Search Results

While the footsoldiers in the efforts to plan cities (and add housing) were grinding away in Pasadena at the American Planning Association conference , a different audience was discovering a challenge that planners have known about for years. Yesterday, McKinsey and Co. released  A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap , which offers its take on California’s housing crisis. It was a focal point of a session I attended at yesterday’s Milken Institute  California Summit , moderated by none other than Jonathan Wotzel, director of the McKinsey Global Institute. MicKinsey’s conclusion: California doesn't have enough housing. How’s that for a news flash? Perhaps the only thing new about the report was its audience.The people who pay attention to McKinsey (who are much the same people that attend Milken Institute events) are probably different from those who usually pay attention to government reports. And they wear more expensive suits. I approach that with explicit sarcasm because, of course, every planner (and developer) in California already knows this. So does nearly every renter and every homebuyer in the sub-$5 million market. The crisis has been studied and described by nearly every major university in the state and acknowledged by nearly every major think tank and nonprofit that deals in land use. The Legislative Analysts Office put out two major  reports  last year. What’s been missing, in many cases, is political will and, let’s face it, political leadership. While majors like Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti and Oakland’s Libby Schaff have forcefully called for more housing, leaders in many other cities are acting like they hope the whole thing will just go away. Fortunately, that kind of willful ignorance is getting increasingly difficult to pull off. The panelists at the summit offered anecdotes and analysis — much of it excellent -- that would sound like old hat to most planners. To folks who haven’t considered the housing crisis and especially the influence of anti-growth stakeholders, it must have been terrifying. Scott Laurie of the Olson Co. described the woes of a developer. He described a 58-unit by-right project in the City of Orange that, though it conformed to the zoning code, got cut in half because of the objections of a single neighbor. Then there’s a project on the San Gabriel-Rosemead border. The Rosemead City Council told him up-front that it would nix its portion of the project if a  single  constituent objected to it. Guess what happened there. Assemblymember and former Santa Monica City Councilmember Richard Bloom said that would-be housing developers are bailing out and selling sites to commercial developers because — for reasons that defy logic — neighbors don’t protest commercial but treat residential like it’s toxic waste. “There’s this idea that housing doesn’t pay,” said Bloom. "Commercial pays.” This, despite the fact that residential typically generates less traffic. Carol Galante, former Federal Housing Administration official and current professor at UC Berkeley, said “it’s hardest to build where the jobs are” and summed up the situation neatly: “the way we do land use in California is not normal.” McKinsey, of course, has some recommendations for normalizing the situation. Normal to the tune of 3.5 million units by 2025. That’s the number that the report thinks California can reach with a few nips and tucks to its land use policies. They want cities to identify housing “hot spots,” like places near transit and with vacant lots; make approvals quicker and less complex; promote affordable housing; and reduce the cost of constructing and operating multifamily housing complexes. Again, not exactly news. Among the “hot spots," McKinsey estimates that up to 3 million units can be built statewide around transit hubs. The recommendation that has drawn the most  attention  is that of building on vacant lots that are already zoned for development. McKinsey says there are scads of them in center cities. Well, of course there are. No one ever said California’s housing shortage was due to lack of land, vacant or otherwise. Planners have been encouraging cities to embrace density for ages. SCAG released its “ two percent strategy ”, advocating for the region’s future development to take place on two percent of its land, in 2004. McKinsey's recommendation is therefore odd, kind of like saying you should feed the homeless with the burritos in your freezer. Unfortunately, unless McKinsey is recommending the biggest eminent domain taking in history, the state can’t compel land owners to build so much as a doghouse. Prop. 13 ensures that land owners have nearly zero carrying costs, and California cities don’t have land value taxes. McKinsey’s most provocative recommendation would be to try to, finally, make the Regional Housing Need Allocation mean something. They recommend that the state offer a combination of incentives and penalties for cities that fail to meet their RHNA numbers. This might include withholding state property tax allocations for cities that flout their housing obligations and giving grants and bonuses to those that exceed them. Currently, “RHNA is a joke to a lot of cities. There's no enforcement,” said Galante. It’s hard to imagine how all this would happen given the current political climate and the temperament of stakeholders. As Galante noted, homeowners, not renters, are typically the ones who vote in local elections in California. That means that people like consulting firm partners and captains of finance are the ones with the real power. They’re the ones who vote, donate, and, often, protest against new development. They’re the ones who have heretofore pressured cities into the status quo. Now that the know there’s a problem, maybe they’ll try to do something about it.

