slog,” said Dale Gieringer, California State Coordinator for NORML. "It’s a tough thing to bring everybody into compliance with extremely extensive regulations.”  Roughly two dozen cities — primarily large cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and Santa Ana — have adopted regulations that permit a range of cannabis-related activities. Large swaths of the state, primarily along the eastern border, remain so-called “cannabis deserts.”  Many, though, have adopted moratoria allowing them to deliberate and observe how regulations play out in permissive cities.  “The politics is dictating whether they banned or put the moratorium in place,” said Heather Stratman, CEO of the Association of California Cities-Orange County. “Some of the more middle-of-the-road cities want to understand it first.” Other localities have opted for outright probation. “There’s no question that a lot of local governments have kicked the can down the road,” said Gieringer. “They’ve just passed a ban so they don’t have to worry about it.” He said he has been “pleasantly surprised” by cities including Fresno, Carmel, and Lompoc that used to be “dead-set against cannabis” but are now allowing some form of legalized cannabis.  Permissive cities are responding to enticements such as revenue, suppression of the black market, and popular demand. At the same time, they are also running headlong into tough decisions about land use, taxation, public health, public safety, commerce, and community character, among others.  “My guess would be 120-150 are looking at some form of implementation,” said Tim Cromartie, Senior Advisor for Cannabis Compliance at HDL Companies and former point person for cannabis at the League of California Cities. “The challenge is that many cities didn’t even wake up to this until Prop 64 passed…about a year after that, now they’re getting traction.” Arguably the biggest debacle so far has taken place in rural Calaveras County. County officials announced a preliminary permitting program and accepted fees from applicants several months ago. The county then did an about-face, announcing that cannabis would be prohibited, absorbing application fees and potentially squandering start-up capital that aspiring businesses had spent. Most cities that have permitted retail cannabis have instituted controls such as limits on the number of stores, buffer zones between stores and sensitive uses (mainly schools), and regulations on signage and storefront design. While these regulations may seem like common sense, they are not without unintended consequences.  “Cannabis is this microcosm of all of economics happening all at once. You see the way that policy affects on-the-ground actions,” said Allan Steiner, a consultant with Green Rush Consulting. “You see the fight between regulation and non-regulation and the way that different policy can affect different economic realities.” Planning and cannabis intersect most directly in the regulations concerning placement and types of facilities that a city adopts. In some ways, facilities for growing, processing, and distributing cannabis are less controversial than retail stores. Industrial facilities are more likely to be viewed as “invisible” — especially if they are confined to areas already zoned for industrial uses — whereas retail facilities must, by their nature, be visible to the general public.  Greg Minor, assistant to the Oakland City Administrator, said Oakland has tried to restrict locations as little as possible.   “Essentially we allow them to locate where their non-cannabis equivalent can located, but with some buffers for sensitive uses or buffers for retail,” said Greg Minor, assistant to the Oakland City Administrator and staffer for the Oakland Cannabis Commission. Nicole Elliott, director of the San Francisco Office of Cannabis, said that San Francisco’s regulations for legalized cannabis are somewhat more liberal than their prior regulations for medical cannabis. The city’s new “Green Zone,” as she put it, reduces many buffers from 1,000 feet to 600 for certain sensitive uses.  In some cities, especially those that do not place numerical limits on the number of facilities, zoning regulations act as a de facto, or “organic,” limit. They mean that, effectively, there are a limited number of potential sites in a city for cannabis businesses, and that number may or may not comport with consumer demand or entrepreneurial ambitions.  According to Steiner, this can mean that cannabis entrepreneurship amounts to something of a land rush, in which businesses that receive permits are simply those who secured their real estate first — often at premium prices.  “What you create is a real estate grab sort of mentality,” said Steiner. “Having control over the real estate becomes one of the primary pieces that makes you competitive.” While some cities are encouraging cannabis entrepreneurship among minority and disadvantaged populations, the permitting process can work at cross-purposes.  “Starting a business in San Francisco is very expensive,” said Elliott. "Sitting on that land and going through the appeals process can be an incredibly high barrier to entry for any small business, especially cannabis.” The City of Oakland is trying to avoid this problem by issuing its limited number of citywide permits to approved operators (determined by a combination of application and lottery) regardless of whether they have storefronts already secured. Minor said that the city has issued eight permits, out of about 115 applicants.  “The overall philosophy has been to minimize barriers to entry,” said Minor. “We did not require that people have a property owned or leased as a prerequisite, which I think was unique or definitely not common. Typically even the city of Oakland in the past had required people to have a property up-front.” Even this strategy is not without complications.  “I've heard anecdotally that landlords will increase the price for a cannabis operator as compared to a non-cannabis operator,” said Minor. “On the flip side, we hear some anecdotes about non-cannabis operators being displaced…. We’re sort of balancing those concerns.” Even on their merits, Steiner has questioned whether buffer zones, which are typically 600 or 1,000 feet, even serve their intended purposes. He suggests that they serve more as political bargaining chips, which cities can use to satisfy skeptics of legalized cannabis, rather than genuine protections against abuse.  “I don’t know that the difference between 600 versus 1,000 feet from a school makes any difference in how often (children) see that building, how enticing that business is to them, how accessible it is,” said Steiner. “It’s a taboo subject, so we use buffers rather than having conversations.” Elliot said that buffers tend to inspire “some of the most politically driven conversations." Steiner suggested that even before cities delve into the niceties of buffer zones and permitting schemes, they first need to understand the existing cannabis-related landscape. In particular, cannabis’ quasi-legal status over the past decade or so created a literally countless number of grey-market businesses. Some say that cities must first discover and map those businesses before they implement an aboveboard permitting scheme.  “You need to understand the businesses that are currently operating in your town,” said Steiner. “If you don’t think they’re there, there’s a good chance you’re not paying attention.” Some cities have offered temporary “amnesty” to these businesses to enable them comply with new regulations.  Even communities that have rejected cannabis are not necessarily immune to the cannabis trade, legal and illegal. The absence of legalized retail cannabis in some places all but ensures that the black market will continue to thrive. Orange County, a geographically small county with a population of over 3 million, has only two permitted cannabis stores, both in Santa Ana.  “When cities ban it or put moratoriums in place, it drives the black market,” said Stratman. “I think that’s an issue that has not come to a head yet. If we’re trying to regulate it well, keep it out of the hands of children, and put tight restrictions in place, we lose the opportunity to do that by just saying no.” Stratman said that this situation is a natural consequence of local political decision-making.  “You have 34 cities (in Orange County) that, when they’re creating these ordinances, look at it from their own jurisdictional boundaries,” said Stratman. “Versus where my thoughts go all the time: these are all transcending issues. The sale of marijuana has no jurisdictional boundaries.” A handful of traditionally conservative counties, such as Butte, Lassen, and Yolo, have approved cultivation of cannabis without approving manufacturing or retail. Presumably this reflects the proliferation of marijuana farms that often elude law enforcement in the first place. Ironically, California’s bumper crop of now-legal marijuana may be fueling black markets elsewhere.  Cromartie noted that Californians consume only 30 percent of the marijuana produced in-state (a crop estimated to be worth over $20 billion annually). The rest of of it goes somewhere else, meaning, “we’re basically the breadbasket for cannabis in this country." He lamented that the state did not cap the total amount of marijuana grown in the state to a level that would be consistent with in-state consumption — especially because of the federal government’s concerns about interstate trafficking.  “So of course we’re in the gunsights of the feds,” said Cromartie. “They have an ongoing justification to ramp up enforcement efforts.” Local officials are generally complimentary of the state’s regulations, in part because they give so much discretion to localities. They acknowledged, though, that the situation for the next few years will remain in flux. The current regulations were drafted as emergency regulations and therefore are expected to be amended as policymakers develop a sense of what the recreational cannabis industry looks like.  Elliott in San Francisco and Minor in Oakland both said that original state regulations neglected to allow for shared use of facilities, such as different producers using the same industrial kitchen to produce edibles. Elliot added that another shortcoming that has become evident are strictures on times and methods of delivery to retail establishments that don’t have generous street frontage or loading zones.  “They haven't necessarily thought about how these activities occur in dense urban environments when drafting their regulations,” said Elliott.  Elliot suggested that the operators have ample opportunity to demonstrate their good faith and neighborliness. She cited one store that is acting like a miniature business improvement district by hiring roving security personnel and beautifying their block. She said that her office serves in part for a resource for other businesses that want to be good neighbors in the legalized economy.  “With the creation of this office and the new permits we are trying to ensure that they are integrating into their communities in a thoughtful way,” said Elliott. Ultimately, cannabis’ presence in the urban landscape may depend on the arcana of tax policy. Currently, the state taxes cannabis purchases at 15 percent, and localities are free to add their own taxes. Many are doing so, arguing that — like it or not — cannabis represents a revenue source. Supporters of legalization caution against setting tax rates so high that they inadvertently privilege the black market.  Cromartie noted that the tax burden on legal cannabis is even heavier than it might appear. Cannabis businesses cannot take any federal tax write-offs and therefore must bear greater financial burdens than conventional businesses do.  “Unlike other businesses -- if they’re selling tires -- they get deductions from their taxes,” said Cromartie. “The cannabis business gets zip. They have additional overhead that other businesses don’t have, and they have to just eat it.” What this means for cities is that storefront cannabis is still competing with streetcorner drug deals.  “I think it's going to take 2-3 years to really implement a statewide licensing system that displaces the criminal market, at least for California,” said Gieringer. Contacts & Resources    California Cannabis Portal Weedmaps - California Be Green Legal Regulation Map Tim Cromartie, Senior Advisor for Cannabis Compliance, HDL Companies,  TCromartie@hdlcompanies.com Nicole Elliott,  Director, San Francisco Office of Cannabis,  nicole.elliott@sfgov.org Dale Gieringer, California State Coordinator, NORML,  dale@canorml.org Greg Minor,  Assistant to the Oakland City Administrator and staffer for the Oakland Cannabis Commission,  GMinor@oaklandnet.com Allan Steiner,  Client Relations Specialist, Green Rush Consulting,  services@greenrushconsulting.com Heather Stratman,  CEO, Association of California Cities-Orange County,   hstratman@accoc.org

