If ever a movie made a star out of a building, the movie was Blade Runner and the star was the Bradbury Building . Rumor has it that it was restored in part because of the fame director Ridley Scott conferred on it by making it the setting for the death of Roy Batty, the emotional undoing of Deckard, and one of the more potent testimonies to the fragility of humanity. The real Los Angeles is thus better off for what happened in the fictional Los Angeles. Then again, 2019 is still two years away. Blade Runner created a dystopic vision of Los Angeles that remains as culturally potent today — if not more so — than it was when it came out in 35 years ago. It shows up in books, articles , and offhand remarks with astounding regularity. It’s a testament to the arresting visuals of hyper-dense polyglot streets illuminated by sparkling advertisements and the possibility, however slim, that our sunny, spread-out paradise could, someday, become one of the dark places of the earth. After all, perhaps the biggest fantasy to come out of Los Angeles is Los Angeles itself. For all the theorizing about Blade Runner, it’s worth asking not what Scott was saying about the future of Los Angeles (or of cities in general) but rather why he chose Los Angeles in the first place. If Blade Runner had taken place in an older, more endearing city — say San Francisco or London — we’d be sad to witness its demise. If it had taken place someplace more generic, like Phoenix, Denver, or Gotham City, we might not care. Los Angeles hit the sweet spot between lamentation and acceptance, and, as Mike Davis says, between sunshine and noir. Director Ridley Scott, like his fellow Briton Reyner Banham, approached Los Angeles with equal parts dread and fascination. His choice was not so much a commentary on the Los Angeles of the future but rather of the Los Angeles of the present. K trudges down a sunless street in Los Angeles in 2049. The challenge that speculative fiction faces, of course, is that eventually the future catches up with it. Blade Runner 2049 takes place 30 years later, in an even bleaker world. An apparent combination of nuclear war, climate change, and technological sabotage has rendered the planet even less habitable than it was before. The dove that Batty released years ago has left no offspring. J.F. Sebastian, the sad-eyed toymaker in the first film, jokes, “No housing shortage around here. Plenty of room for everybody” since everyone who can has moved Off-World. That’s how he can afford an entire office building for his dolls and marionettes and how Deckard can afford to live in an architectural masterpiece on a cop’s salary. In the intervening years, though, the housing shortage has returned with a vengeance, not necessarily because the world has more inhabitants but because it has less land. The moral question, of course, is whether the city should accept all who need safe haven. That’s the same question that today’s Los Angeles is asking itself – or should be asking itself, at any rate. In 2049, untold numbers of stragglers, humans and replicants alike are forced into cities, where they subsist on synthetic food and artificial light. In fact, there may be no cities – plural. From the looks of things, there may be nothing else left besides Los Angeles, with all of humanity and non-humanity crammed into a piece of land whose chief virtue is that it is not radioactive. K, the new blade runner designed to hunt his own kind, searches among tens — or maybe hundreds — of millions of Los Angeles residents, all waiting for their time to die. Areal shots depict the city’s familiar endless rows of boulevards and residential streets. The houses that dot Reyner Banham’s Plains of Id are replaced by high-rise shantytowns, made up of apartment buildings, each many stories tall, each more dilapidated than the last. Mere dingbats they are not. In this Blade Runner, the billboards walk the street, as 80-foot tall interactive holograms that shake their asses just for you. (We’ve come a long way from Angelyne.) Skyscrapers rise into the ochre fog, and all is overshadowed by the new citadel of the Wallace Corporation, the corporation that rose from the ashes of Tyrell. There’s a popular Angeleno parlor game in which you try to spot real-life locations, whether they’re playing themselves or standing in for other places. The original Blade Runner was not all fantasy. Somewhere beneath the gas flares, the billboards, and Tyrell’s pyramid are the Ennis House, Union Station, and, of course, the Bradbury Building. These locations give Blade Runner a sense of reality, at least to those of us who live in L.A. -- a chilling reminder that that the future may be closer at hand than we think. That game brings few rewards with Blade Runner 2049. Director Denis Villeneuve wisely avoided the Bradbury Building, which, in the world of Blade Runner, is as fraught and freighted as Calvary. But it was far from his only omission. In fact, not a single, structure or landscape connects fiction to reality. Villeneuve offers no ruins or repurposed vestiges of the old city. The camera catches no glimpses of a ruined Dodger Stadium, a looted Getty Center, or even a lifeless palm tree. The Wilshire Grand does not stand next to the fictional police station. We know Blade Runner 2049 takes place in Los Angeles only because of arbitrary signifiers, like the LAPD, and because of its cosmetic resemblance to the city in the previous film, not to the one that lives and breathes, evolving before our eyes. In only a single, fleeting sequence in does the cityscape of Los Angeles becomes legible. K flies his Spinner police cruiser over a recognizable, but altered, expanse of the Los Angeles Basin towards what used to be the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Tendrils of ocean creep into what used to be Venice and the other coastal communities. A metal seawall the height of the Hoover Dam and width of the coastline itself protects the city from the bloated Pacific. It’s obviously not a prescription. And yet, some among us appreciate the original Blade Runner for its urbanity: the density, the diversity, and the grit. By avoiding Los Angeles entirely, the sequel lacks that exquisite ambivalence, making Los Angeles seem less human — it is a replicant of itself. Los Angeles does not so much play itself as it stands in for the entire world, obliterated beyond recognition. Villeneuve’s vision conveys more about the future of cities in general than it does about Los Angeles specifically. (Las Vegas makes a cameo, however.) A seawall protects what is left of Los Angeles from the risen Pacific.  Interestingly, of all the reasons that Scott might have envisioned for the demise of the world, climate change surely was not one of them. Blade Runner came out in 1982, after all. If anything, he probably had in mind the Cold War, signified by passing references to our them-communist antagonists, Russia and China. So, while the fictional city hasn’t changed much, its allegorical power has changed dramatically, as the real threats to humanity have evolved (and, arguably, worsened). So, Blade Runner may yet turn out to be a prediction. If the Los Angeles of the original Blade Runner was, as Ridley Scott put it, “Hong Kong on a bad day”, the updated version is closer to Mumbai or Lagos. The misery and squalor of K’s Los Angeles of the future prevails today in plenty of real places on our own planet. Add rising seas or an unthinkable human tragedy, and more people may have to cram into smaller areas. Urban planners are going to have to be ready for that — maybe not in California, but in plenty of other places – and we’re going to need compassion, cooperation, and emotional resilience just as dearly as we’re going to need planning wisdom and technological advances. We’re all going to have to be ready to find out how human we really are. Images courtesy of Sony Pictures.

The First District Court of Appeal has concluded that a challenge to a 16-home project on Laurel Way in Redwood City is not ripe for a challenge under the Subdivision Map Act. The city issued a planned development permit, which covered the installation of infrastructure but not actual approval of the homes. A citizen group challenged the approval, claiming that the Subdivision Map Act’s grandfather provision did not apply to the 1926 Map that is being used for the project. But the appellate court ruled that because the PDP dealt only with infrastructure and not actual homes, the challenge was not ripe. Save Laurel Way v. City of Redwood City, A147942 .