On the day after Tom Hayden died in Santa Monica , I went on the California APA’s tour of station-area development along the Expo Line on Los Angeles’s Westside. It was a bit of a homecoming for me, because my life in Southern California began and ended within spitting distance of that line and despite all the years in Ventura so much of what went on in between was all tangled up with the Westside. The tour made me realize how much has changed on the Westside – even in the last few years, but certainly since I first met Tom Hayden 35 years ago. Two things struck me. The first – especially at our first stop at the Culver City station -- is the weird and ever-changing relationship between the Westside and the car. Yes the Westside is rich and hip, and yes ridership on the Expo Line is exploding. (Monday was the first day the line ran on six-minute headways.) Nevertheless, automotive carcasses are littered everywhere on the Westside, and folks there are obsessed beyond all reason with moving them and storing them. The second – especially at our last stop at Bergamot Station – is how thoroughly the Tom Hayden-era model of urban development, if you want to call it that, is now being rejected by the people of Santa Monica. Hayden, of course, was the godfather of the left-wing faction that took over Santa Monica on a rent control platform in 1981 and he represented the Westside in Sacramento for almost 20 years. For decades, the deal for developers in Santa Monica was simple: We’ll give you what you want if we can extract enough community benefits from you. (In fact, this was the topic of my master’s thesis in urban planning at UCLA , which formed the basis of Chapter 1 of The Reluctant Metropolis .) But the recent debacle at Bergamot – including the city council’s decision to un-approve the big Hines mixed-use project and the subsequent slow-growth measure on the ballot this fall – has made it clear that this deal won’t work any more on the Westside. If you add these two things together, it paints a pretty interesting picture of how the Westside has evolved, how much it struggles these days with being a victim of its own success – and how much the Westside slides back into 20 th Century thinking when the going gets tough. The minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour surface street gridlock on the Westside is awesome to behold, almost as if it were one of the seven wonders of the world. Which is, of course, why the Expo Line is so successful. And yet … Our first stop was at the Culver City station, near Helms Bakery. Culver City is doing a great job of station-area planning and the resulting district is going to be an excellent walkable neighborhood with strong connections to downtown Culver City. (For example, Lowe Enterprises’ plans for Ivy Station look really good .) But the most amusing part of our visit there was the automated parking garage at the old Helms Bakery, which owner Wally Marks and his family have lovingly transformed into modern office and retail space. The parking garage is, indeed, impressive. Once automatically parked using a lift, the cars are moved around the garage based on the established patterns of the drivers. If you don’t use your car during the day, it gets shuffled to the back; if you are in and out, it stays in the front. Your car will be gradually moved closer to the exit as the clock the time you typically leave work. And retrieving a car, even from an upper floor, takes a matter of seconds. But as I watched and listened – and Wally and his staff and consultants couldn’t stop talking about how great the garage was – I kept thinking that this must have been how IBM talked about how great the Selectric typewriter was right before the personal computer was invented. Yes, the Helms garage is all about efficiency – but it’s about storing and retrieving cars efficiently. Whereas the buzz in urban circles worldwide is about Uber, car-sharing and autonomous cars – that is, using cars more efficiently, so that you don’t need to store or retrieve them in the first place. In New York and San Francisco these days, you are how you ride or where you go. On the Westside, you are still what you drive. So 20 th Century. And that was part of the reason it was pretty refreshing to move on to the next stop – the Bundy station – and hear Dan Martin, a third-generation car dealer, bitch about parking requirements and talk about creating a walkable environment. When I first moved to L.A. in the early ‘80s, I lived walking distance from the Martin Cadillac dealership at Olympic and Bundy – not that you would have wanted to actually walk to Martin Cadillac in those days. (Take my word for it: Then, as now, I didn't own a car.) After almost 50 years on this 5-acre site, Martin Cadillac will soon give way to Martin Expo Town Center , a 10-story project with 500 residential units, 200,000 square feet of creative office space, and 100,000 square feet of retail, which will probably include a high-end grocery store. The visit was a good reminder that car dealers are often sitting on the best properties in transit-rich neighborhoods, and the best ones are smart enough to realize that as they become retail dinosaurs that real estate is their biggest asset. The Bundy stop is still pretty much an amenity desert, but between the Expo Line and big office buildings that pre-date it, the pedestrian traffic is already pretty good. At lunchtime today I saw maybe 30 people walking around at Olympic and Bundy, an intersection that features not only Martin Cadillac but a bunch of gas stations and convenience stores. One stop to the west is Bergamot Station, which features a combination of hip galleries and other arts businesses, high-end creative office businesses located in old industrial buildings, and traffic-spewing office towers from the 1980s. My life in L.A. may have begun down the street near Martin Cadillac, but it ended here 32 years later, when I was one of the principals in charge of the Bergamot Area Plan for the firm now known as Placeworks. And I do mean ended, because that plan – and some of the development projects that might have been built near the station – suffered the most ignominious fate of any planning effort in Southern California in recent memory. With it died the Tom Hayden-era idea of soaking the developers to get social goods, which has apparently been replaced by the pretty retro planning idea that doing nothing is usually better than doing something. The plan was supposed to build on Santa Monica’s vaunted 2010 LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element). The LUCE, which supposedly had broad public support, was built on the concept of “tiers” – the idea that developers could get higher “tiers” of density in exchange for providing more community benefits. The LUCE was the ultimate manifestation of the Hayden-era development-for-goodies formula that was developed by the first progressive leaders in Santa Monica back in the ‘80s: Sure, we’ll give you the density for whatever the market is demanding (office, housing, retail) so long as you give us lots of social benefits in return. This was pretty radical stuff back in the '80s, when most people's idea of urban planning activism was to just shut down new development. And despite the fact that Hayden and his buddies had a reputation for being socialists, it requires a pretty deft understanding of capitalism to make this idea work. You have to know just how hard to squeeze the developers, so you still get the goodies and the developers don't go away. Over time, as capitalism has taken over the Westside, the argument for a bigger squeeze has only increased. Today in Santa Monica, the market is so strong that developers will pay almost literally any price for entitlements. Except that this isn’t what happened when Hines proposed a major mixed-use project on Olympic Boulevard right across the street from Bergamot Station. The project was arguably not the best designed project ever, though it dramatically improved pedestrian connectivity and publicly available open space in the area. Nor, apparently, did Hines do an especially good job selling it to the neighbors. The bottom line was that just before the 2014 local election, the city councilmembers up for re-election rescinded approval of the development agreement to save their own skin. And then, subsequently, they also backed off a lot of the good stuff contained in the LUCE . Save their own skin they did, at least for now, but at a cost. Hines sold the land and the existing Papermate factory is now being retrofitted – meaning there is still a 1,200-foot wall along Olympic Boulevard and no sidewalk. Yes, the latest biggest project on Olympic Boulevard went away. But so did all the goodies. And so, by the way, did a lot developers who could have been squeezed. Meanwhile, the defeat of the Hines project infected the entire Bergamot plan, and many of the other things that would have created better connectivity and a mixture of activities went out of the plan. The status quo, however imperfect, was judged to be better than anything new. In a certain way, you can’t blame Santa Monica’s residents for taking such an anti-growth attitude; after all, they’ve been hammered with job-related traffic for 30 years. But in rejecting dense 21 st  Century mixed-use growth, they are stuck with 20 th  Century problems, like no sidewalks, no connectivity, and even no restaurants. They also, by the way, have no affordable housing and none of the other things that the Hayden-era activists in Santa Monica wanted, because they are stuck with the 20th Century solution of simply retaining the status quo. So even as Hayden – perhaps the prototypical 20 th  Century lefty intellectual – slipped away in a hospital a short distance away, the section of Los Angeles that he loved remains mired in 20 th -Century thinking. Unfortunately, it’s not the 20 th  Century anymore. A personal postscript about Hayden: He always took an interest in my work and often quoted me, which on occasion could be pretty embarrassing. For example, one night I was walking down the street in Sacramento with a bunch of Central Valley Republicans when Tom, then a state legislator, hailed me as he was getting out of his car and yelled that he had quoted me in a hearing that day when he was railing against increasing cross-Delta water transfers. We talked briefly, and I pivoted back to discussing farmland with the Republicans as fast as I could. Still, I couldn’t help but like the guy. To me, he was generous to a fault. I well remember the time he hosted a small event at his house when The Reluctant Metropolis  came out. Afterward, I tried to give him a copy, but he pulled a twenty and a five out of his wallet and thrusting the cash into my hand. “I know what it’s like to have to buy books from a publisher and then give them away,” he said. Maybe the guy appreciated capitalism more than he let on -- and more than Santa Monica's current community activists.