The Lewis Center at UCLA released research suggesting that new housing developments in Los Angeles are, in general, not displacing older, affordable units, as many critics of market-rate development claim. The research looked at records of new multifamily development between 2014 and 2016 and found 13,749 units opened in 971 multifamily developments across Los Angeles. The researchers randomly selected 104 developments to conduct in-depth analysis. The analysis showed that more than 13 times as many units were constructed across the city than were demolished, and 22 percent of the new units were affordable. According to the findings, new multifamily developments are replacing single-family housing, and many new multifamily developments are being built on vacant lots. However, the majority of the single-family houses being demolished were in South Los Angeles neighborhoods and not the Westside. OPR Releases Annual Survey Results The Office of Planning and Research has released results of the 2017 Annual Planning Survey , distributed to all cities and counties in the state and provides the latest information on local planning activities, the status of city and county general plans, and an important local perspective on issues of statewide concern. In 2017, a total of 348 of the 540 cities and counties (64 percent  in California completed the Annual Planning Survey. This includes 302 of the 482 cities (62.6 percent) and 45 of the 58 counties (77.5 percent).  The survey asked agencies to report on whether their plans address issues such as health, aging, greenhouse gas emissions, access to food, and other pressing issues. This year, in addition to posting the full results of the APS, OPR provided an overview of transportation, land use, climate action planning, water conservation, in-fill, and open space. The survey also includes information on how local governments track progress on general plan policies.  Orange County Clashes with Cities over Homeless Housing Plans The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted , 4-0, to scrap a plan to relocate 400 homeless residents. Earlier in March, Irvine and Laguna Niguel each voted to sue Orange County and Huntington Beach officials opted to explore legal options of their own to shut down a plan approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to erect temporary tent cities for four hundred homeless people. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter insisted the Board find a more permanent solution for the homeless recently relocated from the Santa Ana riverbed. According to the plan, once the county’s stock of temporary shelter beds are filled, the next two hundred people would go to temporary tent-like structures at a 100-acre site adjacent to the Great Park in Irvine, once those fill up the next 100 people would be sent to an abandoned landfill area in Huntington Beach, and the next 100 people would go to a county owned parcel in Laguna Niguel next to City Hall, a library, and a daycare. Laguna Niguel residents are concerned their city would end up being the No. 1 choice because Irvine’s litigious community would immediately file a lawsuit and the “methane-filled” Huntington Beach site would be found unreasonable. Supervisor Bartlett (Laguna Niguel district) said she and Supervisor Michelle Steel (Huntington Beach district) would introduce an agenda item that the 400 people be moved to the El Toro Marine Base site. Amazon Fulfillment Center May Not be Boon to Fresno The City of Fresno affirmed a package of economic incentives last summer to locate an Amazon fulfillment center in the southwest corner of the city. The package will be worth up to $30 million over the next 30 years and the center will employ 1,500 workers when it opens later this year. A Washington, DC think tank, Economic Policy Institute, recently published a report that found on average, “Amazon’s fulfillment centers are ineffective at providing net job growth.” While the county gains roughly 30 percent more warehousing and storage jobs it loses jobs in other industries and merely shifts the composition of employment. The EPI economists explain that either the jobs created in the warehouse and storage sector are offset by job losses in other industries or the employment growth generated by Amazon is too small to meaningfully detect in the data. The researchers assert that rather than providing millions in tax rebates and other economic incentives to lure Amazon in hopes of stimulating job growth, local governments should invest in early-childhood education and infrastructure which have been proven to spur long-term economic development. Agricultural Plan Seeks to Preserve Farmland in Bay Area The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority recently released the the Santa Clara Valley Agricultural Pla n, billed as an innovative approach to agricultural preservation that will reduce future conversion of local farmland. The plan, with support from cities of San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy and the county, will map agricultural lands in Santa Clara Valley for conservation and identifying the regional GHG reduction potential. Santa Clara County has 24,000 acres of farmland that generates 8,100 jobs and $830 million in economic output. However, in the last three decades the County has lost 21,171 acres of farm and rangelands to development. The State launched the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program I 2015, which provides cap and trade funding to protect agricultural lands in order to reduce GHG emissions to meet California’s climate change goals.  San Diego to Account for Wildfires in General Plan In the wake of a horrific fire season, the City of San Diego is adding policies aimed at preventing massive wildfires to its general plan. The policies will be part of a new wildfire planning section and will cover everything from brush management guidelines to the use of fire-resistant building materials in dangerous areas. Many of the rules would only apply to homes located on the edges of canyons or where suburban neighborhoods bump up against undeveloped wilderness. The state Board of Forestry and Fire Protections approved the plans in January, the Planning Commission unanimously approved them last week, and the City Council is scheduled to okay them this spring. City officials say many of the new policies have already been in place but new state law requires all California cities to add them to their general plans. The website of the city’s Fire-Rescue Department provides residents with many tips for preventing wildfires and includes a how-to video on brush management. Contentious Brisbane Development May Go to Voters A battle over housing is brewing in Brisbane and will likely go to voters. The Brisbane City Council unanimously approved a housing development along the Baylands with as many as 2,200 units and 4 million square feet of commercial space. Councilmembers at the March 22 meeting said they felt pressure to build housing as a means of alleviating the regional housing affordability crisis but also said they are concerned about the project proposing to build on contaminated land. City officials will return with a proposed General Plan amendment that would allow between 1,800 and 2,200 housing units and up to 4 million square feet of commercial space. At the next meeting there will be a discussion about environmental remediation requirements and a fiscal impact analysis of the project. The project is most likely slated to become a ballot referendum, allowing voters to determine whether development is allowed at the site. Quick Hits & Updates  The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation's new  Food Truck Index, “Food Truck Nation,” highlights the more than $2.7 billion industry across cities in America. The report complied the rules governing food truck in 20 American cities and surveyed 288 food truck owners to strengthen the findings of the index. Los Angeles ranked 8th as friendliest to food trucks with relatively light regulatory burdens, but higher costs to operate than most other cities. San Francisco ranked 18th and among top five for most difficult cities for food trucks with 32 separate procedures to obtain permits and licenses with a minimum cost of $3,481. Former Sacramento Kings co-owner Gregg Lukenbill, a member of the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, says his group and others will contest any city effort to rip out train tracks in order to make room for a 4.5-mile recreational trail along an old and unused rail line that stretches through South Land Park. The line was last used by trains carrying farm products in 1978. The city is applying for regional bikeway funds this summer in the hopes of breaking ground in spring 2020. The San Francisco Examiner reports that in the two years since a law to encourage accessory dwelling units passed, only 23 new units have been built while 109 permits have been issued in the city. While advocates say ADUs can be an affordable way to help solve the housing crisis, the process is complicated and expensive. LA Metro has begun exploring whether some of its properties, including bus yards and Metro stations, could be used to provide services for homeless people. Metro Board of Directors asked the agency to prepare a list of properties that could accommodate showers, storage for belongings, parking lots where people could sleep in their cars overnights, or other facilities. Nearly three out of 10 riders told the agency that they stopped taking transit because they felt unsafe and the county’s rising homeless population has become a major concern for the agency. The board of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District rejected a nonbining letter of intent to purchase water from the Cadiz Inc.’s proposed project water-mining project in the Mojave