The Second District Court of Appeal has upheld the environmental impact report for the extension of Los Angeles's Purple Line, removing another hurdle for construction of the "Subway to the Sea" through Beverly Hills. Now we'll see whether the Beverly Hills city and school district will appeal to the California Supreme Court.

A Venice tenant who was renting her attic or loft out through AirBNB does not have a "triable issue of fact" on an eviction case brought against her by her landlord, the appellate division of the Los Angeles County Superior Court has ruled.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday not take the appeal in  California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose , the case in which the California Supreme Court upheld San Jose's inclusionary housing requirement. But the court was not completely silent.

On December 21, the Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, deployed a suite of communications satellites, and, in impressive fashion, came back down to Earth. Using its engines to dull the force of gravity, it survived re-entry and hit its football-field sized landing pad like a Tesla backing into a garage. The Falcon 9's return from the heavens was an early Christmas miracle, courtesy of Elon Musk, one of the world's few celebrity engineers. It is a product of SpaceX, Musk's pioneering private space-travel company based in Hawthorne. He can now add space to the list of fields - from electric cars, to battery power, to credit card payments - that his ventures have conquered. (A similar launch Jan. 17 didn't go quite so well.) Next, Musk hopes to revolutionize long-distance transit. That one may make rocket science look like child's play. For the uninitiated: Hyperloop is - depending on whom you ask - either the name brand or the generic concept behind the next generation of magnetic levitation technology. It's envisioned as either a train or as a set of individual pods that, unlike conventional maglev (which never really caught on, except on a 21-mile line in Shanghai), would run through depressurized tubes. Yes, tubes. As in under the ground. The technology makes intuitive sense. It uses the estimable power of magnetic propulsion while avoiding the mortal enemy of all moving things: air resistance. With potential speeds north of 600 miles per hour, the "hyper" is obvious; whether "loop" refers to the circular tube or to the idea that these things will be encircling us sooner than you can say " California High Speed Rail " is but one of its delightful mysteries.

Resident concerns about the social and psychological impact associated with the conversion of a horse-boarding facility to a 12-lot subdivision do not constitute a "community character" issue requiring an environmental impact report, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

Steve Jobs. That's the only reference to Apple's ubiquitous founder that this review will include. In Geography of Genius, journalist Eric Weiner does the world a favor by reminding us that there are, and have been, other greats who deserve the mantle of genius. Taken seriously, "Geography of Genius" is a troubling book, lauding a scant few individuals throughout history who, by a combination of talent, relative privilege, and good fortune qualify as "geniuses." Fortunately, we don't have to take it that seriously. Its strength and weakness that it is not a rigorous scholarly review but rather a romp through human achievement - and the cities where it has taken place. Organized chronologically, each chapter travels to a different city and investigates a different type of genius, spanning some 3,000 years. There's a fun, parlor-game quality to anticipation, both of what city will come next and of what might qualify as "genius" for Weiner.

Five years ago, metropolitan regions across California started implementing what is arguably the most significant statewide land-use and transportation policy to come along in generations: Senate Bill 375.

An appellate court has refused a developer’s request to order the City of Sebastopol to approve an environmental impact report on which the city began work in 2001.

Following Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing of two new climate change bills last week, state officials have released two short white papers laying out possible approaches for hitting the targeted 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The papers are a starting point for the Air Resources Board’s new Scoping Plan on GHG reduction strategies.

If there's anything more confusing than one regional government bureaucracy, it's two regional government bureaucracies.

A new set of recommendations for implementing SB 743  - which would require traffic analysis to be based on vehicle miles traveled -- proposes moving many proposed significance thresholds from the legally binding CEQA guidelines to a technical advisory memo. These recommendations also call for stricter thresholds on the so-called "regional averages" and provide simpler methodologies for dealing with safety issues. The thresholds of significance are important because they often trigger an environmental impact  report.

BEVERLY HILLS, May 2, 2016 - As the saying goes, when you're holding a hammer, the world looks like a nail. What if you have a 3-D printer instead of a hammer?