The San Diego City Council approved , 5-4, new restrictions on Civic San Diego, the nonprofit that oversees downtown development. The new restrictions include more oversight and transparency, mandates for low-income housing, employee wages and local hiring. The council members who voted against the pact said the language was not firm enough, with too many potential loopholes and wanted stricter income eligibility requirements for low-income housing in CivicSD projects. CivicSD was created in 2012 to oversee redevelopment projects after the state eliminated redevelopment agencies; two of the council members are in favor of phasing out the organization entirely. Treasure Island Plan Receives LEED-ND Platinum Certification Treasure Island Community Development has announced that its redevelopment of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island have been awarded  LEED-ND Platinum plan certification, the highest designation possible. Treasure Island is the largest plan, in acres, to receive this certification nationwide. The project received its certification for implementing measurable strategies and best practices to achieve sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, sea-level rise adaption and overall environmental quality. The redevelopment of the man-made island created for the 1939 World’s Fair received unanimous approval from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2011. The project includes upgrades to road, utilities and creation of 300 acres of park and open space. Bay Area Council Assesses Housing Regionwide The Bay Area Council Economic Institute released a report  on policies that have been instituted to alleviate the housing affordability crisis in San Francisco. The organization looked at 20 housing-related state and local policies and analyzed their impacts on net affordability. The three key takeaways from the analysis is that local policies matter, building all types of housing is the best way to alleviate housing cost burdens and it is not only about increasing supply but the overall impact on affordability matters. The study noted the importance of keeping rent control in the city, building below market rate units, and the balance of requiring developers to construct a percentage of affordable units. Proposal Could Hasten New Transportation Projects in L.A. County The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has received a proposal  from Parker Infrastructure Partners centered on the concept of flexibility in funding transportation projects at different stages of progress. This new approach would offer multiple Measure M projects to be delivered sooner than anticipated. The Parker proposal is now moving into the detailed proposal phase. In February, Metro officials invited the private sector to bring their ideas for helping Metro deliver projects sooner than scheduled. The Parker Infrastructure Partners’ proposal is one of three currently undergoing initial review to see if they have technical and financial merit. The other two proposals are related to the West Santa Ana Branch Light Rail Project and the Purple Line Extension. Study Finds ‘Filtering’ of Housing Happens Slowly in Bay Area UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies released a research brief  titled Housing Production, Filtering and Displacement: Untangling the Relationships. The study finds that in the Bay Area development of both market-rate and subsidized housing can reduce displacement pressures, but subsidized housing has double the impact of the former. While on average in the United States rental units are filtered down at a rate of 2.2 percent per year, in California and New England the rate is much lower and filtering rates have an inverse relationship with housing price inflation. It is estimated that in the Bay Area filtering rates are roughly 1.5 percent per year and rents decline by about 0.3 percent annually. In housing markets such as San Francisco, aggressive preservation strategies plus increases in subsidized and market-rate housing will help address the displacement crisis. Nevada Stadium Proposal Moves Forward; Could Woo Raiders The Nevada legislature passed  a bill offering $750 million in public funding for a 65,000 seat, $1.9 billion stadium off the Las Vegas Strip for the Oakland Raiders. Team owner Mark Davis will contribute $500 million and billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson $650 million. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed the bill and now three-quarters of NFL team owners must approve in January when they meet. In Oakland, the Raiders are share the aging Coliseum with the A’s. Mayor of Oakland Libby Schaaf said she would not spend public funds on building a new stadium and will not enter a bidding war with Nevada using the public’s money. Scott McKibben, head of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, said  by the time the NFL owners meet Oakland will have a plan to offer to compete with Las Vegas. Sacramento Seeks to Demolish, Revitalize Public Housing Projects Sacramento housing officials say it is time to demolish  Alder Grove and Marina vista housing projects and replace them with a mixed-use neighborhood. Almost 2,000 residents live in the two projects and would have to be moved into temporary housing while the new denser units are constructed. The new neighborhood would include market-rate housing, to rent and purchase, including town homes and single-family homes. While residents are excited for change and city officials are pushing for the new development, the city will need federal financial help. Local housing officials are hoping HUD will give Sacramento up to $30 million through its Choice Communities Initiative grant program. However, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency will have to partner with private developers to help close the financing gap. Encinitas, Del Mar Face Twin Lawsuits over Ballot Measures Two environmental attorneys are filing  lawsuits against the cities of Encinitas and Del Mar over land use issues that have ended up on the ballots of both cities this November. Measure R in Del Mar would give voters the right to approve or reject projects that exceed the number of homes allowed on a property. Measure T in Encinitas gives city residents the choice of adopting the city’s housing element. One of the lawyers is representing the Affordable Housing Coalition of San Diego County and wrote a letter threatening to sue if Del Mar did not increase density in a certain part of the city designated for more housing in the housing element. Quick Hits & Updates The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted  to update the 20-year-old LA River Master Plan. The update will coordinate the numerous ongoing efforts to revitalize the 51-mile body of water by all stakeholders. The new plan will reflect a unified vision from all 17 jurisdictions the river passes through. The Anaheim City Council voted  unanimously to approve the $450 million LT Global’s LT Platinum Center adjacent to the Angel Stadium. The Angels were the last hurdle for the mixed-use development and received the teams approval after resolving differences related to traffic and scale. Rents in San Jose and San Francisco have fallen  for the second month in a row. A 7 percent drop in San Jose from September to October and 6 percent in San Francisco. However, rents climbed in Oakland by 5 percent to $2,358 for a one-bedroom.  The Menlo Park Planning Commission voted, 5-0, to approve  two new office buildings, 200-room hotel and potentially 1,500 units for Facebook. Some community members are worried that the 6,500 employees generated by the two new buildings will not have housing provided. San Francisco Supervisors introduced  legislation to place a 60-day cap on the number of days a housing unit could be rented out as a short-term rental and require hosts to live on the premises for at least 275 days of the year.  Westfield Corp. has proposed  a $1.5 billion project to turn an aging mall into a ‘live, work and play’ complex in Woodland Hills, in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. The project includes a large indoor performing arts arena, central parks, rooftop gardens, pools, and 1,400 apartments. Riverside County  received  a federal grant to move forward with a proposal to initiate rail service between Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley. The train, provided by Amtrak, would run on existing rail tracks and have limited stops in Coachella Valley and Riverside. They are gathering public comments to complete an initial study by the end of 2018. Caltrans released  its FY 2017-18 Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant Application Guide. Statewide a total of $9.3 million is available for transportation planning projects. These grants are in line with Caltrans’ current mission: “Provide a safe, sustainable, integrated and efficient transportation system to enhance California’s economy and livability.” The Palo Alto City Council voted unanimously to provide  a Ford Motor Co.- backed regional bike share program next year grow the current program from 37 to 350 bikes by June. The $1.1 million project is part of a larger plan of growing the Bay Area Bike Share system from 700 bikes to 7,055.