Desert. The company is looking to pump as much as 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year and pipe it across the desert to sell to cities in Southern California. Board member Bryan Urias said lobbyists working for Cadiz have repeatedly contacted him trying to influence his vote. Originally the water district had decided to explore the Cadiz project as an option, but after the vote the board decided to take no action. The Oakland A’s are proposing purchasing the entire Oakland Coliseum site from the city and Alameda County. While the team isn’t committed to the Coliseum location, they don’t want another buyer snatching up the site. The A’s are proposing buying the site in exchange for paying off the city and county’s roughly $135 million in outstanding debt on the stadium and Oracle Arena. Orange County released a new Declaration on Housing which proclaims the county “is experiencing a substantial shortage of housing, which is creating a significant negative impact on household budgets and the quality of life of its residents, as well as diminishing out county’s workforce.” County staff have been directed to work with stakeholders to collaborate and prepare a report detailing how Orange County can facilitate the construction of housing under half a million dollars. The deadline for the report is June 11. The California Transportation Commission allocated $50 million in state funds to the Riverside County Transportation Commission to launch environmental studies to build tolled express lanes on the 15 Freeway corridor between Cajalco Road in Corona and Highway 74 in Lake Elsinore. The state agency also awarded $47.6 million to the I-15/ French valley Parkway interchange in Temecula, and $2.9 million to the I-15/ Railroad Canyon Road interchange in Lake Elsinore. Angelo Tsakopoulos, a prominent Sacramento real estate developer, contributed $2.02 million to his daughter Eleni Kounalakis’s bid to become California lieutenant governor. The California Fair Political Practices Commission said there’s nothing wrong with the financial arrangement (the money was contributed to an independent expenditure committee). Kounalakis has served as US Ambassador to Hungary in 2010 and worked in the family business, AKT Development, for nearly two decades. Cisco Systems Inc. announced it will donate $50 million over five year to address the growing homeless problem in Santa Clara County. The donation will go to Destination: Home, a public-private partnership that focuses on getting housing for the homeless as the first step in addressing other problems related to health, addiction, family estrangement, and joblessness. Los Angeles World Airports is looking for proposals to redevelop 93 acres just north of LAX and Westchester Parkway. That is approximately one-third of the 340 vacant acres it is eventually planning to develop with a mix of offices and shops, plus green space and pedestrian areas. One of the vacant parcels is zoned for office space but could also be used as recreational space while the other is zoned for low-density, landscaped office campus. BART General Manager Grace Crunican sent a letter to Bay Area legislators saying VTA and BART have reached an agreement on recommending building one tunnel instead of two for the long-awaited San Jose BART extension . Originally BART wanted a twin bore for safety reasons while VTA wanted a single bore because it would cause less disruption to downtown businesses and cost less to build. The two boards are set to meet this month to discuss the multi-billion-dollar project. According to a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), 53 percent of Californians still support high-speed rail despite the increase in cost and delays. The numbers are up from 48 percent in favor last year. In the Bay Area, 61 percent are in favor of the project. Two Bay Area developers, AGI/KASA Partners and Blake Griggs, are the last two teams facing off to develop a hotly contested 6-acre housing site in South San Francisco near the city’s BART station. The two groups have submitted proposals that could bring more than 800 units on a city-owned vacant piece of land near El Camino Real. City Council is expected to select a wining developer next week. Officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California had a board workshop last week in which they outlined ways the agency could finance the construction of two giant water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The state’s large agricultural irrigation districts have not committed to these future water purchases, meaning MWD and ratepayers from LA to San Diego could be stuck with a roughly $11 billion bill for the project. MWD’s board already voted last fall to invest $4.3 billion in the twin tunnel project.

CP&DR Vol. 33 No. 3 March 2018

Several environmental groups are suing the County of San Diego for its plans to use carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions from new housing and commercial developments. The County recently redrafted its Climate Action Plan under court order and the new document includes a plan that would allow developers to offset air pollution by purchasing carbon credits purchased through carbon registries. The suit, filed in San Diego Superior Court, argues the county has no way to verify the quality of the credits and should require all such off-set programs to be located within the county. The suit notes that the revised plan would facilitate the county’s approval of sprawl development over thousands of acres of greenfield lands in unincorporated areas, including nearly 20,000 new residential units already in the pipeline. Plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the Endangered Habitats League, Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Climate Action Campaign, and Preserve Wild Santee. City of Oakland Negotiates for Full Ownership of Coliseum Alameda County and the City of Oakland are negotiating a deal to sever their 52-year joint ownership of the Oakland Coliseum sports complex and surrounding land in the hope that a single owner would make it easier to build housing. City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said in a statement, “the city of Oakland and Alameda County are aligned in the view that development of the Coliseum property would be simplified and streamlined with a single owner that controls all aspects of the future development process.” The city would keep the land and would pay the county, however the county still owes about $38 million to the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Los Angeles School District Tries to Assess its Real Estate Holdings A Los Angeles Unified School District task force recently analyzed the school system’s vast real estate holdings, which cost millions of dollars a year to maintain. The LA Unified Advisory Task Force made three recommendations: 1) Take a careful inventory; 2) figure out how best to utilize these properties; and 3) engage the community along the way. The group recommends LA Unified hires real estate experts to complete an analysis. The nation’s second-largest school system owns 6,400 acres and includes 1,200 schools and centers. In its portfolio are also vacant lots, administrative buildings, operation plants and parking lots. The report states, “The district lacks a comprehensive strategy to manage these properties and utilize each asset at its highest and best use to support the district’s goals.” Court Decision Halts Martis Valley West Project Sierra Watch, Mountain Area Preservation, and the League to Save Lake Tahoe celebrate a court decision handed down  Monday  that halts the controversial Martis Valley West Project, a 7,428-acre project in North Tahoe that would include more than six acres of retail stores, restaurants, offices and sports equipment rentals as well as the homes. .  Placer County Superior Court  Judge Michael W. Jones issued an order to vacate and set aside Placer County’s 2016 approvals of the project, focusing on Placer County’s failure to provide sufficient CEQA analysis of the project’s impacts on emergency evacuation, such as in the event of a wildfire. The proposed project is located in a very high severity fire zone.  The conservation groups contend that the region’s community will benefit from the stoppage of a project that would threaten public safety, the local environment, and Lake Tahoe. Discovery of Faultline Prompts Redesign of San Diego Waterfront Redevelopment Unified Port of San Diego officials voiced approval for major alterations on Protea Waterfront Development plans after major earthquake fault lines were discovered on-site. The government agency that oversees the redevelopment of Seaport Village would not vote on changes until September. The big changes include moving the hotel and aquarium and turning the fault line into a pedestrian mall surrounded by trees. Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego submitted a letter to the board saying the new design would block view of the bay from the hotel, create traffic problems, and is disproportionate to the amount of land adjacent to the hotel. However CEO of Protea said he had a meeting planned with Hyatt later in the week to discuss solutions. Quick Hits & Updates Some farmers in Oceanside are opposed to a proposed ballot measure that could preserve the city’s disappearing agricultural land. The group filed a complaint with the city clerk, the county district attorney, and the state Fair Political Practices Commission saying the nonprofit Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources are violating state and local campaign laws by not filing the financial disclosure forms required by the FPPC. Neil Nagata, an Oceanside farmer and president of the San Diego County Farm Bureau wrote in the complaint, “Oceanside voters deserve to know who really is behind this measure.” Recent technical documents in the High Speed Rail Authority 2018 business plan indicate that a 30-mile stretch south of San Francisco no longer has dedicated tracks designed for speeds of up to 220 mph. Instead the stretch between San Jose and Gilroy would operate at 110 mph on ground-level tracks on or adjacent to an existing right of way owned by Union Pacific. This change in design may add several minutes to the trip but will save about $1.7 billion. The original design included elevated tracks and the use of significant private land. Facebook has announced plans for a new 465,000 square-foot office building at its headquarters in Menlo Park. Just eight months ago Facebook unveiled its plans for a Willow Campus with 1.75 million square-feet of offices, 1,500 homes, and 125,000 square-feet of retail space. According to San Jose ’s latest annual housing report the city only issued 475, or 20 percent, of its target number of affordable units last year. During the same time, the city issued permits for 2,622 new market rate units. Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “I would challenge other mayors and cities to step up and present their own plans because we are not going to build our way out of this housing crisis by confining our efforts to the city of San Jose. This is a regional problem.” The developer of a 27-story tech office center is San Francisco is proposing temporarily moving the historic Flower Mart to the congest Embarcadero to Piers 19 and 23. However many vendors and customers are concerned that the proposed location has many tourists which will not appreciate the trucks and semi trucks clogging Embarcadero. Flower Mart vendors were promised they’ll return to the new space at Sixth and Brannan after construction in two to three years.  