In an important followup to the Berkeley Hillside case, the First District Court of Appeal has upheld a CEQA exemption for a three-unit condo project just below Coit Tower in San Francisco. Neighbors argued that the project’s unique location on Telegraph Hill represented “unique circumstances” that should have overridden the CEQA exemption. Relying on the California Supreme Court’s ruling in Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley (2015) 60 Cal.4th 1086, the appellate court disagreed. “ he project is within the density, height and bulk limitations for its designated zoning,” wrote Justice Peter Siggins for a unanimous three-judge panel. “It will also be immediately adjacent to a four unit building of similar proportion. It would be odd at best for us to conclude a development project that conforms with zoning requirements on Telegraph Hill is in and of itself an unusual circumstance that requires CEQA review. We decline to do so.” The court also rejected the neighbors’ argument that conditions of approval imposed by the San Francisco Planning Commission were really mitigations under the California Environmental Quality Act, suggesting that the CEQA exemption was invalid. But the court knocked that argument down also, creating a potentially important distinction between The case involved a plan to restore a 1,000-square-foot 1906 cottage and building three new condomiums ranging in size from 3,700 to 4,200 square feet, all on a mostly vacant 7,500-square-foot lot just below Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Although the proposed development project is similar in scale to adjacent buildings, it generated controversy in the neighborhood. (More background on the project, including photographs of the site and the proposed project, can be found in an SFCurbed article here . ) The Planning Commission approved the project in 2014 with a number of conditions of approval designed to minimize the disruption of the project during construction. Under the San Francisco City Charter, the Planning Commission has broad discretionary power to impose conditions on projects. The Planning Commission also exempted the cottage rehab from CEQA under a categorical exemption for restoration and rehabilitation, and the three condos because the project was less than four units. The citizen group Protect Telegraph Hill sued, arguing that the exemptions were wrongly applied and the conditions imposed were really CEQA mitigations that were inappropriate to be imposed in a conditional use case. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Teri L. Jackson ruled in favor of the city and Protect Telegraph Hill appealed. On appeal, the neighbors argued that, among other things, the situation involved “unusual circumstances” that should have overridden the CEQA exemptions. The neighbors called the location and site constraints “unequivocally rare,” and says the exception applies because it is the “ first among the ‘Outstanding and Unique Areas’ that ‘contribute in an extraordinary degree to San Francisco’s visual form and character.” The neighbors also argued that this unique character is reflected in the city’s general plan and urban design element. But the appellate court disagreed. “The City rejected the notion that the designation of Telegraph Hill in the urban design element supports a claim of unusual circumstances, and so do we,” the court wrote. “ The full description of the Hill in the element shows that it is lined with low, small-scale buildings with flat roofs that hug the topography. While one may argue the scale of the proposed building, this seems a question of degree rather than an unusual circumstance.” The neighbors’ other major argument was that the conditions of approval were really CEQA mitigations that the city should not have imposed as part of a conditional use approval. But the court wrote, “There is simply nothing in this record that demonstrates the Board was imposing the additional conditions in order to mitigate the project’s significant environmental effects as opposed to taking precautions to address the ordinarily anticipated inconvenience and danger that arises when significant construction activity occurs in a congested urban environment like San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill.” The Case: Protect Telegraph Hill v. City and County of San Francisco , No. A148544 (published October 13, 2017) The Lawyers: For Protect Telegraph Hill: Susan Brandt-Hawley, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com For City and County of San Francisco: Andrea Ruiz-Esquide, San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, andrea.ruiz-esquide@sfgov.org For developers of lot (real parties in interest): James Reuben, Reuben, Junius & Rose, jreuben@reubenlaw.com , and Anna C. Shimko, Burke,Williams, & Sorenson, ashimko@bwslaw.com .

The City of Stockton City Council voted unanimously to approve  the first phase of downtown’s proposed Open Window redevelopment project. The proposed project includes 15-square-blocks of mixed-use development with about 1,000 residential units, 90,000 square-feet of commercial space, and 110,000 square feet of industrial/art studio space. Last week, the City Council increase the city’s commitment of funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that is required to rebuild parts of downtown’s aging infrastructure. In 2016, the council voted to set aside $3.8 million but that number has increased to $6.18 million. The $67.5 million project is expected to break ground in 2018. Bakersfield Park Named to APA’s ‘Great Places' American Planning Association released its 15 “Great Places in America”. These neighborhoods, public places or streets are celebrated for being exemplary planning that results in stronger, healthier, and more just communities. Mill Creek Linear Park in Bakersfield was the only California community to be a designee. The 1.5-mile urban trail won in the “2017 Great Public Spaces” category along with four other projects nationwide. The park was originally an irrigation canal that has evolved into the center of revitalization for downtown Bakersfield. It connects several civic resources and has been credited with spurring revitalization in downtown Bakersfield. The APA writes that the park "serves as a national model for how cities and rural communities can repurpose single-use canals into a multi-use focal point for an entire community.” San Jose Mayor Proposes 25,000 New Units, with 10,000 Downtown San Jose Mayor Sam Licardo proposed constructing 25,000 residential units in the city over the next five years. Part of the proposal includes changing the landscape of downtown by increasing higher-density homes and more transit-oriented development. According to the mayor, half of the proposed units should be built in downtown and roughly 10,000 should be affordable units. Mayor Liccardo notes the city departments tasked with project, permit and building approvals is understaffed as well as the planning department. Several developers attended the event and said they have considerable units in the pipeline that assists the goal of the mayor’s proposal. However, director of public policy for Working Partnerships USA- a community coalition pushing for more affordable housing- says there needs to be stronger rent control policies and assurances that companies such as Google contribute to solving the housing crisis rather than just increasing housing prices. The City Council will consider the proposal during its Oct. 17 meeting. (See prior CP&DR coverage of downtown San Jose.) SDSU to Sponsor Ballot Measure for Redevelopment of Qualcomm San Diego State University may launch a citywide ballot initiative that would authorize the city to sell 132 of the 166 acres at the SDCCU Stadium (former Qualcomm) site to create the SDSU West Campus Research, Stadium and River Initiative. The goal is to bring the measure to voters in the June 5 primary or Nov. 6 general election next year. A competing initial, to develop SoccerCity sports complex, is scheduled to be on this November's ballot. The SDSU measure does not specifically lay out the uses for the stadium land but instead calls for the University to prepare a master plan that would be approved by the state and leaves the city and university to negotiate the fair market price, mitigation measures, and other details. However, part of the initiative calls for a new stadium of at least 35,000 seats to be built within sever years. The city had planned to close the 50-year-old stadium in 2019 to save about $12 million in annual operating costs since the Chargers have relocated to Los Angeles. S.F. Mayor Calls for Adding 5,000 Units Annually, Hastening Entitlements San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee mandated a citywide goal of 5,000 new homes built every year. To reach this ambitious goal, Lee is asking all city agencies to cut average wait times in half to facilitate more construction. According to the U.S. Census, the city only added 2,600 new units of housing between 2015 and 2016. The year before it had added 3,500 new homes and 5,500 the previous year. The mayor’s office created a timeline for housing project approval saying buildings exempt from CEQA should take no more than six months for approval and housing that requires a full EIR should take 18 months at most. Mayor Lee mandates that 11 city agencies appoint new managers with the job of speeding up entitlements. Visualization Tool Provides Detailed Information on Climate Change in Calif. The California Energy Commission (CEC) announced the release of Cal-Adapt 2.0. This comprehensive climate change data visualization and download tool is developed and maintained by the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility with funding and oversight from CEC. Cal-Adapt 2.0’s new updates and enhancements include alignment with the latest scientific research, more robust analysis of climate change impacts and risks to local communities. The program now enables access to climate change data through new public application programming interface, downloadable charts and graphs, CSV charts, GeoTIFF format, and direct access to data for all 32 models for two representative concentration pathway scenarios. Quick Hits & Updates The California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Strategic Growth Council have announced approximately $255 million available for Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program. Applications and required documents must be submitted by Jan. 16, 2018. Former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson faces legal scrutiny for the second time in two years for deleting texts related to developer Paul Petrovich from his cellphone. Petrovich contends Johnson and other councilmembers colluded to deny him a fair hearing and says they erased text messages that Petrovich contends may have supported his claims that members agreed to vote against him beforehand. Johnson said his emails automatically delete after 30 days and he habitually erases texts from his personal cellphone to declutter. Two years ago, another judge reprimanded Johnson for erasing texts after being told not to by the city attorney. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Google has backed down from its threat to not build more housing on the Charleston East campus without more office space. The tech company is planning to build 9,850 units and originally asked for more office space than the 3.6 million square feet in the draft plan. The final City Council vote is set for November for the North Bayshore plan. The Coastal Commission is challenging the City of Los Angeles's 30-year-old beach curfew, which applies to beaches, piers and oceanfront parks. In 2015, Venice activists sued the city’s defiance of the Coastal Commission’s jurisdiction and sought to suspend the curfew enforcement. The city has now agreed to seek a permit, first from the city engineer and then the Coastal Commission, and to have police issue warnings before citing curfew violations. In 2001, the City of Sacramento and CalPERS signed a memorandum of understanding saying the giant pension fund would build 400 housing units downtown. As of today, only 36 units have been constructed. City officials have now sent a letter contending CalPERS is out of compliance. The 36 single-family homes were supposed to be finished in 2009 and 300-unit development on R Street expected to be completed in 2012. According to a new report from Apartmentlist, rents in San Jose rose 2.5 percent from last year to $2,050 for a one-bedroom, Oakland rose 5.4 percent to $1,780, and San Francisco rose 1.6 percent to $2,450. Across the Bay Area rents rose 1.3 percent to 6.2 percent. Los Angeles Metro has commissioned a study of the benefits of eliminating the Claremont Metrolink commuter rail station and replacing it with a light-rail station as part of the 12.3 mile Gold Line extension, which paraells the Metrolink line. Metro has allotted nearly $1.4 billion for the Glendora-to-Montclair Gold Line and is getting underway in the next few months. A group of Central Valley officials want to bring back  Amtrak service from southern valley cities into Sacramento on the old train tracks. The service could start as soon as 2020 with at least one daily train in each direction. The cost for the project would be around $189 million, mostly for the construction of new rail platforms. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife published  a draft EIR on three alternatives for the Ballona Wetlands restoration project in west Los Angeles; they include 483 acres and the mouth of the 8.8-mile creek. The three alternatives include: naturalized creek, restored partial sinuous creek, and levee culverts and oxbow. Construction would occur over five years, and the more ambitious first two alternatives would require a second phase of construction approximately one-and-a-half years after the initial construction.

Here’s a dream request-for proposals, if ever there was one: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently kicked off a site search for a 5 million-square-foot “second headquarters” for his fast-growing e-commerce, newspaper publishing, luxury food, and film production concern. (Can you believe this guy got started selling books ?) To qualify as the future home of Amazon, Mr. Bezos is asking for a community with a population of at last 1 million people, good public schools, a major airport, and a decent public transit system. The game is afoot.  Insofar as no city in California can meet all three of these criteria (indeed, Slate writer Henry Grabar says no city in America can fill the bill) we suggest waiving all the requirements. By so doing, we can throw open the door to an otherwise deserving future home of Whole Washington Ama-Bezos Inc. and offer a dazzling array of landscapes and cityscapes from which to choose. Among Mr. Bezos's 482 choices in California -- not counting unincorporated county land where he might build his city from scratch -- here is a sample of some hidden gems he might want to consider.  Taft This small city in Kern County serves as a historic marker for the oil business that flourished here and in nearby Bakersfield decades ago. Tiny Taft has many points of interest, such as a number of working oil derricks. And the traffic court. Much of the town, sadly, has a kind of beaten-down look. A landscape ravaged by the oil business has never been repaired, and no new core business has moved in to fill the gap. If the oil derricks of Taft symbolized 20th century industry, the same town could symbolize 21st Century business: a consumer economy in which is every store in the world is owned by a single company. The derricks, with their non-stop pumping, could be made over as public art: with each pump decorated to depict the arm of an Amazon worker stuffing a book into an envelope over and over again. And no need to worry about CEQA suits. The land in Taft isn’t exactly pristine, and oil pumps don’t file lawsuits. Costa Mesa This Orange County community is the home of the South Coast Plaza shopping center, a sprawling, high-end retail complex containing nearly 3 million square feet. Buying an existing building is much cheaper than new construction, so I suggest Mr. Bezos simply acquire the entire complex and occupy the space vacated by stores he has already put out of business . With the proverbial handwriting on the wall for brick-and-mortar retail, the current owners should exult in the chance to exchange their mortgages for shares of Amazon. And don’t worry about displacing the remaining merchants: Bloomingdale’s et al can stay in place and become on-site amenities for tech workers accustomed to nice things. (“No need to leave work for a day of mad, impulsive shopping,” goes the recruitment brochure. “You can suppress your feelings of rage by overspending during lunch, and suppress your feelings of shame by over-achieving in the afternoon.”) Amazon should also buy the nearby Orange County Center for the Performing Arts, a great venue for Mr. Bezos to announce the release of, say, Kindle 17.3 or the acquisition of the German auto industry. Santa Nella This car-friendly tourist town in Merced County is the ultimate expression of freeway-oriented urbanism: Lots of fast food and cheap motel rooms, gasoline and impulse retail, with very little urban design to get in the way. It would be tacky and wrong to say that Santa Nella is a glorified pea-soup pit stop along Interstate 5, but a little bit of that DNA would show up if the town took a geneaology test. So why would Amazon locate here? With the laissez-les-bon-temps-rouler attitude toward freeway-oriented development in this city, the company could build here any which way it wanted, without so much as a dirty look, much less a protracted approval battle. As for the transit requirement, well, please observe Santa Nella is right on the freeway. If that’s not enough, Mr. B. could buy a fleet of touristy charter buses to shlepp in folks from Los Banos. This service can be supplemented by high-speed rail, which is expected just in time to celebrate the retirement of your grandchildren. Mendota This Fresno County city is, regrettably, “the unemployment capital of California,” according to McClatchy News Service. At the height of the recent drought, joblessness hit 40 percent in a community heavily dependent on seasonal farm work. The poverty rate hovers around 60 percent. Here, the selling point for Amazon is a motivated workforce. Forget the sulky brats in Seattle or Silicon Valley, who interrogate you, during their own job interviews, about the number of ping-pong tables to be found on the barbecue deck with the ocean view. Folks in Mendota are willing to work, period. Any company should be willing to hire them, give them fair pay, and share the California dream. Santa Monica This ocean-front hub of tech and entertainment would be a common-sensical choice for Amazon’s HQ No. 2. Of course, the arrival of 50,000 workers to Santa Monica to a city with an inventory of 95,000 dwellings might make an already expensive housing market even more exclusive. Imagine a line of people standing on Wilshire Boulevard, wearing imported knit clothing and staring off in the distance like refugees. “I sold my home before realizing that I couldn’t afford anything else in Santa Monica, even after making a profit,” bewails Lindsay Gwyneth, a personal assistant. The hyperinflation of Santa Monica real estate would also bring about a cataclysmic eastward shift to the entire LA housing market. Downtown would become the new Culver City, East LA would be Larchmont and Victorville would be Riverside. While benefiting homeowners and investors, this eastward march in value may be less helpful for young renters in search of affordable digs. I hear there are some great saguaro catcti in the Arizona desert just waiting to be converted into Santa Monica’s newest bedroom community. Dialogue overheard between two young non-homeowners in the high desert: First Young Person: “Hey! I know a large saguaro cactus where you can live!” Second Young Person: “Is this one of those co-housing situations where I have to share the cactus with eight other people”? First Young Person: “Actually, you’ll be subletting from one of nine other tenants. She works at night.” Second Young Person: “Done!” San Francisco Who are we kidding? Even Jeff Bezos can't afford to live in San Francisco.