The California Chapter of the American Planning Association presented its 2016 awards this evening at its annual conference in Pasadena. The awards include 13 categories and levels of “excellence” and “merit.”  EXCELLENCE Opportunity and Empowerment City of Salinas 2014-2015 Housing Initiatives City of Salinas Comprehensive Plan, Large Jurisdiction Plan for a Healthy Los Angeles Los Angeles Department of City Planning Comprehensive Plan, Small Jurisdiction Baldwin Park Health and Sustainability Element City of Baldwin park, Community Development Department Implementation, Large Jurisdiction Alcohol Nuisance Abatement Ordinance City of Long Beach Innovation in Green Community Planning City of Los Angeles Sustainable City pLAn Transportation Planning Cross Border Xpress Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering Best Practices Redwood City Community Benefits City of Redwood City Grassroots Initiative Huetra del Valley Community Garden Public Outreach The Game of Floods Marin County Community Development Agency Urban Design The Open Window Project Ten Space Advancing Diversity and Social Change, in Honor of Paul Davidoff Lara Gates City of San Diego Planning Department Academic Greater Washington “Voices of the Community” Assessment Report Graduate Student Teams, San Jose State University Masters of Urban & Regional Planning Program Hard-Won Victories City of Vacaville General Plan Vacaville Department of Community Development MERIT Opportunity and Empowerment Cabrillo Gateway and Anchor Place, Villages at Cabrillo City of Long Beach, Development Services Comprehensive Plan, Large Jurisdiction Sacramento County Development Code Sacramento County Planning and Environmental Review Division Comprehensive Plan, Small Jurisdiction City of La Mesa Urban Trails Mobility Action Plan City of La Mesa Innovation in Green Community Planning Goleta Slough Area Sea Level Rise and Management Plan Goleta Slough Management Committee Transportation Planning Los Angeles Union Station Master Plan Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Best Practices Fresno Multi-Jurisdictional Housing Element Fresno County Department of Public Works and Planning Urban Design Green TI: Terminal Island Freeway Transition Plan City of Long Beach Development Services Advancing Diversity and Social Change, in Honor of Paul Davidoff SurveyLA Latino Los Angeles Historic Context Statement City of Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources Academic Placemmaking for an Aging Population: Guidelines for Senior-Friendly Parks Anastasia Loukautou-Sideris, Lene Levy-Storms, Lin Chen, Madeline Brozen UCLA Luskin School for Public Affairs Hard-Won Victories Carmel Mountain/Del Mar Mesa Natural Resources Management Plan City of San Diego Park & Recreation Department

With due appreciation to the organizers and sponsors of this week’s California APA conference, there’s been a lot of food to keep over 1,500 planners sustained and energized this week. At this morning’s session, there was also a lot of nibbling coming out of Sacramento. As every planner knows, the state’s ability to influence local land use is limited and usually indirect – for better or worse. State policy has traditionally been limited to nibbling around the edges, with the occasional law, and some polite suggestions. The financial incentives that could be most powerful are neutered because, well, they depend on finances. And yet, Gov. Jerry Brown and many other officials have statewide concerns and, in some cases, holistic visions for what the state’s cities should look like. The task of refining those goals and coming up with policies, strategies, and polite suggestions falls largely to the Strategic Growth Council. This morning SGC staffer Suzanne Hague discussed a comprehensive strategy called Sustainable, Equitable Communities. The SGC is drafting it now and hopes to adopt it sometime next year. It includes a range of tasty-sounding morsels designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (per AB 32) and provide a range of co-benefits. Depending how cities respond, these ideas may or may not ever make it out of the kitchen. Here are a few highlights, including some I hadn’t heard before: Regional transit-oriented development funds. The Bay Area has done it with the TOAH program . Other MPOs can follow. Rebates for carbon-friendly housing. If they do it for Teslas, why not for solar panels? Various tax-increment financing schemes, including one that encompasses multiple TOD areas so as to share wealth. Urban growth boundaries, reduced parking requirements, and tax abatements in distressed area. On the transportation tip, Hague mentioned a few well known ideas: subsidized transit passes; bike sharing and car sharing; congestion pricing (which she appealingly recast as “cordon pricing”). She touted the state’s current pilot project to test demand-based taxation that could replace the gas tax: the less you drive, the less you pay (whether you drive a Tesla or a Hummer). If you put Hague’s 30 or so bullet points together and make them happen, you’ll either get a regulatory monstrosity or, perhaps, an walkable, equitable, sustainable urban paradise. In the question-and-answer period, we learned a few reasons why neither scenario may come to pass, including the use of ballot measures to approve leapfrog development, regional transportation plans and taxation measures that have their own agendas, and the perennial shortage of funds to create regulations and do planning work. Hague herself volunteered one of the least talked-about but perhaps most profound impediments to infill living (as opposed to infill development). As it turns out, reduction of GHGs may depend on ABCs. No matter how many high-density, low-parking, mixed-use, yoga-adjacent, dog-friendly units California developers can crank out, none of these developments does a thing to improve public education in center cities. As long as parents, rightly or wrongly, fear for their children’s’ minds and safety, they will always be tempted to flee the suburbs eventually. California’s education tragedy, above all challenges, may be the reason why cities are so family-unfriendly (despite what grumps like Joel Kotkin may claim). So, while California’s planners are learning, and eating, their fill this week, we should remember that the success of their cities may in fact depend on what California’s children learn every day.