Ground was broken on a $13 million effort to restore a wildlife corridor that will connect the Cleveland National Forest with Orange County wild coastal terrains. The project has been in the making for more than two decades and will encourage biological diversity in the animals that dwell in more than 20,000 acres of coastal chaparral surrounding Laguna Beach. The corridor is being funded by the Great Park developer, FivePoint Holdings, and is estimated to be completed by mid-2019. The San Francisco Police Department reported last spring that Lyft and Uber drivers were responsible for two-thirds of all traffic violations in downtown San Francisco. Bicycle activists in the city are protesting about the dangerous conditions and need for protected bike lanes as many ride-hailing drivers pull into bike lanes to load or unload passengers. In May 2017, the late Mayor Ed Lee proposed a pilot program of loading zones that would allow ride-hailing drivers some curb space to allow for loading and unloading of passengers. In exchange, the city would get data about where Uber and Lyft rides were happening. A consortium of developers wants to build 1,100 new homes around Balboa Reservoir in San Francisco but the group Save CCSF says eliminating the existing 2,000 parking spaces would hurt the City College. The group has now filed initial paperwork for a ballot measure that would prohibit development on the Balboa Reservoir site until a planned Performing Arts Education Center on an adjacent site is “built, completed and opened to the public.” The proposed development would include 80 homes at 55 percent AMI and 24 rental homes at 105 percent AMI, and 83 homes at 120 percent AMI. Los Angeles City Councilmembers pledged last week to build at least 222 units of permanent supportive housing in each of the 15 districts over the next three years. If they accomplish the goal, they would bring 3,330 supportive housing units to “every corner” of the city by July 2020. The construction of the buildings would come from Measure HHH, the $1.2 billion bond measure to finance the construction of 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over the next ten years. Travis Kalanick , the former CEO of Uber, has announced he will head City Storage Systems, a holding company that redevelops distressed real estate particularly for parking, retail, and industrial properties. Kalanick was ousted from Uber in June has bought controlling interest worth $150 million in the new company and says it is a 15-person start-up based in Los Angeles. Orange County Supervisors and various OC city councils have voiced concern over a recent proposal to place a homeless shelter on the site of an abandoned landfill in Huntington Beach. The opposition underscores the challenges Orange County faces as it tries to find housing for homeless people who have been evicted from massive camps along the Santa Ana River. A federal judge has said the county needs to find solutions. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission  adopted a 10-year investment strategy, which will direct $3.8 billion to 20 Bay Area projects. The focus will be primarily on Interstate Corridors and the Port of Oakland in Alameda County. MTC and the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) adopted a Goods Movement Plan in 2016 that will be implemented the plan and will confer many benefits for the region. Some of the benefits of the strategy will be to deliver projects that can improve mobility and economic vitality, addressing community and environmental concerns of freight, and enable the region to coordinate and compete for state and federal fund sources. According to a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association, walking across the street is more dangerous than it has been in more than a quarter-century. Nearly 6,000 pedestrians were killed by automobiles nationwide for the second straight year. In California, there were an estimated 352 pedestrian deaths between January and June 2017 making it the 15th- highest rate in the country.

Give Scott Wiener credit: Everybody in California is talking about housing and SB 827, and – truth be told – nobody’s talking about much of anything else. SB 827 is, of course, the now-famous bill that would pre-empt local control over certain residential projects located close to transit stops. It’s the most high-profile piece of legislation – other than the sanctuary state bill – to be proposed in California in a long time. Everybody’s talking about it. California’s burgeoning YIMBY groups are enthusiastically supporting it . A distinguished group of 22 urban planning and policy professors has taken the unusual step of endorsing it. Meanwhile, a curious alliance of renter activists and NIMBY groups are opposing it, often using harsh terms in the process – apparently because they share a common view that change will be bad for their very different constituencies: affluent homeowners and at-risk renters. (Indeed, the old rent control crowd has become very vocal against SB 827, fearing that low-cost old rent controlled buildings will be replaced by luxury high-rises.) These activists range from a candidate for Cupertino City Council, who argued in measured terms that there’s little evidence market-rate housing becomes affordable over time (probably true in Cupertino), all the way over to the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, which said that SB 827 is a “declaration of war on South L.A.” and said that Wiener is to gentrification what Donald Trump is to racism. Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, a former speaker of the California Assembly, is leading the charge for L.A. to oppose SB 827. His recent committee hearing on the topic yielded a bemused piece in Streetsblog wondering why NIMBYs in peaceful Beachwood Canyon, far from any transit, would froth at the mouth about SB 827. Even Joel Kotkin has weighed in, somewhat cryptically, apparently siding with the NIMBYs over the market advocates by saying: "If you live within a half mile of transit lines, developers can come in and reshape your areas with little public input." And yes, this debate has even spilled over onto the pages (both real and virtual) of California Planning & Development Report , where our Josh Stephens – admittedly an unabashed supporter of the YIMBY group Abundant Los Angeles – mixed it up with longtime Sierra Club leader (and former Berkeley planning commissioner) Eric Parfrey about whether the Club is being hypocritical in supporting infill development while opposing SB 827. Even Joel Kotkin has weighed in, somewhat cryptically siding with the NIMBYs over market advocates, “If you live within a half mile of transit lines,” he wrote recently , “developers can come in and reshape your areas with little public input.” The big question, of course, is where is all this going to go this year. One thing is clear: Unlike past efforts, it’s not going to go nowhere . Despite the significant resistance among NIMBYs and renters rights advocates, something along the lines of SB 827 is going to get passed. After all, last year, 15 housing bills were signed into law, including Wiener’s SB 35 , a distant cousin of SB 827. Furthermore, housing has taken center stage in the gubernatorial race, even if the don’t always address SB 827 head on. On the one hand are Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa , former big-city mayors who have endorsed the audacious goal of building a half-milion units per year. Then there’s John Chiang , who says that there’s no way that much housing will ever be built but we should throw tons of money at affordable housing. And finally there’s the leading Republican candidate, John Cox , who quite predictably is advocating an extreme streamlining of the California Environmental Quality Act to solve all housing problems. So what’s going to happen? Most likely it will come down to the question of affordable housing versus market-rate housing. In other words, will local overrides such as SB 827 apply to all housing projects? Or will they apply mostly to affordable housing projects? This is where we are beginning to see a shift in political alliances and possible political outcomes compared to past years. Up to now, the most influential lobbyists favoring infill development in Sacramento have been the affordable housing developers, both non-profit and for-profit, and their allies in the advocacy world, especially from the Bay Area. There is considerable pressure in that world to focus public policy exclusively on affordable housing. Think back to the Strategic Growth Council’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, funded by the cap-and-trade money. As the program guidelines were being developed, Bay Area affordable housing advocates were all over the process and the result is a major emphasis on affordable housing in a program that is, by statute, focused on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. And in political terms, focusing on affordable housing – by which I mean housing built with government subsidies and reserved for households with specific incomes – is a perfect way out of the political box, at least for in dealing with the renter advocates. If you run the risk of displacing tenants from low-cost but unsubsidized housing, what better outcome could there be than creating guaranteed affordable housing that those tenants – and others – can move back into. Yet there’s a growing belief on the part of housing advocates such as Wiener that affordable housing won’t solve the problem. No matter how much money is thrown at that particular problem – and Chiang, for one, is proposing another $9 billion bond on top of the $4 billion bond that will be on the ballot this fall – it’s not enough to make up the 2.5-million-unit gap that McKinsey Global Institute identified and that Newsom and Villaraigosa have promised to erase. In the view of all of those folks, the private market has to step up and build a lot of market-rate housing as well in order to solve the problem. But NIMBYs and affordable housing advocates simply don’t believe that’s going to happen – they think all the new development is going to be luxury and there isn’t going to be any filter-down of older housing to the middle classes. Some SB 827 opponents even seem to view Wiener as a kind of a shill for the private real estate development industry. The question, then, is whether the infill market advocates can overcome the NIMBY/renter opposition in Sacramento. Wiener definitely represents something new in California politics – a liberal democrat from San Francisco who is fighting folks on his side of the political spectrum over the role of the market in increasing housing supply and affordability. In the end, he may have to fold this year on the question of affordable housing with SB 827 – he’s already amending the bill to provide renter protections. But it’s clear that this new kind of Democratic housing advocate isn’t going to go away in California anytime soon.

A mixed-use project located near the Covina Metrolink station is exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act – at least insofar as parking requirements are concerned – because of SB 743.