After 25 years of negotiations, lawsuits, acrimony, and revisited proposals, environmental groups agreed to conditions under which the Newhall Ranch mega-development of 58,000 residents in Santa Clarita Valley will proceed. Covering roughly 12,000 acres, it is expected to be the last major greenfield development to be approved in Los Angeles County. Under the deal, developer FivePoint Holdings agreed to provide about $25 million for conservation efforts aimed at protecting a number of endangered species along the Santa Clara River and a separate agreement with a nonprofit Native American organization to provide a parcel and an undisclosed amount for construction of a multimillion-dollar cultural center. In exchange, the environmental and native American groups will drop lawsuits against the company and will not oppose development of new homes, golf courses, schools, recreation centers and 13 million square feet of commercial space. A first phrase of Newhall Ranch was approved in July.  Google Gets into Dispute over Proposed Office Complex in Mountain View In a new twist on the housing pressures faced by Silicon Valley, Google is reportedly demanding more office space for its new “Charleston East” campus in Mountain View in exchange for constructing nearly 10,000 units in North Bayshore. The Mountain View City Council gave preliminary approval on the construction of 9,850 homes, but at a council meeting last week Google warned it would not allow the housing unless the city approved another 800,000 square feet of office space in addition to the 3.6 million in the draft North Bayshore plan. The city is concerned the new office space would further increase the gap between jobs and housing in the city. Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga says an additional 2,700 housing units on top of the nearly 10,000 would be required to fix the imbalance. Google, in a letter to the city, says the development requires significant investment and the demolition of existing office space and therefore the net new office development is required. The North Bayshore plan calls for three neighborhoods on 154 acres. Nearly 40 percent of the housing will be “micro-unit/studios”, 30 percent 1-bedroom units, 20 percent 2-bedroom units, and 10 percent 3-bedroom units. Mountain View’s City Council will vote in November on the final plan. (See prior CP&DR coverage of Google.) Los Angeles Takes Major Step to Promote Transit-Oriented Development Los Angeles Department of City Planning  released its official Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) guidelines. The new program was created through November’s Measure JJJ, a ballot measure that affects density bonuses citywide, and will incentivize the production of affordable housing by addressing all housing developments within a one-half mile of major transit stops. The TOC Affordable Housing Incentive areas are designed  in tiers based on the type of transit and distance of the stop (Tier 1-4). The incentives vary depending on the density, amount and distance of the transit stop, open space, lot coverage, yards, and many more. These guidelines provide eligibility standards, incentives, and other necessary components of the program. Pursuant to Measure JJJ, the guidelines have been drafted and implemented by the Planning Department and did not require a vote of the city council. TOCs will be designated around the city’s several-dozen transit stops.  San Jose May Resort to Ballot Measure for Senior Housing Project Two San Jose city councilmembers are pushing a ballot measure that would allow 910 new senior homes on empty land in east San Jose that is set aside for industry and jobs. While some city officials support the new affordable housing project, Mayor San Liccardo argues the proposal “upends San Jose’s careful planning process while enriching wealthy developers and failing to provide housing for those who need it most.” The proposed Evergreen Senior Homes would call for 20 percent of the new homes to be “affordable” for those earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income ($128,500 a year for family of four) but there is no guarantee those homes would be built in the first nine phases. The proposed project would prioritize affordable housing for veterans as well as include some open space. The Evergreen Senior Homes Initiative would change the city’s general plan as well as include a specific Evergreen area plan that limits housing to allow the zoned “industrial” to become “residential”. UCLA Crunches Numbers on Housing Affordability vs. Production According to the new UCLA Anderson Forecast  it could take 20 percent more housing production to achieve a 10 percent reduction in prices. Such a reduction in prices would bring down housing to roughly 2014 levels throughout the state. However, an increase of 20 percent took Los Angeles and San Francisco 30 years to accomplish. Gov. Jerry Brown’s housing department says the state needs to build 180,000 units a year to keep up with housing demand, but falls 80,000 units short. Catching up to demand would cost an additional $26 billion. In Gov. Brown’s recent budget summary he states half of all California households are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing and nearly one-third are spending more than 50 percent. The author of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, the recent signing of 15 housing bills in Sacramento will not do much to alleviate the high cost of living in the state. Quick Hits & Updates According to a report from Attom Data Solutions, an Irvine-based real estate research firm, San Jose and Los Angeles are two of the top three cities in the nation most at risk of losing housing from natural disasters. If only earthquakes are considered, LA is most at risk with San Jose, Bakersfield, and Seattle. The group also found homes in high risk areas have grown twice as fast as those in the bottom 20 percent. The Ventura City Council approved 200 residential units last year in East Ventura but needed Ventura LAFCo approval to turn the county land over to the city. Two weeks ago LAFCo voted, 6-1, to approve the change. The city will be responsible for providing water, sewer, and emergency services to the future residents. One of the remaining issues was the city’s ability to assure the commissioners there was sufficient water to meet the project’s current and long-term demand. The Strategic Growth Council is hosting a series of consultations for prospective applications to the Transformative Climate Communities Program. Consultations will be available for proposals from Los Angeles Oct. 9 and 10 and from other eligible TCC cities Oct. 11 and 12. To schedule an appointment, email  tcc@sgc.ca.gov . (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Los Angeles Metro has earmarked $9 million for a Metro Affordable Transportation Connected Housing Program aimed at incentivizing more affordable housing near its transit stations. The public-private partnership will loan money to developers to build more affordable housing within a half-mile of transit lines. Executive officer of the program, Jenna Hornstock, said the loans will help preserve affordable units and help build roughly 1,800 new units. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley criticized the title and summary for a proposed initiative that would repeal recent gas tax increases in California. Frawley wrote in his ruling, "The Attorney General’s title and summary… must be changed to avoid misleading the voters and creating prejudice against the measure.” The title and summary will be placed on petitions to be circulated by those trying to qualify the measure for the November 2018 ballot.  According to an official at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum Authority the Raiders “might likely” play at the stadium through the 2020 season until the team’s Las Vegas stadium is built.The current contract will run through the 2018 season, and there is a likelihood that two-year extension will be sought. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a $1.25 million contract with a private company to oversee the eviction and relocation of hundreds of Treasure Island households to make way for the thousands of homes and businesses that will be constructed in the next four years. There are currently 675 households on the island, including 250 residents who will receive economic support for the moving expenses. Those living on Treasure Island before 2011 can receive a cash payment or a choice of a Transition Housing Unit or down payment toward the purchase of a new unit. Those moving in after the City approved new island development in 2011, can get “advisory services” for relocating.  Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors gave  conditional approval to the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed residential and hotel complex planned in downtown LA. The supervisors’ approval is conditional because the Grand Avenue Joint Powers Authority wants more details on a number of issues, including the parking plan which reduced the number of parking stall from 1,350 to 800. The City and County of Los Angeles are providing tax breaks and other subsidies valued at nearly $200 million. The Anaheim Convention Center recently opened an  addition  of 200,000 square feet to join a handful of U.S. cities that have at least 1 million square feet of exhibit space. McCormick Place in Chicago is the nation’s largest with 2.6 million feet of exhibit space, but Anaheim is now 11thin the country. The convention and meeting industry generates more than $280 billion in spending per year and employs more than 1.8 million workers. In San Francisco, the Moscone Center is getting an additional 305,000 square feet bringing the facility to more than 1 million square feet.