If you're in Pasadena right now, you're not alone. The American Planning Association, California Chapter, reported yesterday that 1,800 people are registered for the conference this week. That's a huge number -- in past years it's been more like 1,000 -- and it may suggest that planning and development in California is back after a long downturn that began with the Great Recession. Here are some other tidbits from Sunday ... ... As we tweeted yesterday morning, the most heavily attended session at 8 am. on Sunday was the medical marijuana ordinance session . You can expect even more marijuana land use drama if Prop. 64 passes and every local jurisdiction in the state will have to pass a land use ordinance dealing with marijuana. As we have reported in the past, medical marijuana cases appear to be driving land-use law  in California more than ever before.... ... SB 743 is on everybody's mind. Not only did Rob Dayton from Santa Barbara weigh in on how that affluent coastal city is serving as an "early adopter" of alternative methods of analyzing transportation, but the ever-diligent Chris Calfee from the Governor's Office of Planning and Research reported that a new version of the SB 743 VMT travel guidelines will be out early next year... ... One reason planning may be back in California is that development is back, and one indication of that may be the plethora of land-use ballot measures this fall. Josh Stephens and I weighed in on that yesterday morning at a panel discussing the 60 or so measures on the ballot this fal l.... ... AEP is working through the post- Newhall greenhouse gas emissions analysis problem. At a panel yesterday morning, several AEP leaders worked through their new "field guide"  to GHG emissions and Climate Action Plans. Bottom line: You've got to understand how to separate out the emissions assumptions for new development v. existing development in the area in order to meet the Supreme Court's test.... ....And at a panel on CalAdapt, Erik de Kok of Ascent Environmental gave a nice little primer on SB 1000 , the new environmental-justice-in-General-Plans law that goes into effect in 2018. One interesting sidelight: SB 1000 doesn't specifically speak to climate change, but you might want to take climate change impacts on vulnerable populations into account.

It’s election season, and throughout California we are seeing an unusually large number of ballot measures designed to restrain development. As usual, most of these measures are in coastal areas. Some are urban growth boundary measures, but a lot of them try to put a brake on the density and/or height of new residential development. Presumably that’s because longtime residents in these coastal areas fear that high-density residential development will invade their communities. But even as these skirmishes are still going on, it looks like the battle is over – at least in coastal California. Higher-density development has already won. And increasingly that’s creating a bifurcated state. New single-family homes are built pretty much only in the inland areas. With a couple of exceptions, the coastal areas are turning dense. Perhaps most strikingly, the move toward multifamily development has gotten much stronger since the Great Recession ended. According to the Demographics Research Unit at the Department of Finance, between 2010 and 2016 more than half of all housing units built in California were multi-family units, and the vast majority of those were contained in projects of five or more units. This reverses the trend from the 2000s – but reinforces a trend from the 1990s. (All numbers in this article are derived from DOF's most recent E-5 spreadsheet .) Now, there are a lot of caveats here. There hasn’t been that much housing built since 2010 – only about 300,000 units, or an increase of about 2.5%. (There was only about one housing unit built for every six people addd to the population.) There was a huge amount of single-family housing built during the real estate boom that ended with the crash in 2008 – much of which was available for rent or at cut-rate prices when the Great Recession ended. And lenders have been gun-shy about single-family subdivisions for years. But the trend is striking. And it’s even more striking when you break out the coastal and inland areas – or, more accurately, the land-poor urban areas (which are mostly near the coast and good transit) and the land-rich suburban areas (which are mostly, but not exclusively, inland and away from good transit). To see what I mean, take a look at the striking patterns contained in the chart below. In coastal Southern California – Ventura, Los Angeles, and Orange counties – 77% of new construction is multifamily and only 18% is single-family. (Even in Ventura – land-rich but highly regulated – the numbers were 62% multifamily and 27% single-family.) In the Bay Area, there’s a similar big divide. If you look at the rapidly urbanizing counties with good transit – San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda – you’ll see that 83% of new housing since 2010 is multifamily and only 12% is single-family. In the other counties – Contra Costa and Solano to the east and the three notoriously no-growth counties to the north, Marin, Sonoma, and Napa – you’ll see that only 28% of new housing is multifamily and 68% is single-family. We see the same thing in San Diego – though, as in the Bay Area, some of the single-family dominance is located in slow-growth coastal areas with land. In South County, 66% of new housing is multifamily and only 25% is single-family. In North County, 54% is single-family and 37% is multifamily. But that’s not the whole story. There’s also a story here about big cities in California. Contrary to recent history, they are growing faster than the state as a whole. They are adding housing faster than the state as a whole. And they are adding multifamily housing much faster than the state as a whole. The trend is really striking with the biggest cities. Take a look at the chart below, which compares the four largest cities with the state as a whole. Bear in mind that three of the four cities – Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego – are geographically very large, while San Francisco is not. Those big three cities are, however, running out of land. The raw numbers are striking. Of all the new housing built in these four cities, 92% was multifamily and only 7% was single family. But the numbers relative to the state as a whole is even more striking. Look at the chart below. Blue represents the situation in 2010; orange is the change from 2010 to 2016. In 2010, these four cities had about 19% of the population and 19% of the housing. But between 2010 and 2016, these four cities added 24% of the population and 27% of the housing. Most strikingly, they added about 52% of the multifamily housing. In other words, more multifamily housing was built in L.A. San Jose, San Diego, and San Francisco than in the entire rest of California put together . This trend plays out with other big cities, at least in coastal areas. Big inland cities are like their surrounding counties. Housing construction in Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Stockton, and Riverside – the five biggest inland cities – is all overwhelmingly single-family. So there it is: Bifurcated California. One very identifiable part of California is getting much denser really fast. One very identifiable part of California is not. It doesn’t break out. This doesn’t break down perfectly by coastal and inland areas – political culture about land use in places like the North Bay and North County San Diego matter a lot – but the overall trend is clear. In the long term, the question is not so much how the bifurcation occurs but what it means – not just politically but also in terms of policy, transportation, and lifestyle. For example, as the state’s push for a planning policy revolving around reduction in driving grows, the dense coastal areas will have a huge advantage in competing for money. And the big question is probably whether anti-density politics in the coastal areas will trump pro-density market trends. If the market wins, that means more housing built near job centers, lessening the transportation impact. If anti-density politics wins, that means more housing gets pushed inland. More people will be living in single-family homes, but they’ll be driving a long way to work. Whether they will be happy or not remains to be seen.