I’ve always felt that CPDR is an invaluable resource for young (and old planners) trying to make their way through the maze of growth regulations and politics in the state. I have been a planner working in Northern California over the last four decades, working for three counties and spending a dozen years in the private sector. I also spent three years on the Berkeley Planning Commission, where I learned at least as much about the profession as I did in planning graduate school at UC Berkeley. I have also been an activist with the Sierra Club over the last twenty years. The recent blog post ( Sierra Club California Blazes Wrong Trail on Urbanism ) about Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB 827 and the Club’s position on the bill was incomplete and, at times, seemed mean-spirited. Some of the logic in at least one of the arguments in the blog also seemed sketchy and not based on actual facts. We all agree that California is facing a massive affordable housing crisis (which is also manifesting in other states, but the sheer numbers here are staggering). The crisis is calling out for state involvement and positive state leadership. We have been talking about this for some time. Sierra Club California, which is the organization and lobbying arm in Sacramento, represents over 180,000 members, or about one fifth of all members in the U.S. The blog piece quoted from some national growth and housing related policies that were adopted in 1970 and 2000. However, many are unaware that the state organization has adopted much more detailed housing and growth management policies and positions, which have been in place since 2000. SCC’s Growth Management Guidelines help our state legislative committee and our lobbying staff develop positions on specific bills (and also guide us when we take positions on state and local growth initiatives). We support the goal of increasing transit-oriented development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for decades--but we have concerns about the ill-conceived approach in SB 827. The bill is a flawed and unbaked piece of legislation that may never get out of a policy committee without serious revision. This bill is using the same undemocratic state-level pre-emption tactics that are being used by right-wing legislatures during the Trump era to squash local and progressive laws at the local level. As the press release from the national Club office that was cited in the blog noted, last year we saw this regressive tactic used in Louisiana and Tennessee in an effort to stop local affordable housing mandates for developers, using the very same blunt instrument -- removal of local zoning authority. There have also been examples applied to block local fracking bans, deregulate factory farms, suppress the minimum wage, and most recently, in a bill that just passed committee in Utah last month, restrict local elected officials’ ability to advocate for public lands protections. Curiously, the blog seemed to miss the point of these dangerous pre-emption laws related to housing. The blog criticized our staff for pointing to these dangerous laws and then argued unconvincingly that these very laws were “designed to downzone. The preemption was against local laws that favored dense development — which the Sierra Club supposedly supports. In other words, those laws didn’t have unintended consequences. They do exactly what their state legislatures designed them to do. SB 827, whether you love it or hate it, would do the opposite of those laws. How dumb does Kash think we are? The club’s opposition, therefore, takes place in some weird backwards land. It’s like ordering steak tartare and getting angry with the chef for not cooking it well done.” This is hyperbole and overwrought. The blog linked to the background news article and op-ed that described which local inclusionary housing programs were being attacked in Louisiana and Tennessee. Notably, prominent planning groups such as the American Institute of Certified Planners (I am a member) are actively opposed to these laws. The faulty logic expressed in the blog seems to assume that any housing project that is subject to these inclusionary ordinances are automatically multiple family, denser projects. No. The way many inclusionary housing programs work, the requirement to provide affordable units within the project (or pay an in-lieu fee) apply to all housing of a certain size, including conventional single-family home subdivisions. There is no evidence that the right wingers are trying to overturn local inclusionary laws because they force higher densities; the legislators are opposed to local agencies requiring developers to provide affordable units in their projects, because they think it’s bad for business and/or some sort of socialistic tactic. The blog then veers off into an ad hominen attack on Club activists in San Francisco citing a single disgruntled blogger. The blog also cites a dated 2015 SF Chronicle news article about the failed attempt by local Republicans, real estate interests, and others to stage a takeover coup of the local SF group. Needless to say, the attempt fizzled, because these people were not credible. The blog’s criticism of the positions taken on local development projects by SF Club activists is inaccurate and mean-spirited, especially the comments that these activists are, “in one way or another, reflective of the same older, wealthier constituencies that oppose new development in California generally. These are the folks who are leading the Sierra Club these days. What these club leaders may not realize is that they are at odds with the official policies of their own organization.” In fact, these leaders have supported high-density development in San Francisco, a city that is currently exceeding its State recommended housing allocation by over 200%. Parfrey is chair of the Sierra Club California Executive Committee. He can be reached at parfrey@sbcglobal.net

With a population 470,000, national population rank of 39th, and home of the largest port complex in the country, the City of Long Beach keeps a disproportionately low profile nationally. It also keeps a literally low profile, with much of the city limited to two story buildings. Over the past year, though, residents made a great deal of noise about the city’s first update to its Land Use Element since 1989 and failed attempts by planners to promote more mid-rise development. While the plan accommodates growth and cites a host of progressive goals, community opposition to upzoning led to vicious political battles and, ultimately, the adoption of a scaled-down Land Use Element, in the preliminary form of “PlaceType and Height” maps, on a 8-1 vote March 6. “PlaceTypes” refers to the plan's characterization of land uses; it is designed to de-emphasize specific uses and focuses on the form and character of the city's neighborhoods and districts. The council adopted an accompanying Urban Design Element and directed staff to prepare a programmatic environmental impact report. It was a contentious end to a process that lasted over a decade. Years ago, the Long Beach Planning Department laid out a series of goals meant to update its 1989 general plan and modernize the port city, known for beachy middle class homes on the southeast side (contributing to the nickname “Iowa by the Sea”) and for impoverished, largely minority neighborhoods in its northern half (celebrated as the infamous “LBC” by native Snoop Dogg). Those goals became more progressive with the recession of the late 2000s, which put the planning process on hold. The process resumed in what was, essentially, a different world several years ago, as sustainability and transit-oriented urbanism became more ingrained in planning orthodoxy. “I think it brings our land use element into the 21 st century by including a lot of new best practices in land use that were not even on the table when our element was last done in 1989,” said Linda Tatum, Planning Bureau manager at Long Beach Development Services. The plan is designed to achieve the following goals, according to the Planning Department: Address demand for housing, employment, and lifestyle choices for today and tomorrow. Guide where new development is located and what it should look like. Protect the character of existing single family neighborhoods. Preserve and protect our environment for future generations. Improve pedestrian experience and increase walkability. Aim to reduce the number of residents (76 percent) who commute out of Long Beach for work. Encourage larger open spaces by allowing a moderate increase in height limits in transit-oriented and mixed-use areas. All these goals may indeed by included in the new Land Use Element – but the scaled-down proposal was adopted only after a hugely contentious process over the last few months, during which opponents personally attacked the city’s planners. A Facebook group, “Say No to the LUE” led some of the most public opposition. Managers of the “Say No to the LUE” Facebook group declined to comment for this article. A notice on the group’s page reads, in part, “We forced our representatives to admit their failure to reach the citizens they are supposed to represent, causing them to vastly scale back an overly-ambitious and idealistic LUE, and replace it with one that allows for more modest and pragmatic growth.” Planning Department staff released an initial proposal in November. It recommended increases in residential density but limited those increases to roughly 16 percent of the city, largely on low-rise commercial corridors. For many residents, it was too dense and covered too broad an area. Ultimately, the Planning Department whittled down the LUE, and the City Council shrank it further to result in the maps adopted last week. Council members amended the LUE in the meeting leading up to the vote in fine detail, chopping certain lots zoned for five stories down to three and others from four stories to two. “The map came back to planning commission, who kicked it down a little bit. Staff also kicked it down a little bit in response to the feedback from a significant number of outreach efforts,” said Tatum. The LUE is designed to encourage significant housing and commercial development in the City’s Downtown core, invests in future housing opportunities along the Blue Line light rail, and identifies areas for modest growth throughout the city. Downtown, where the majority of the city’s dense development is expected to occur, was not included in the plan.  This comes against the backdrop of a housing crisis that is particularly acute in coastal cities. Long Beach’s formidable size gave it the potential to absorb a great deal of the region’s growth. Tatum said, though, that the city focused primarily on its own needs. “We know that the city doesn’t exist in a vacuum: everything from the housing crisis to traffic impacts are regional,” said Tatum. “You think about those things, but what’s happening with the regional housing crisis doesn’t in and of itself drive the city’s determination for what we recommend at a local level. We respect the needs of our city, so that was our primary focus.” Original drafts accommodated a generous amount of new housing. Tatum insists that even with the downzoning, the city has zoning capacity to meet its Regional Housing Needs Allocation. The city’s current RHNA allocation calls for the addition of on average 780 units per year. In the past three years, the city has added 300, 150, and 675, respectively. “We feel that the LUE that was adopted by city council last night…can indeed accommodate the city’s regional housing needs allocation,” said Tatum. She added that the LUE does not specify a number of units, in part because the map includes many mixed-use parcels, and the ratio of housing to commercial space that will be developed on those parcels is unpredictable.  