CP&DR Vol. 32 No. 9 September 2017

A week or so ago, in less time than it takes to pop open a can of Pringles, the Internet fawned over and then recoiled against retail startup Bodega. Promising to do for potato chips what Uber did for transportation, Bodega intends to place what are essentially glorified vending machines all over, well, everywhere. The machines’ inventories will be customized according to location (train station; sorority; gym; tech startup office) so that inhabitants of our new, perfected cyber-world can acquire necessities without having to confront ugly realities of space and distance.  For those among us who are truly that antisocial, agoraphobic, or overworked, I can’t imagine why this system is preferable to home delivery, but whatever. Bodega is making a go of it, crossing off yet another industry on the disruption hit list.  How fast do things happen when you’re not constrained by things like public outreach, CEQA, city council meetings, and construction schedules? Very. On literally the same day that Bodega the company launched — that would be two days ago, Sept. 13 — Fast Company ran a comprehensive profile of the company, replete with praise and skepticism. By that afternoon, Eater ran an entire article , and then a follow-up , about the backlash against Bodega, calling it “Twitter’s least-favorite startup” and quoting Tweets making fun of its logo (a cat), questioning the ethnic sensitivity of its name, and saying that it should be called “Gentrification Box.” Ouch.  Now that the world knows what Bodega is, residents of California can be forgiven for wondering what a bodega is.  As anyone from an East Coast city knows, a bodega is a corner store. It’s the type of place that sells milk, chips, and ramen in single-serving cups. They are also the types of places where, depending on their selection of malt liquor, you can get panhandled or shaken down. They have neither the placemaking power of a local bar nor the culinary selection of a supermarket. But they’re nice parts of the urban fabric and often provide economic substance for individual entrepreneurs. And, since they’re generally located in dense neighborhoods, no one ever drives to a bodega.  Fast Company notes that Bodega could present fatal competition for its namesakes:  The major downside to this concept–should it take off–is that it would put a lot of mom-and-pop stores out of business. In fact, replacing that beloved institution seems explicit in the very name of McDonald’s venture, a Spanish term synonymous with the tiny stores that dot urban landscapes and are commonly run by people originally from Latin America or Asia. Some might bristle at the idea of a Silicon Valley executive appropriating the term “bodega” for a project that could well put lots of immigrants out of work. While this prediction may be exaggerated, what it implies is that cities don’t need fewer bodegas. In fact, they need more of them — especially in California.  Bodegas are essentially illegal in most neighborhoods in California. In California, separation of uses is next to godliness. Our residential neighborhoods, urban and suburban alike, can span dozens of square miles and require drives of many miles to get a quart of milk. And, yet, if anyone were to propose the addition of a corner store in these homogenous neighborhoods — to, you know, cut down on those drives and maybe give neighbors a place to run into each other — orthopedists would be overwhelmed for all the pearl-clutching. And don’t get me started on parking requirements.  A bodega could easily prosper on my nearest corner, and on hundreds of others like it. I’m in the heart of a west Los Angeles neighborhood packed with mid-rise apartment buildings as far as the eye can see. There’s no earthly reason why one of those buildings can’t have a retail space on the ground floor. I can only imagine the number of car trips that would be eliminated if my neighbors and I could walk to a bodega rather than drive to the supermarket. And, I can only imagine what it would be like be to have a place to bump into neighbors that doesn’t include rear-ending them in rush-hour traffic. My point here is, the question of whether or not this silly startup will “disrupt” the corner store industry is beside the point. Zoning regulations and our stunted notions of what constitutes a “proper” neighborhood have already prevented more bodegas from opening than will ever be run out of business by the likes of Bodega. It’s telling that Eater jumped so quickly to criticize Bodega and to publicize those mean tweets. Eater is a restaurant blog. Its entire existence depends on people going out into the world and doing things — in their case, consuming food, alongside other people who are also consuming food. So they get rightfully jumpy when yet another cyber-something comes along that would compel people to stay at home and watch The Bachelor. (Restaurants themselves aren’t doing so well these days.) Of course, Eater’s mission should be every planner’s mission: to promote and celebrate physical places where poeple can enjoy each other. I hope the current generation of planners will grab a can of Pringles — or whatever else they need to fuel up — and figure out ways to give bodegas a fighting chance.

Among the foggy peaks of Mt. Tam, the vineyards of Sonoma County, the spires of the Golden Gate, and the gracious communities that make up the northern fringe of the Bay Area runs a parking lot known as Highway 101. It’s not a pretty sight.