At first blush, the rest of California may not have much to learn from a high-priced, semi-isolated Spanish Revival paradise by the sea. But, roughly halfway through this week’s conference  of the American Planning Association California Chapter, held in Pasadena, Santa Barbara yielded what might be the conference's two most compelling pieces of data:  Among all the people who live in Santa Barbara’s downtown core and immediate surrounding neighborhoods, 10 percent commute outside the city for work.  Among all the people who work in downtown Santa Barbara, 39 percent commute into the city from somewhere else.  Hm.  These numbers come from Rob Dayton, principal transportation planner in the Santa Barbara Department of Public Works. They illustrate a truism that planners in big cities know well but that is counterintuitive to many suburban planers and — more importantly — to many of the opponents of growth in center cities. Dayton's numbers attest to the jobs-housing imbalance, in all its Mediterranean glory. (CP&DR doesn’t cover Santa Barbara very often — in part because, being built-out, it doesn’t have a lot of development.)  This data lead to an obvious conclusion: the more residents a downtown accommodates, the less driving there is in the aggregate. That’s doubly true if you believe in a world in which people do not equate self-worth with a steering wheel.  Santa Barbara is acting on this data sensibly: by encouraging development — commercial and residential — in its downtown core. Though Santa Barbara's street grid that is saturated, as Dayton said, a development’s traffic impact depends largely on its location. He expects that developments in the core will generate half the traffic of developments in outlying areas of the city.  This is exactly the kind of logic that eludes many of the opponents of development. In Santa Monica, for instance, voters will soon consider a ballot measure, Measure LV, that would all but freeze residential development. Proponents argue in part that development automatically incurs traffic and they fight like mad against it, ignoring the fact that the people with the most incentive to occupy new units are exactly those who are commuting into Santa Monica. Meanwhile, the westbound Interstate 10 looks like an evacuation route every morning.  Disregard for the jobs-housing imbalance is much the same in Los Angeles, where traffic gridlock is cited as the reason to oppose pretty much everything, especially in sites in West L.A. that would likely house — you guessed it — workers who commute to Santa Monica.  Dayton’s Santa Barbara data is of course no revelation for anyone who has paid any attention to center cities in the past decade. But his way of getting around the NIMBY freakout is. He’s using vehicle miles traveled (VMT) measurements rather than level of service (LOS). That change, which will be blessed statewide with the imminent implementation of SB 743, enables the city to essentially evaluate traffic impacts — and, crucially, CEQA analysis — from potential development in its entire downtown area in one fell-swoop. (The conference's host city, Pasadena, happens to have been the first city in California to implement VMT metrics; see CP&DR coverage .) Dayton said the impacts of any particular downtown development can be performed "on the back of a napkin." That’s because VMT enables the city to account for the non-impact of all those downtown workers who, with closer-in housing, will no longer be gumming up intersections after they spill off Highway 101.  Dayton stressed that Santa Barbara’s plan is new and not yet implemented. But if a place as near-perfect as Santa Barbara can accept that, sometimes, a little development can be a good thing, maybe there’s hope yet for the rest of coastal California.

The Strategic Growth Council granted $289 million to 25 projects last week in the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program – but not without considerable criticism about how the SGC scored the applications for senior housing projects. SGC funded only two out of 17 full senior housing applications, many of whose scores were apparently affected by the Air Resources Board’s decision to reclassify those applications under the “Retirement Communities” land use subtype rather than the “Apartment” subtype”. According to several unsuccessful applicants, this change caused an increase in estimated vehicle trips and hence a lower estimate in greenhouse gas emissions reduction. “Senior housing is typically a housing source for low-, very-low, and extremely-low income seniors,” Stuart Hartman, vice president for operations at the Retirement Housing Foundation, a nonprofit developer, told the SGC at its meeting in Sacramento on October 11. “It is a radically different type of housing than a retirement community. “It’s like calling a horse a dog and a dog a horse,” Meghan Rose, director of policy for Leading Age California, told the SGC. “They’re just not the same thing.” Several speakers asked SGC to rescore the projects for this round, the SGC declined to so and approved the staff recommendations instead. Most speakers also asked SGC to consider a supplemental round in order to give the senior projects another chance, but SGC Chair Ken Alex downplayed expectations on that idea as well. “It's not obvious to me that it should go back simply to ‘Apartments’,” Alex said. “For that reason I think it's not appropriate to change the proposed allocations this year or to do a new round based on next year’s money until we figure this out in a better way." The two senior projects funded by the SGC were the Kings Canyon project in Fresno, a mixture of affordable and senior housing that received $15 million, and the Sun Valley senior veterans housing project in Los Angeles, which received $11 million. Both were funded through the Integrated Connectivity Program. Among the senior projects that did not receive funding were the Beacon Pointe project in Long Beach by Century Affordable Development, the Valley Vista senior apartments in Jamestown, a senior affordable housing project in South San Francisco, Eden Housing’s senior project in Alameda, and a senior housing project in Crescent City by Danco Communities. Several applicants and advocates also criticized SGC and ARB for a lack of transparency. Although SGC held several workshops on proposed changes to the guidelines, this shift was buried deep in ARB’s “Quantification Methodology” document and not highlighted by SGC staff at the workshops. Deputy Executive Director Allison Joe said the staff would discuss the senior housing issue in detail in developing guidelines for next year’s program. The question of affordable housing has been a difficult one for the SGC ever since the AHSC program was created two years ago. The program is funded by state cap-and-trade pollution permit funds and is designed primarily to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, housing advocates have lobbied hard to give priority to affordable housing projects in the scoring, with considerable success. In his remarks about the senior housing issue, Alex referred to the tension between sustainability and affordable housing. “I do want to remind everybody that at the end of the day this remains a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emission reduction funded program,” he said. “So as important as affordable housing is in this State, and as important as it is that we deal with it, the function of this Council on this topic is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” SGC permitted more than 70 proposals to move forward to the final scoring, seeking more than $700 million in state funds. The final SGC decision was to fund 25 projects with $289 million. The Bay Area and Southern California received seven projects each, with the average project receiving between $10 million and $12 million. Originally the SGC had been expected to give away $400 million, but cap-and-trade auction sales have been weaker than expected. SGC meeting materials can be found here . Videotape of SGC meeting can be found here . Prevous CP&DR coverage of these recommendations can be found here . The free online CSS cleaner tool allows you to organize style for websites.