The November draft of the LUE says that the plan accommodates a population “expected to reach 484,485 by 2040 a 3.2 percent increase from a population of 466,255 in 2012.” Tatum said that those estimates come from the Southern California Association of Governments. By contrast, the California Department of Finance estimates that the state will grow more than 15 percent in that same time period. New housing, though, is not necessarily the priority of many of the stakeholders who commented on the LUE. Many of the LUE’s amendments reflect the level of public participation in Long Beach and were designed to appeal to individual activists and neighborhood groups. The city’s directory lists 79 official neighborhood associations, many with ultra-specific constituencies. The city’s Wrigley neighborhood alone has five neighborhood associations.  Early drafts of the LUE inspired the formation of new neighborhood coalitions and the strengthening of others, many with a strong slow-growth ethos, in a similar pattern to those seen in many other built-out California cities. With each successive proposal, many groups retrenched their opposition, with city council members following suit. Long Beach realtor and Executive Director of the city’s Council of Neighborhood Organizations (CONO) Robert Fox threatened to run for mayor against incumbent Robert Garcia if demands were not met.  Ultimately, Fox and CONO agreed to support a late version of the LUE.  “We had stakeholders on both sides, and that tells us that we did something right,” said Tatum. “Everybody got something of what they wanted.” Josh Butler, executive director of advocacy group Housing Long Beach, noted that “everybody” is a relative notion. “Only Long Beach's White and Caucasian populations are majority homeowners, and they dominated the conversation. Long Beach's diversity was not represented,” wrote Butler in an email. “Having the voices of the underserved community would have been of great assistance to counter the anti-growth voices that dominated the conversation.”  Butler said that the LUE, in any form, is essentially ineffectual in the absence of effective citywide programs to promote affordable housing, such as an inclusionary housing requirement.  “With no built in component requiring affordable housing be included in market rate developments, the City left themselves in a position, wherein which the community does not believe that future growth will benefit them, and another half of the city who believes that future growth will hurt them,” wrote Butler. “The City placed themselves in a lose-lose situation.”  Tatum said that housing, including affordable housing, falls under the city's housing element , not its land use element. She noted that the Planning Department's housing staff is currently drafting recommendations for the city's housing policy.  The adoption comes after a contentious fall. In November, city staff recommended the reduction of permitted heights and densities across 686 acres that it deemed would have impacted single-family neighborhoods. In December, the Planning Commission voted to recommend those changes. Still, some groups, including “Say No to the LUE” remained wary of the plan, and some council members indicated that they would not vote for it until the last-minute changes.  The debate challenged the leadership of Garcia, who has enthusiastically promoted the city as a progressive place that constitutes more than just cranes and containers. He struck a conciliatory tone in a statement following last week’s vote: “I’m proud of the community and the City Council for adopting a responsible and forward-looking plan that protects residential neighborhoods and invests in our future,” said Garcia in a statement.  The Facebook group’s post invokes the vitriol of some of the discussions, saying, “There are vultures out there, not just politicians, but advocacy groups, lobbyists, special interests, unions, etc, who are all waiting for you to fall into irrelevance and disenfranchisement, so that they can push through their agendas and buy and sell Long Beach.”  Whatever developers’ agenda may be, city planners intend for them to pursue it in a more attractive fashion. Tatum said that she considers the Urban Design Element to be one of the more innovative aspects of the general plan update. And one that may placate anxious residents.  “Addresses it at a fairly granular level….to make sure that new development is compatible and contextual,” said Tatum. “For residents who have concerns about higher density and multifamily built up against single-family residences, it’s important that they know that that is something we gave a lot of thought and attention to.”  Contacts & Resources Long Beach General Plan Update Page November 2017 Draft Josh Butler , Executive Director, Housing Long Beach, jbutler@housinglb.org Linda Tatum , Planning Bureau Manager, Long Beach Development Services, linda.tatum@longbeach.gov

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders agreed to a $4 billion bond that would fund low-income housing and subsidize home loans for California veterans. This comes at the same time as the Legislature considers a package of legislation designed to address the state’s housing affordability crisis. SB 3 would authorize $3 billion to support construction of new homes for low-income residents and $1 billion for homeownership subsidies for veterans. Senate Bill 2 would add a $75 fee on mortgage refinancing and other real estate transactions to fund low-income home building. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon are also negotiating a bond measure to fund improvements to water and parks infrastructure. Estimated Cost of High Speed Rail System Rises by $13 Billion The California High Speed Rail Authority released its 114-page draft business plan, which found the cost of the entire system would be between $77.3 to $98.1 billion, an increase of at least $13 billion from two years ago. The authority said the earliest trains could operate between San Francisco and Bakersfield in 2029 and the full system by 2033. The new estimates will force California leadership to double down on its political and financial commitments if it wants to see the system completed. One of the major uncertainties was the cost of the 36 miles of tunnels through mountains in Southern California, which could range from $26 billion to $45 billion. CEO Brian Kelly said if there were greater certainty about future funding it could reduce costs and risks with a best-case scenario projects costs are as low as $63.2 billion. Despite the challenges, nearly 1,700 construction jobs have been created in the Central Valley. MTC Announces Recipients of 'One Bay Area' Grants The One Bay Area Grant 2 (OBAG 2) County Program has pledged approximately $386 million in federal funds to go to 180 transportation projects in 95 jurisdictions across the Bay Area. OBAG 2 is the policy framework for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's distribution in $862 million in federal Surface Transportation Program and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program funds from Fiscal Year 2017-18 to 2021-22. The OBAG 2 County Program of Projects was approved by the MTC Commission at the end of 2017. A majority of the funds will be directed to active transportation projects including bicycle and pedestrian projects (15 percent), Safe Routes to School (8 percent), and Transportation for Livable Communities (34 percent) projects. The commissioners also approved revisions to the OBAG 2 Project Selection and Programming Policy to clarify program details for the 80k by 2020 Challenge Grant initiative, a pilot program that incentivizes the production of affordable housing. These revisions also include increasing the number of jurisdictions eligible to receive the challenge grant from 10 to 15, clarify that the preservation of affordable housing units will be credited in the program, and adding a provision that at least one jurisdiction from each county will be awarded a challenge grant. Irvine Ballot Measure Will Determine Future of Voter Approval Irvine voters will decide June 5 if they want to keep the ability to vote on city development projects after Mayor Don Wagner proposed two ballot questions including one that would exempt development agreements approved by the City Council from voter approval. Residents however say this would again completely remove residents from the approval process. Resident Karen Jaffe is spearheading an effort to place a voter initiative on November’s ballot that would require a vote by city residents on developments that have more than 40 housing units, a commercial/industrial development bigger than 10,000 square feet, or converting public land to private use. Wagner accuses Jaffe and her supporters of being anti-growth and irresponsible. Mayor Pro Tem Christina Shea voiced support for Wagner’s ballot proposal saying the city is forecasted to have a $1.3 million drop in sales tax revenues due to online shopping. The other city charter amending proposals includes one that would increase the threshold to a two-thirds majority council vote before placing a tax increased proposal on ballots. Los Angeles Creates Position of Chief Design Officer  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Christopher Hawthorne as the first Chief Design Officer, a new post created to improve the quality of civic architecture and urban design across the city. Garcetti contends that Hawthorne will help bring a unified design vision to projects that are shaping the urban landscape, collaborate with city departments and public agencies to promote welcoming, economical and ambitious architecture and urban design. A key part will be to ensure transformative infrastructure and architectural projects are inclusive, accessible, and cost-effective. Hawthorne is a native of Berkeley, graduated from Yale where he studied political science and architectural history and has been serving as the architecture critic for the LA Times since 2004.   Quick Hits & Updates The San Francisco Foundation is teaming up with Facebook to fund affordable housing in Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. The foundation is contributing $1 million to Facebook’s Catalyst Housing Fund to build and protect affordable housing within 15 miles of the company’s hometown. Facebook created the Housing Fund in 2016 with $18.5 million and this will be the first outside contribution. The Foundation is one of the country’s largest community-based philanthropy organizations with over $1.4 billion in assets. It is also partnering with San Francisco and Enterprise Community Partners on the Hope-SP program. (See prior CP&DR commentary .) The Secretary of State reported 25 percent of the 365,880 signatures required by June 25 have been collected to amend Costa-Hawkins in the “Affordable Housing Act” ballot measure. The ballot measure is created by Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Christina Livingston, state director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, and Elena Popp, founder of Eviction Defense Network.  The San Diego City Council unanimously approved legislation that aims to create more housing for middle-income residents, including market-rate “micro” units averaging 600 square-feet. The incentives approved allow developers to build larger housing projects if they set aside some of the units for low-income seniors, former foster youth, disabled military veterans or homeless people. Developers will be allowed to double the size of the project if it consists entirely of units between 600 and 800 square-feet. The City of Los Angeles hopes to finish its modernization and expansion of the Convention Center by 2022 according to minutes from last month’s meeting of the Board of LA Convention and Tourism Development Commission. The current project is a public-private partnership between the city and AEG. AEG had proposed an expansion of the J.W. Marriott through a 38-story, 750-room tower on an existing parking lot but pulled the plans after the city announced its own plans to construct additional hotels on the Convention Center campus. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin pledged to sue the state to overturn Senate Bill 827 should it be approved. The state bill would increase housing density and heights near transit routes. However, Senator Wiener, author of the bill, critiqued Peskin’s challenge and said “with the average San Francisco rent for a two-bedroom at nearly $5,000 a month, I recommend that Supervisor Peskin focus les son lawsuits and inflammatory rhetoric and more on making sure everyone has a home.” (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Sacramento Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner agreed with a Republican lawmaker that the official title for Proposition 70 , a ballot measure laying out rules for future climate change revenues collected by the state, must be rewritten otherwise voters in June would be misled. The ballot title was originally written as “Limits Legislature’s Authority to Use Cap-and- Trade Revenues to Reduce Pollution” and will be changed to “Requires Legislative Supermajority Vote Approving Use of Cap-and-Trade Reserve Fund.” Prop 70 would require the Legislature to take a one-time vote in 2024 on how revenues collected from cap-and-trade are spent. According to a study by the Governors Highway Safety Association between January and June 2017, 352 people were struck and killed by motor vehicles in California. The majority of state pedestrian fatalities occur in LA County and 20 pedestrians died in San Francisco. In 2014, San Francisco instituted the Vision Zero SF program, which seeks to eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2024. According to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, new houses are being built fastest in places where they are most likely to burn: wild fringes of urban areas, such as neighborhoods surrounded by canyons, hills, or other open land covered in flammable vegetation. In Southern California between 1990 and 2010, new homes went up twice as fast on the edge of developed lands than in the region as a whole. Riverside County leads the area with over 190,000 more houses built in high-risk areas during that period, an increase of about 75 percent. According to a report from the Real Estate Research Council of Southern California, the city and county of San Diego issued 4 percent fewer residential building permits in 2017 than the previous year. Overall building was down because of a reduction in apartment and condo construction, despite an increase in single-family home construction. Building permits for 9,580 new housing units were pulled in 2017, which is down from 9,972 in 2016 and 9,975 in 2015. Most of Southern California saw increased building permits in 2017, up seven percent among the seven counties, compared to 2016. Only San Diego and Orange counties saw less demand. According to a report from the California Housing Partnership, homeowners received $5.8 billion in subsidies through the ability to deduct interest on their mortgages and property taxes from state tax bills while renters only received $215 million in housing subsidies. The rental subsidies are for low-income renters and a state tax credit for developers to help finance low-income rental projects. Banning City Councilmembers expressed concerns about a proposal to build a bypass to the 10 freeway that the Riverside County Transportation Department wants to construct in the southern part of the city. The bypass would offer an alternative route in case the freeway is closed or at a complete standstill. The councilmembers are worried about wear and tear, cost of upkeep of city streets, traffic through residential areas, and security if trucks are using the bypass to avoid nearby California Highway Patrol inspection station. Banning City Councilmembers expressed concerns about a proposal to build a bypass to the 10 freeway that the Riverside County Transportation Department wants to construct in the southern part of the city. The bypass would offer an alternative route in case the freeway is closed or at a complete standstill. The councilmembers are worried about wear and tear, cost of upkeep of city streets, traffic through residential areas, and security if trucks are using the bypass to avoid nearby California Highway Patrol inspection station.

The City of Los Angeles released its first citywide Resilience Strategy to help prepare for natural disasters and other stresses that the city might face. Mayor Eric Garcetti also signed an executive directive that commits city departments to appoint Chief Resilience Officers who will take the lead in making the city stronger and safer. The city worked with 100 Resilient Cities pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Los Angeles Resilience Strategy features 96 immediate actions that give residents the tools to plan and prepare from earthquakes and flooding to homelessness and climate change. The plan is organized around four main pillars which includes 15 goals: Safe and Thriving Angelenos, Strong and Connected Neighborhoods, Prepared and Responsive City, and Pioneering and Collaborative Partner. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Bay Area Landfill Areas Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise UC Berkeley and Arizona State researchers released a new study in Science Advances that indicates the threat of climate change-driven sea level rise will be a threat particularly for landfill developments such as Treasure Island and Foster City. The research was based on data collected via satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (inSAR) and GPS monitoring from 2011 to 2017. According to senior author Roland Bürgmann, the vulnerability of landfill zones, which are sinking due to soil compaction, means buildings and roadways are sinking as sea level is coming up. Earlier studies on the vulnerable San Francisco Bay shoreline did not take land subsidence into account. S.F. Seeks to Charge TNCs Infrastructure Impact Fees San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution from Supervisor Aaron Peskin that urges state legislators to enable San Francisco to impose infrastructure impact fees on transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft. Peskin pointed out that cities like New York City, Portland, and Philadelphia have “been getting fees in some instances and taxes in others from transportation network companies to ameliorate the impacts they have.” The resolution will be communicated to San Francisco’s state representatives: Senator Scott Weiner and assembly Members David Chiu and Phil Ting. Report Examines South L.A. 50 Years after Unrest According to a new study by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin school, it’s been 50 years since the Kerner Commission’s report on urban unrest and South L.A. has experienced little economic progress. In the 1960s, South LA workers made 80 cents on the dollar compared to the average LA County worker and today it’s closer to 60 cents. The pay gap is widening in part by a steady decline of male wages. The report also finds inequalities in homeownership, car ownership, educational attainment, and early childhood preparation.  Facebook Pitches New Campus to Menlo Park Facebook presented to Menlo Park Planning Commission its plans for a new 59-acre campus that would accommodate an additional 9,500 workers. Facebook executive John Tenanes said the social media giant would have roughly as many employees as the city has residents once its fully built out. Tenanes said Facebook plans to employ approximately 35,000 people east of Highway 101 and the city’s population last year was roughly 35,670. The new campus, Willow Village, would be constructed in four phases and some offices would be occupied by 2021. Willow Village would include 1.75 million square feet of offices, minimum 1,500 housing units, 126,500 square feet of retail, 200 hotel rooms, 18 acres of open space, and a cultural and visitor center. A fear with the project is that it will exacerbate the area’s jobs/housing balance especially as the offices would open before the housing units are completed. Lawmakers Seek to Head Off Displacement in South L.A. Three Los Angeles council members have introduced new measures to prevent displacement in South Los Angeles. The motion notes neighborhoods in South LA are especially vulnerable to displacement, unemployment, wage stagnation, and urban blight which has been reinforced by practices such as historic redlining, foreclosures, and predatory lending. The motion would direct the Chief Legislative Analyst, Community Investment Department, Economic and Workforce Development Department, and the City Attorney to report back with a feasibility study on the former Redevelopment Agency of San Francisco-style program. Survey Claims Downtown Los Angeles Is Fastest-Gentrifying Neighborhood Nationwide A new survey from RentCafe found Downtown Los Angeles (90014) took the number one-spot for fastest gentrifying zip code in the country and 90013 which encompasses parts of Skid Row came in 12th. Between 2000 to 2016, median home values in downtown rose roughly 700 percent. The report used 2000 census and 2016 American Community Survey to examine 11,000 zip codes for median home value, median household income, and population that holds a bachelor’s degree or higher. One downtown resident and broker at the Agency, Maranda Blanton, said it became evident in the new grocery stores that started popping up, “Now we have a Whole Foods, Ralphs, and every dining establishment is looking for a property in Downtown.” The majority of the survey's fastest-gentrifying zip codes are on the East Coast.  Quick Hits & Updates San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott released a 15-page opinion on the proposed ballot initiatives from SDSU for the former Qualcomm Stadium as major concerns of continuing city control. Earlier this year, Elliott’s office issued a similar analysis of SoccerCity’s initiative. The memo notes if the city sells the site to SDSU, it would lose control over the property because the city’s development regulations and processes would not apply. Although terms of a purchase and sale agreement could be made, but are currently unknown until after the election. The environmental review also would not be conducted until after the election.   Riverside County transportation officials are considering adding additional westbound lanes on 91 Freeway toll lanes in Corona because the lanes opened almost a year ago have far surpassed expectations. Since the 91 toll lanes open in March, they’ve been used by 1.2 million vehicles, about 40 percent more than the agency projected. Several communities in California are suing oil and gas companies over climate change. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled the far-reaching scope of issue puts the matter in federal jurisdiction. The judge denied the request by San Francisco and Oakland to move their cases to state court. The seven cities and counties are seeking to recoup billions of dollars from fossil-fuel-energy producers to compensate for past and future damage incurred because of rising sea levels. Snap Inc , which owns 14 locations and 163,000 square feet of office space in Venice Beach, has announced it will begin leasing more than half of its Venice office space so that it can consolidate hundreds of employees inside a corporate office park near Santa Monica Airport. The company signed a long-term lease for the 300,000 square feet Santa Monica Business Park last year. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) San Bernardino County Transportation Authority is looking at a $425 million project to add express toll lanes on a 12-mile stretch of the 15 freeway from Duncan Canyon Road to Cantu Galleano Ranch Road. The route is heavily used with about 223,000 vehicles a day of which 20,000 are commercial trucks. The authority is now accepting public comments on the draft environmental documents for the project. The comment period will close March 16. Transportation Agency for Monterey County board is set to begin the search for an environmental review and project development consultant for the Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway. This 24-mile, 12 foot-wide biking and walking trail would run in two giant loops from Del Rey Oaks to Marina, through the former military base. The $1 million scope of work, funded by state and local money, will start in late June. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Pacific Grove City Council passed an ordinance, 4-1, that turns the city's short-term rental policy to include a lottery system which would get the number of STRs down from 290 to 250 and make it so only 15 percent of housing per block is dedicated to such rentals. The lottery will also include the adoption of a 55-foot zone of exclusion to address density problems. The California State Historical Resources Commission voted unanimously to support the City of Norco’s efforts to get a World War II-era naval hospital and missile research laboratory on the National Register of Historic Places. A previous attempt to get the building recognized was rejected in 2013 after a Navy survey disagreed with the city on the property’s merited inclusion. This time, the city hired a consultant who spent three years documenting the history and compiling thousands of records along with support from historic preservation groups. The Developer of a $72 million apartment project in LA Harbor Gateway neighborhood is being charged with making illegal campaign contributions to local politicians while seeking a zone change for his property. Prosecutors with LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s office charged Samuel Leung with one felony count of conspiracy to commit campaign money laundering and one felony count of offering to bribe a legislator. If convicted, Leung could face up to four years and eight months in state prison. The Long Beach Harbor Commission recently approved plans to build a $820 million railyard that supporters say will cut pollution and speed up cargo handling at the nation’s second busiest port. The 171-acre project is forcing 39 businesses out of the area and with little land available due to marijuana growers moving in. The Port officials say they have already identified spaces for the owners and tenants to move to and will offer fair price for their land. Construction on the railyard could begin in 2020 and will take several years. Rancho Cucamonga City Council approved, 4-1, plans to transform Empire Lakes golf course into a high-density, urban community with new homes, community center, and shops. The Golf Course will be sold May 31 to the Lewis Group of Companies, which plans to build between 2,650 and 3,450 homes and 220,000 square feet of nonresidential uses. The site is a 15 minute walk from the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station. Local transportation advocates hope to place a ballot measure before voters in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange Counties in 2020 that could fund the electrification of Metrolink . This would allow for higher-frequency service such as four trains per hour between Irvine and Union Station and eight trains per hour between Union Station and Burbank. The opening of Milpitas and Berryessa BART stations will be delayed to January or March 2019 due to delays in testing, breakdowns in communication, and lack of personnel. Ratcliffe did say the project is still within budget. Almost a year after Metro pronounced the 710 freeway extension dead, South Pasadena hired an outside attorney to help the city redouble its efforts to fight the tunnel extension. On March 1, a letter to Caltrans listed four historic structures would be damaged by drilling. Caltrans is the lead agency on the project and until Caltrans signs the environmental analysis the project is not official decided. In May of last year, Metro unanimously voted not to build the tunnel saying the $3-5 billion price tag was prohibitive. San Francisco water officials will begin charging property owners a new “ storm-water fee ” to help with the upkeep of the city’s aging sewer system. However, for the first time 500 vacant lot owners will be included. One resident was notified that starting July 1 he will be assessed $31.46 per month for runoff on his vacant lot. According to the Public Utilities Commission, every inch of rainfall on the 47-square-mile city puts about 430 million gallons into the stormwater runoff system. San Francisco Board of Supervisors  unanimously supported , 9-0, the San Francisco Giants’ 28-acre development at Mission Rock which includes stores, cafes, markets, offices, and up to 1,500 housing units on an existing surface parking lot. The housing would be 40 percent affordable to low-and moderate-income people and include eight acres of open space. Residents in Fresno have asked a judge to overturn the city council’s January approval of a development permit for a proposed industrial park. The South Central Neighbors United filed the lawsuit in Fresno Superior Court and alleges the city did not fully evaluate the potential environmental effects that the project would have on nearby residents. Attorneys for the residents believe the project requires a full EIR to comply with CEQA.

As best I can tell, Bird scooters resemble their namesakes insofar as they look like ashen, emaciated carcasses of storks when they are perched on sidewalks, often to the surprise of unsuspecting pedestrians. This morning, I left my apartment at an unusually early hour and was greeted by a downright Hitchcockian sight: an flock of six of them on my doorstep where, the previous evening, there had been nothing.  One can only imagine the journeys they took, winging their way through the Westside, until coming to roost again.  Bird is based in, and was first deployed in, Santa Monica. It has spread to San Diego  and elsewhere, and, with a fresh $15 million of capital, more cities are to come. Bird’s careers page lists 13 major cities nationwide where they're hiring. This  invasion  presents a moral quandary. I want to hate them. They are annoying and juvenile in the way that all “disruptive” technologies are annoying and juvenile. But I find myself oddly attracted to them.  At their best, Birds are yet another weapon in the war against the “first-mile, last-mile” problem -- and an especially effective one at that. They have evolved from the Precambrian species of bike share, by which ugly, heavy bicycles are made available at docking stations. I like bike share, partly because the docks create a sense of place. But, let’s face it, they’re hard to ride, and they aren’t always where you want to be. Bird scooters are more directly descended from dockless bike share, in which bikes are locked to themselves and located via app and GPS, thus making them footloose. Dockless bikes have proliferated in China where, with competing companies operations semi-legally in the public realm, they have devolved into nuisances in many cities.  Bird improves on this model in a few ways. Most notably, its scooters are motorized, so they can whisk travelers along sidewalks and roads effortlessly. They also solve the eternal sartorial predicament of bicycles. By enabling riders to stand up, they don’t muss one’s clothing. They’re lightweight and, as noted, conveniently thin, so they can maneuver in tight spaces and park just about anywhere.  Lithe as they may be, the scooters travel up to 15 miles per hour and have ranges over 30 miles. Bird resorts to crowd-sourcing to charge and rebalance them every night. I guess I have a neighbor who’s signed on.  For all of these reasons, electric scooters like Birds (and a forthcoming competitor from Limebike, a Chinese dockless bike share company) might be the perfect first-mile, last-mile mode of transportation. My apartment is, for instance, a 5-minute Bird ride to the 720 bus, one of the most heavily traveled bus line in California. You can hop off the Expo Line and on to a Bird and get clear across Santa Monica — roughly three miles square — in 15 minutes.  And yet… Let us count the ways in which Bird scooters offend the sensibilities and violate the law (aside from inviting avian puns). Woe to the wheelchair-bound pedestrian who encounters a “parked” scooter in a sidewalk. I’ve already tossed a few ADA-noncompliant scooters out of the way, but many disabled people will not be so adept. This is one detriment unlikely to be considered by the proverbial 25-year-old aspiring tech billionaire.  Svelte as they are, scooters threaten to turn into visual blight if and when they become too plentiful in high-traffic areas. It’s worth noting that Lime scooters aren’t nearly as skeletal as Birds are.  Scooters beg for violations of the law, including regulations that prohibit riding on sidewalks in certain cities.  A sticker on each Bird scooter reminds riders that they’re required to wear helmets. By my casual count roughly 0 percent of riders comply. So, who’s liable when someone cracks his head on the pavement?  By what rules of God and humanity drivers supposed to follow if they encounter scooters in the street?  As an anarchic element of urbanism, the problems Birds pose are mostly minor and probably correctable. But they should not be allowed to fly under the radar, as so many other “disruptive” services have done. The spats between Uber and city governments have become legendary, as arrogance has run headlong into bureaucracy. The same goes for Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber. Bird is already getting into it  with the City of Santa Monica (and losing ), and San Diego seems none-too-pleased .  Unlike some of those companies, though, Bird seems to have benign origins. Founder Travis VanderZanden left Uber (and previously Lyft) and says he was motivated more by the chance to provide mobility to the masses than by the potential for profit. Quite un-Kalinack of him.  As for urban planners: scooter-share presents either a revelation warranting the wholesale redesign of the pedestrian realm or yet another bauble.  The former scenario may seem extreme, but it goes to one of the core questions of planning: do planners plan cites according to their best principles and let people and technologies make the most of that framework? Or do they accommodate and try to capitalize on new technologies? In terms of transportation, the most extreme example of the former approach would be a subway. The most extreme example of the latter: the automobile.  If scooters proliferate, planners have all the more reason to reclaim pavement from cars, creating more sidewalks, bike lanes, or, indeed scooter lanes. Scooters might warrant further transit investments as they widen the traditional walk-sheds of transit stops. They might influence parking requirements and warrant the conversion of on-street parking spaces into scooter corrals. Or maybe they’re benign enough, and our existing streetscapes accommodating enough, that we can indeed let them evolve organically and not freak out about them.  As Richard Sennett notes in his forthcoming book Building and Dwelling, "every innovation suffers by definition from a mismatch between the ways people currently do things and the way they might do things." And, of course, innovations keep coming, some improving on previous iterations, some neutralizing them, some proving that the previous innovations weren't so innovative after all.  Really, the best response might be to sit tight, let Bird do its thing, and wait for the arrival of flying cars.