The following awards were presented at this week’s conference of the American Planning Association, California Chapter, in Sacramento.  Awards of Excellence  Opportunity and Empowerment Award  Safe Long Beach Comprehensive Plan Award: Large Jurisdiction San Diego Forward: The Regional Plan Comprehensive Plan Award: Small Jurisdiction Duarte Town Center Specific Plan Innovation in Green Community Planning Award City of Palm Springs Sustainability Master Plan Economic Planning and Development Award Small Business Support Program, City of Los Angeles (Wilmington) Transportation Planning Award City of Long Beach - CX3 Pedestrian Plan Best Practices Award Mission Creek Sea Level Rise Adaptation Study , City and County of San Francisco / SPUR Grassroots Initiative Award City of Orange Home Grown Farmers & Artisans Market Public Outreach Award Los Angeles Countywide Comprehensive Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment Planning Advocate Award Vicki Granowitz, San Diego Emerging Planning and Design Firm Award City Fabrick , Long Beach Advancing Diversity and Social Change in Honor of Paul Davidoff Award Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust Academic Award Midtown Ventura Wellness District Urban Design Concept Plan Communications Initiative Award Vital Signs – Taking the Pulse of the Bay Area , Bay Area MTC Hard-Won Victories Award Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan Planning Pioneer Award Margarita Piel McCoy , FAICP (In Memoriam) Awards of Merit Comprehensive Plan Award: Large Jurisdiction West Adams-Baldwin Hills-Leimert Community Plan and Implementing Ordinances (Los Angeles) Comprehensive Plan Award: Small Jurisdiction City of Palm Desert General Plan Update 2016 Implementation Award: Small Jurisdiction City of West Hollywood Inclusionary Housing Program Innovation in Green Community Planning Award Energy and Climate Action Plan , County of Santa Barbara Economic Planning and Development Award The Pruneyard Master Use Permit, City of Campbell Transportation Planning Award Multi-Use Trails and Bikeways Master Plan Update, City of Temecula Best Practices Award Streamline Riverside , City of Riverside Grassroots Initiative Award StreetAir , San Francisco Public Outreach Award Designing an Addition to Single Family Residence Urban Design Award 2020 Campus Development , University of California, Merced Planning Advocate Award Jeanette Dinwiddie-Moore, FAICP Emerging Planning and Design Firm Award Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors , Los Angeles & San Diego Advancing Diversity and Social Change in Honor of Paul Davidoff Award Department of Regional Planning Spanish Planning Committee, County of Los Angeles Academic Award East Santa Clara Street Urban Village Planning: Community Assessment Report , City of San Jose Communications Initiative Award Communications and Community Engagement Strategic Plan , City of West Hollywood Hard-Won Victories Award Portside Ventura Harbor Mixed Use Project

The City of Huntington Beach Planning Commission preliminarily  approved the General Plan update through 2040 and certified the associated EIR Sept. 18. At the last minute, though, the City Council delayed a vote on the plan itself in part to consider the impacts of pending state legislation. The new plan forecasts very little growth for the city, accommodating 85,403 residential units through 2040 — down from a projection of over 86,000 units in the city’s 1996 general plan. The update includes new zoning for “research and technology,” intended to spur economic development and accommodate new types of industrial and commercial uses. The holdup is due in part to Senate Bill 35, which requires cities to streamline certain housing approvals; Council Member Erik Peterson wants city staff to consider how SB 35 might interact with the draft plan.  Delta Water Tunnels Face New Challenges The WaterFix tunnel project recently won key approval from regulators, but the $17 billion project has multiple agencies that have expressed concern about the high costs. It is difficult to estimate the cost each agency will pay if the total number of agencies is unknown explains Robert Shaver, general manager of Alameda County Water District. Santa Clara Valley Water District as well as districts in Central Valley and Southern California have said they will make a decision next month. Westlands Water District’s board rejected participation, 7-1, last week. Westlands provides irrigation water to 1,000 square miles of San Joaquin Valley farms and would be a major funder of the project. Westlands’ rejection could therefore empire the project. While there is no set deadline for agencies to make their decisions, officials are hoping to begin building tunnels next year.  California-Based Environmental Groups Sue Feds over Border Wall The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Animal Defense Fund sued the federal government in an attempt to block construction of a border wall with Mexico. The environmental groups allege that President Trump may overstep his authority by waiving environmental reviews and laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The suit claims that the wall would irreparably harm habitats of species including bighorn sheep, jaguars, and ocelots. A similar lawsuit was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity but the three organizations say they each have hundreds of thousands of members. The government recently awarded eight contracts to build prototypes of the wall with construction beginning this fall. In August, the administration waived environmental reviews on a 15-mile stretch of border in San Diego. ULI Issues Report on Housing Advocacy The Urban Land Institute released a report “ Yes in My Backyard ” on how cities and states can help find common ground in expanding housing choices and opportunities through local land use policies and incentives. Local zoning and land use regulations have slowed affordable housing development and states have not been using their authority and resources to help cities plan. The report suggests five ways states can help cities and counties promote housing development: ensure localities are assessing future housing needs, provide incentives to local communities for zoning for new housing, reduce regulatory requirements that increase costs and slow development, authorize cities to invest own resources for pro-housing land uses, and enable communities to overcome unreasonable neighborhood opposition. Lyft Makes Foray into Planning With L.A. Street Proposal Lyft with the help of Perkins+Will and transportation consultants Nelson/Nygaard have reenvisioned some streets in L.A. for the future. The designs include trees, protected bike lanes, loading zone for ridesharing vehicles, three narrowed lanes for vehicles and lanes for autonomous buses. The concept for Wilshire Boulevard features widened sidewalks, landscaping and benches to create a more comfortable and welcoming space. The team believes this could allow the road to transport four times as many people with twice as many road users, such as motorists and cyclists. Lyft is also partnering with SCAG on its 100 Hours Campaign to reduce congestion. Both Lyft and Uber have endorsed congestion pricing in cities, but no U.S. city has embraced the model yet. Quick Hits & Updates The Strategic Growth Council and the Department of Housing and Community Development for Round 3 AHSC Application Workshops . The program will include the AHSC 2016-2017 Program Guidelines, Scoring Criteria, and Greenhouse Gas Quantification Methodology. The workshops will be held in October in Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego. The proposed 2018 statewide initiative to extend Prop. 13’s property tax breaks from older to younger homeowners would ultimate cost local governments and the state billions of dollars a year, according to an analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The LAO found cities and counties would receive less money because the measure would reduce the amount in property taxes that occur with new home purchases. The San Francisco school board voted unanimously to enter into an agreement with the Office of Housing and Development to construct up to 150 units on a former school site in the Outer Sunset neighborhood. The city would contribute about $44 million. The units would be for teachers and aides who have increasing difficulty finding housing on their median $70,000 salaries. The process would take up to two years, including finding a developer, designing, working with neighbors and going through environmental impact studies. Construction would take an estimated 18 months meaning the units could be ready by 2022. San Diego County Supervisors unanimously approved to put $25 million into a trust fund to help create more affordable homes. The trust was first proposed in early June, and would be administered by the county’s Health and Human Services Department and include projects that house homeless or at risk of homelessness, veterans, people with disabilities, seniors, transitional age youth, and families. The fund proposal must return to the board in October for final consideration. The City of Costa Mesa City Council and Planning Commission decided its small-lot ordinance and urban plans and overlay districts needed some changes. The small-lot ordinance eases standards for proposed developments of 15 or fewer detached homes in areas zones for multifamily units and the urban plans and overlay districts outline development standards in certain portions of the city. Many residents are requesting a repeal or moratorium. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors is considering a new program to keep private transit vehicles out of Muni bus lanes and crosswalks, and from replicating existing transit routes. Chariot, the only major private transit company operating in the city, is expecting to pay $240,000. Enforcing the new regulations will cost the agency $250,000. While Chariot is the only player in the market now, city officials are interested in developing a framework now. The Office of Planning and Research has launched a new website:  opr.ca.gov . The front page includes easy buttons for CEQA, General Plan Guidelines, CEQA Clearinghouse, Adaption Clearinghouse, Just the Facts and Environmental Goals. The new design is intended to be more user friendly and organized.  Richmond Mayor Tom Butt is proposing dismantling the city’s Housing Authority saying the diminishing funds from the federal government makes the continued operations difficult. The Richmond Housing Authority runs six public housing projects and administers Section 8 vouchers for low-income residents. Butt said dissolving the agency would not eliminate existing public housing but would relieve the city from financial responsibility over the subsidized homes. The homes would be transferred to Contra Costa County Housing Authority, HUD, or a nonprofit or private developer. The State Council, China’s Cabinet, announced that it will limit domestic companies’ investments abroad in property, sports, entertainment and other fields. President Xi Jinping is encouraging companies to invest in the “Belt and Road” initiative, which includes ports, highways, railways, and power plant, to link China with other parts of Asia and eastern Europe. Chinese companies have invested heavily in real estate development in California, particularly in downtown Los Angeles. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Next 10 and Beacon Economics released the ninth annual California Green Innovation Index and found that California’s climate policies have allowed for significant economic growth with GDP growing almost $5,000 per person between 2006 and 2015. However, the rate of GHG emissions declining is slowing due in part because of a large spike in transportation emissions. Commute times have increased and public transportation trips have decreased 4.8 percent between 2014 and 2015. Transportation accounts for almost forty percent of total emissions. To reach climate goals emission targets will become stricter and require greater reductions. The City of Los Angeles Planning Commission voted unanimously to back a proposed regulation that would limit marijuana retailers to most commercial and industrial zones, barring them from opening within 800 feet of school, parks, libraries, alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs, and other pot shops. The draft rules also specify where manufacturers, distributors and greenhouses can operate in the city. The marijuana companies are required to get both a state license and city approval to operate in LA. The California State Association of Counties released its 2017 Challenge Award Recipients. CSAC received 288 entries and 16 programs were selected to receive Challenge Awards and another 33 programs received Merit Awards. In Housing, Land Use, and Infrastructure Nevada County-Over-the-Counter Plan Review Program, Sonoma County- Creating More Housing with 100% Rental density Bonus and Los Angeles County- Spanish Planning Program received Challenge Awards. In the Merit Award category, Los Angeles County- Buyer-Beware: Property Buying Education Program and San Bernardino County- Code Enforcement Illegal Dumping Program received awards. The Cultural Landscape Foundation announced its two 2017 Stewardship Excellence Award Recipients. While one was in Portland, Ore., the other was The Sea Ranch Association in Marin County. The Sea Ranch Association was established by developers, along with a Design Committee, to guide physical improvements in the area. The group has a Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions giving the revolutionary idea real teeth. The California High Speed Rail Authority  approved roughly $50 million in contract amendments to deal with unanticipated construction and environmental review costs. However, some board members said the repeated budget overruns are damaging the project’s public image and more oversight of how budgets are set and spent is required. San Francisco and Oakland are suing five oil companies to pay for costs of protecting the Bay Area from rising sea levels and other effects of global warming. According to one of the lawsuits, San Francisco’s seawell is projected to cost $5 billion. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission released a report saying traffic congestion in the Bay Area has increased 80 percent since 2010. In 2016, the average driver spent roughly 3.5 minutes per commute traveling less than 35 mph, a new record, and 9 percent increase from 2015. The report ranks the worst freeways and segments throughout the Bay Area.

Many of today’s Silicon Valley behemoths famously, and perhaps apocryphally, originated decades ago in humble garages in what used to be the sleepy bedroom communities of the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay. But for at least one major company, the future may not involve cars, much less garages.  With a reported 11,000 employees currently based at its global headquarters, known as “The Googolplex,” in suburban Mountain View, Google Inc. has announced plans to move a significant portion of its offices and workforce to a decidedly more urban location: downtown San Jose. For the past decade or so, tech companies have either occupied relatively cramped offices in San Francisco or expansive office parks in Silicon Valley. While Google is not the first company to look to San Jose, such an ambitious move may signal a new era in the urbanization of the tech industry.  Google plans to build a campus, presumably in phases, on parcels totaling roughly 126 acres just west of downtown San Jose. The campus of 6 million to 8 million square feet will house up to 20,000 employees. Crucially, the campus will be in easy reach of Diridon Station, which currently is the terminus of Caltrain commuter rail, with an extension of Bay Area Rapid Transit scheduled to open in 2026. The station is also intended to serve California High-Speed Rail.  In June, the City Council voted, 10-1, to negotiate exclusively with Google for the purchase of 16 city-owned parcels. Potential prices have not been disclosed, but city officials say that the entities are negotiating “in good faith.” Google has also acquired nearby privately owned parcels, for a reported $135 million.  Google officials declined to comment for this story, aside from a statement from a spokesperson reading, "We’re excited to have the support of the San Jose city council as we evaluate our options at Diridon Station." City officials in San Jose are welcoming Google wholeheartedly, with the hopes that the development will spur the urbanization of a downtown that, while not destitute, has never enjoyed the vibrancy of San Francisco or Oakland.  “San Jose has been really trying to revitalize downtown, almost since Valley Fair Mall opened in 1956,” said San Jose planner Michael Brilliot, who oversees the Diridon Station Area Plan. In fact, Google’s plans represent a victory for San Jose after the city experienced what had seemed like a defeat at the hands of Oakland. For several years, the Oakland A’s negotiated to move to San Jose and build a stadium on the site being eyed by Google. The A’s bid failed in October 2015 when the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the A’s challenge to Major League Baseball’s rejection of their bid to move away from Oakland. Located in a former redevelopment project area, the property is controlled by the successor agency to the San Jose Redevelopment Agency.  Lacking the power of a redevelopment agency, the city had expected the development of the property to take place slowly, if at all. Indeed, few developers or companies have the funds and inclination to develop the entire area. What the city had hoped to do was provide clear development guidelines, via the Diridon Station Area Plan, to ensure that the area was developed properly.  “We weren’t going to piecemeal it and let it be developed parcel by parcel,” said Scott Knies, executive director of the Downtown San Jose Business Association. “It’s too important of a space and there’s too much potential and promise.” Google could make that process even easier, and more predictable.  “If someone had told me that Google was going to come in and built 8 million feet and accommodate up to 20,000 Googlers, that would have made me think the ballpark is OK to let go,” said Knies. In many respects, Google will use the location far more efficiently than the A’s ever could have. What could be transformative for San Jose may also be transformative for the tech industry. Having both created and suffered from the high real estate prices and land shortages of the Peninsula, Google is now sees itself as a city-bulider.  “This is not just the office product of the future for Google,” said Knies. “It’s really the example for what a transportation hub and an urban center can be.” The location signals a commitment to the use of public transit, walking, and bicycling, and possibly to residential development that would enable Googlers to live in an attractive urban neighborhood blocks from their offices. This would be in stark contrast with the torturous commutes that many Google employees currently make from San Francisco and points beyond, often on much-maligned “Google buses” that, according to some, symbolize the gentrification of San Francisco and the fraught relationship between tech firms and long-term stakeholders.  “It’s a new way of thinking about the workplace, departing from the old concept of more suburban campus development,” said San Jose Senior Planner Jenny Nusbaum. “We are very excited at the prospect of any developer who’s supportive of that vision.” While San Jose benefits directly from Google’s arrival in the form of civic pride, tax revenue, and elimination of blight, the entire region stands to benefit from the move and, especially, from 20,000 more efficient daily commutes.  Google’s move to San Jose promises to exert an outsized influence on the city. Though San Jose has over 1 million residents, making it the third-largest city in California and far larger than its Bay Area sister cities, it has one of the lowest ratios of jobs to residents of any major city in the country. “It’s one of the few large cities that exports more workers out of its city limits than imports, mostly driving north along the Peninsula,” said Knies. “When San Jose is expected to be the bedroom community for Silicon Valley, there needs to some balancing of the ledgers." This imbalance has led to some nasty disputes among regional cities. Recently, San Jose filed suit against Santa Clara over the CityPlace mega-development (see prior CP&DR coverage ). San Jose alleges that Santa Clara needs to provide housing to complement the project, lest workers are compelled to live in San Jose, increasing housing pressures and adding to cross-jurisdictional traffic.  "Communities are saying they've got too much job growth,” said Brilliot. "We’re saying, bring it on. This is where the urban future of Silicon Valley is."  The city hopes that Google can create a healthier balance between jobs and housing and create far shorter commutes for those Google employees who already live in San Jose or who will move to San Jose once the company arrives. San Jose currently suffers from the same housing crisis that plagues the entire Bay Area, but it has a far larger overall supply of housing than do cities like Menlo Park, Mountain View, and other tech cities. Workers who commute to Google from the north - the proverbial “Google bus” employees” — will have abundant rail options.  "The good thing about this proposal is it helps in what is currently a reverse commute for transit, with Caltrain and soon BART both having more capacity in the southbound direction,” said Stuart Cohen, executive director of transit advocacy group TransForm. "Getting more evenly distributed ridership should increase farebox recovery for both BART and Caltrain.”  As intense as the development will be, it comes at just the right time. San Jose has recently adopted vehicle miles traveled metrics for its transportation analyses, anticipating Senate Bill 743 (see prior CP&DR coverage ), which is particularly friendly to infill development and mindful of its potential environmental benefits.  “We also see it as being an area that could be the poster child for VMT reduction,” said Nusbaum. By some accounts, transit options were the catalyst for Google’s move. Regional voters approved a series of transportation funding measures, in 2000, 2008, and 2016, to extend BART. That task became easier with the dedication of federal funds that will support the electrification of the Caltrain line, making it less polluting, quicker, and more efficient. That funding had been in jeopardy earlier in the year, when Transportation Sec. Elaine Chao announced that the federal government was going to review the funds, but they were reinstated in May.  “This is exactly what we want to see from all those years of transportation and transit investments,”said Chris O’Connor, senior director for transportation at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Until some of these companies saw the guarantees that these investments were going to come, they couldn’t make those investments." The move also comes amid sustained promotional efforts on the part not only of the city but also on of regional organizations like the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. SVLG has gotten increasingly involved with land use and transportation has its member companies have contended with the costs and constraints of doing business in — and attracting workers too — built-out Peninsula cities.  “It’s very much an acute concern of our member companies that there is a drastic shortfall in the housing supply and that it’s so difficult for them to retain their human capital,” said O’Connor. “The only way you can do that in an area that’s already built out the way we are, you need to do very dense infill development.” (Even as Google looks to San Jose, O’Connor praised the company for promoting nearly 10,000 units of housing near its Mountain View campus.) The details of that density have yet to be worked out, though. In fact, while Google’s public announcement suggests that the plans will come to fruition — the company has a reputation for getting things done — currently the project is in only the earliest stages. The company has an exclusive agreement to negotiate with the city to acquire the land, essentially giving it right of first refusal, but not much more.  “There is no application on file by Google for development or land uses,” said Nusbaum. “If it’s going to happen, it’s likely to be several years away.” Even once that application is filed, Google, the city, and various stakeholders will likely go through extensive negotiations over the form, look, and mix of uses on the new campus. In some ways, that will be the true test of whether the tech industry is ready to embrace urbanism — or whether it’s going to build the same old office park design in a new location.  The poster child for the latter concern is Apple’s new campus in Cupertino, which looks like a spaceship and has about the same amount of transit connectivity as it would if it were actually in orbit. Despite its inclusion of green elements — such as solar panels — the ring-shaped campus has been derided for its provision of 12,000 parking spaces and suburban orientation. (See prior CP&DR commentary .) "It’s a neat design and they spent hours arguing over doorhandles, but it’s a futuristic vision from 1956,” said Brilliot. "It’s not that innovative from our point of view. Why is that there? Why isn’t that here?" San Jose planners insist that Google has different urban sensibilities. And they expect that stakeholders will ensure that Google builds a campus that enhances the city rather than retreats from it.  “For quite some time now, the city's been clear about how it wants to grow and develop over the long term,” said Rosalyn Hughey, interim director of the San Jose Department of Planning, Building, and Code Enforcemen. “We’ve been very deliberate….very public process, with a task force and multiple community meetings.” “What we understand Google tends to value and envision….seems to be very in line with the vision we have for Diridon,” said Nusbaum. Even so, a massive, single-company development can come with drawbacks. In fact, without careful planning, Google might not end up with an “urban” campus even if it is in the middle of the city.  "The downside is it'll be one company with a lot of control. If it's not done right, it'll feel like one giant campus,” said Brillot. "Traditionally, urban development is more organic, more fine-grained, which adds to the character and funkiness of it." Of course, the city’s vision, or Google’s vision for that matter, does not necessarily have anything to do with what the final result will look like. The city’s planners expect to go through a long negotiation over the development’s form, aesthetics, and uses. And community benefits will surely come into play. Given Google’s wealth and heft, it can singlehandedly transform the area — but it also may become the object of every hope, dream, and demand of local stakeholders.  “The challenge here is, before you know what the deal is and what the project is, is that there are community groups asking for too much,” said Knies. O’Connor, of the SVLG, said the city should seek appropriate concessions from Google, but it should not to too far.  “Any city should do is strike a balance between understanding the benefits that these companies are going to bring as far as prosperity to the region,” said O’Connor. One element that the city and community groups are likely to demand is that of housing, particularly affordable housing. The Diridon Station Area Plan currently allows for up to 3,000 units.  “There's really this tremendous opportunity to have this city within a city of the future and to do that in a way that addresses income inequality” said Knies. “Those arguments are not going to go away. We’re going to be hearing them every step of the process. But there’s enough room there to incorporate a lot.” Contacts & Resources  Diridon Station Area Plan Michael Brilliot, Division Manager, City of San Jose Planning Building & Code Enforcement, Michael.Brilliot@sanjoseca.gov Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransForm, stuart@transformca.org Scott Knies, Executive Director, Downtown San Jose Business Association, sknies@sjdowntown.com Jenny Nusbaum, Senior Planner, City of San Jose, Jenny.Nusbaum@sanjoseca.gov Chris O’Connor, Senior Director for Transportation, Silicon Valley Leadership Group Note: Scott Knies's final quote was corrected since this article's original posting.