Breaking new legal ground, an appellate court has concluded that a Mello-Roos District may fund facilities and services that are funded by general tax revenue in areas outside the district but within the same jurisdiction. The court also ruled that a Mello-Roos tax funding general governmental services is not a general tax under Proposition 13 and Proposition 218 but, rather, a special tax.

As part of its participation in the 100 Resilient Cities program , the City of Oakland released  Resilient Oakland: It Takes a Town to Thrive, a resilience playbook and call to action designed to tackle Oakland’s most pressing systemic and interdependent economic, social and physical challenges. The Resilient Oakland playbook includes strategies and actions to tackle systematic, interdependent challenges. This means changing the local and regional institutions to become more resilient and responsive to challenges. The main themes of Resilient Oakland are to build a more trustworthy and responsive government, stay rooted and thrive in the city, and build a more vibrant and connected Oakland. "The Resilient Oakland Playbook sets forth nearly 40 actions designed to be collaborative, data-driven and equitable in our outcomes," said Kiran Jain, Oakland's chief resilience officer, in a statement. "By taking a continuous 'build, measure, learn' approach to resiliency, we honor the work that has been done and build on it today, while setting forth bold actions that shape the future of a more resilient Oakland." (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Low Inflows Imperil S.F. Bay Ecosystem Researchers at the Bay Institute have found  that because little water is flowing from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River into the San Francisco Bay estuary, the ecosystem may be collapsing. One major reason for the sharp decrease in water is human extraction. The State Water Resources Control Board last month required Californians to leave 40 percent of what would naturally flow during the spring to save fish species. One UC Davis scientist told the SF Chronicle “of the roughly 120 native freshwater fish species in California, over 80 percent of those are faced with extinction by the end of the century if current trends continue.” The study’s conclusions were that fish extinctions were looming, starvation of fish-dependent species, diminished freshwater to the Gulf of the Farallones, increased salinity, and lack of sediment. Downzoned San Diego Community Plans Sent Back to Drawing Board The San Diego City Planning Commission rejected  the Uptown community plan update, which would have decreased housing density in parts of Hillcrest, Bankers Hill and Mission Hills. The vote may signal an appetite for greater density in those parts of San Diego. The rejected Uptown community plan update included several instances of “downzoning,” resulting in a loss of around 1,900 housing units but also protects historic buildings. The commissioners voted unanimously to recommend approval of the community plan update, but without the density decreases. A city-commissioned analysis found the Uptown Community Plan update would fall short of the citywide transportation goals included in the Climate Action Plan. The City Council has final say on the update. Beacon Awards Recognize Leaders in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Honoring voluntary efforts by local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy and adopt policies that promote sustainability, the Beacon Program  is sponsored by the Institute for Local Government and the Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative (SEEC). The City of Colma won the 2016 Gold Beacon Award for 29 percent Agency Energy Savings, 43 percent Agency Greenhouse Gas Reductions, and Platinum in Sustainability Best Practices. American Canyon, Emeryville, Benicia, Hermosa Beach, Davis, Manhattan Beach, and Santa Monica received silver Beacon awards. One-hundred California cities participate in the program and 45 cities received awards  for their sustainability efforts. Parcel Adjacent to Great Park Rouses Controversy in Irvine Orange County is developing  a proposal to develop 100 acres it owns south of the Great Park in Irvine. The development would include 2,103 housing units, 242 room hotel, 220,000 feet of commercial space, and 1.9 million square feet of office space and could reap the county nearly $4 billion in tax revenues over 75 years. Irvine officials are threatening to sue over the project because they claim it is a money grab and could prevent future nearby developments. County officials deny these allegations and will begin a public discussion about the project by releasing draft plans next month. The opposition centers on the limited capacity of local roads. Study Assesses Wild Fire Damage Across Western U.S. A study by the University of Idaho and Columbia University found  that 10.4 million acres in the West burned between 1984 and 2015 as a direct result of human-caused global warming. While research has tied wildfires to hotter, dryer conditions resulting from GHG emissions, this report is one of the first to quantify the impact of climate change. California is one of the states hit the hardest with the 132,000-acre Soberanes Fire in Big Sur this summer, last years Valley Fire in Lake County and Yosemite’s Rim Fire in 2013. According to the U.S. Forest Service, nationwide a record 10.1 million acres burned last year. The research looked at eight measures of “aridity” such as weather and moisture metrics. Their models showed temperature increases of 2.5 degrees in the past 50 years. Additionally they computed that 55 percent of forest aridity was due to climate change and the remaining 45 percent was natural climate variation. Oceanside Embarks on General Plan Update The City of Oceanside is updating  its General Plan to focus on expanding local jobs and reducing its carbon footprint. The first step is a new Economic Development Plan Element and Energy/Climate Action Plan Element. As is required by CEQA, all cities must reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. Oceanside is updating its general plan and including GHG emission reduction thresholds and how they intend to meet these goals. Some policies the city will focus on are containing sprawl, providing alternative transportation options and expanding tree canopy. Quick Hits & Updates The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission  announced  it will produce a plan to help the city prepare for sea level rise. Drafting of the plan will take three years and focus on coming up with “vulnerability assessments” for each section of the shoreline and explain how it could be adapt to changes that lie ahead as well as recommending that local governments explore new institutional arrangements to address the impacts of climate change”. Tesla Motors Inc. intends to build  4.6 million square feet of new space for its factory in Fremont, which would increase production to 500,000 cars per year and add more than 3,000 workers. This proposed expansion is adjacent to the company’s current 4.5 million square feet plant. The company is seeking approval from the City of Fremont for a master plan to accommodate 11 new structures, primarily industrial space. The proposal must now go to the city’s Planning Commission. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) The Fair Political Practices Commission dismissed  a complaint that accused Chinese developer Wanda Group of illegally funding an effort to halt a rival Beverly Hills condo proposal, which is the subject of a November ballot measure. Wanda Group and Alagem have plans to build condominium towers on adjacent properties. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has announced  the beginning of its search for engineering and architectural consultants to draw up plans for the Fresno station. The winning team will receive a six-year contract for up to $11 million. The City of Fresno is developing a master plan for the proposed area of the station in the heart of downtown. The Greater Sacramento Economic Council has presented a proposal  to rename the Bay Area, Sacramento, Central Valley corridor the “Bay Area-Sacramento Mega Region.” The council claims that the megaregion can collaborate to keep jobs in California and improve regional transportation. The California Public Utilities Commission has approved  water taxi service connecting San Francisco and Berkeley. Two companies, Tideline and Prop, will run smaller 40-person ferries. Prop plans to serve Berkeley, Emeryville, San Francisco, and Redwood City starting in January. Tideline expects cross-bay trips to take about 20 minutes and cost $10 each way. The League of California Cities installed  several new officers at its recent conference. Lodi Council Member JoAnne Mounce, former vice president, was installed as the League president. Palos Verdes Estates Council Member James Goodhart was elected the first vice president and South San Francisco Council Member Rich Garbarino as second vice president. The City of Carlsbad released  its draft Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment in June. City officials are meeting with residents and experts to discuss ways the city can adapt.

In most urban areas, the promise of 25,000 new jobs would cause celebrations. But the laws of economics take strange turns in Silicon Valley. This summer, the Santa Clara City Council approved CityPlace, a $6.5 billion mega-development on the site of a city-owned golf course (which was previously a landfill). It is designed in part to be the downtown that the valley, populated by office parks and bedroom communities, does not have. The project, developed by Related Cos., will encompass a total of 9.7 million square feet, more than half of which will be office space, and 1.1 million square feet of retail. Amid this enormity will be 1,360 residential units. But that’s far too few, according to Santa Clara’s biggest neighbor. While Santa Clara city leaders are hailing the project, their counterparts in San Jose are wondering something else: Where is everyone going to live? And how are they going to get there? Shortly after CityPlace’s approval, and an accompanying general plan amendment, San Jose filed a lawsuit against Santa Clara in Santa Clara County Superior Court; Related Cos. is named as a real party of interest. It is believed to be the first time San Jose has sued a neighboring city over development issues. The suit alleges that the project violates the California Environmental Quality Act on the grounds that the city did not properly consider the traffic, water, and economic impacts of the massive project. In particular, San Jose alleges that Santa Clara has failed to plan for the housing needs of the project’s estimated 25,000 workers. They will, San Jose’s argument goes, be forced to seek housing in San Jose and thereby push housing prices even higher. CityPlace exacerbates what San Jose officials describe as an already challenging situation. According to city officials, 32 percent of Santa Clara workers live in San Jose, with only 8 percent of Santa Clarans working in San Jose. “As a city, San Jose is providing housing not just for workers employed in Santa Clara, but for workers in other cities across the Peninsula and South Bay,” said San Jose spokesperson Elisabeth Handler. It’s a region-wide problem – and it’s an old fight in Silicon Valley, where San Jose – a city of almost 1 million people – has long complained of bearing the housing burden for smaller, richer Silicon Valley cities where the jobs are located. “In the Bay Area there is an extraordinary imbalance between job creation and housing production which puts pressure on housing prices,” said Sarah Karlinsky, a policy analyst for the regional urbanist advocacy group SPUR. She noted that the region added over 450,000 jobs from 2010 to 2014, but scarcely more than 10 percent as many housing units. Santa Clara officials point out that the city’s general plan calls for 10,000 new housing units. Santa Clara’s population is 120,000 while San Jose’s is 998,000. “Create profound environmental impacts which, unnecessarily, have a regional effect…. shifts the environmental burden and expense to support that economic development onto neighboring cities and counties by limiting housing within the development,” wrote San Jose’s attorneys in the complaint. “Respondent's EIR has understated and/or whitewashed the impacts the project creates, leaving its own citizens and neighboring communities to bear the burdens, risks, and costs of these impacts.” The complaint further accuses Santa Clara of disregarding the principles of its own general plan, which call for reducing in vehicle miles traveled, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and preservation of neighborhoods. Santa Clara has hired prominent CEQA attorney Tina Thomas to defend it. City officials have fired back at San Jose alleging that it has pursued developments close to its border with Santa Clara without consulting the city and that it has aggressively recruited businesses and new jobs. Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gilmor did not respond to requests for comment. In essence, both cities’ housing shortages, and the resulting jobs-housing imbalance, has made economic development an unusually controversial issue. San Jose hopes to reach a settlement without bringing the suit to court. “As a city, we believe in working with the other cities in our region to jointly address the economic and quality of life issues that impact all of us, without involving the courts,” said Handler. Contacts & Resources Santa Clara CityPlace Project Page San Jose Complaint (pdf) Elisabeth Handler , Public Information Manager, Office of Economic Development, City of San Jose, elisabeth.handler@sanjoseca.gov Sarah Karlinsky , Senior Policy Advisor, San Francisco Planning & Urban Research, skarlinsky@spur.org