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The scene is the control room of a spy satellite, launched by an unnamed country. Two men sit in semi-darkness, their faces washed in the ghostly light of a video screen. At this moment, the satellite is transmitting images of a new master-planned community known as Dos Lagos, located in the western Riverside County city of Corona. “What’s that?” says the first guy, pointing a sausage-like finger at the screen. It shows the configuration of office, retail and residential buildings. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The second guy squints at the screen. “It looks like suburbia to me.” “How do you know,” says the first guy in a contentious tone, “that it’s not some sort of weapons plant? You see those two lakes? They could be cooling ponds for a reactor.” The second guy squints again. “Nothing big enough there for a reactor,” he says finally. “It looks more like a master-planned community in Southern California.” He adds teasingly: “You oughta go back to spook school, dude.” At this point, the two men break the tension by exchanging some playful punches. “How can you tell it’s suburbia?” says the first guy, still feeling a little defensive. “That layout sure doesn’t look like the suburbs where I grew up in the ’70s, when the streets looked like something you’d see inside a can of bait. This place is a lot more orderly and put-together, like a big industrial operation. Besides, if this is a residential community and not a weapons plant, like you say, what are those missile silos doing there to the left?” “Those are office buildings.” “And how do you explain those chemical factories next door?” “Those are live-work lofts. You’ve gotta have housing choices in these master planned communities. This isn’t the ’70s anymore.” After a moment, the first guy asks: “What are office buildings doing in a residential master plan? I thought you said this was the suburbs.” “The office buildings are there,” says the second, “ because this is an enlightened, state-of-the-art plan that balances jobs and housing.” “Really?” says the first, showing interest. “How many people who live here will actually work here too?” “If experience is our guide,” says the second, “almost nobody.” “Ah-ha!” the first guy shouts. “What about those airplane hangars next to the runway?” “Those are retail buildings arranged on either side of the main street,” says the second guy quietly. “Stores, huh?” says the first. Then, after a moment’s reflection: “How come that retail strip is the most formal and orderly part of the installation?” “Well, now, that is a good question,” says the second before answering his own question: “I think it’s because retail is the most public part of the master plan. This is where folks are supposed to gather and hang out. It’s a promenade, like.” “ ?” says the first, in a derisive tone. “Dude is talkin’ now. Tryin’ to lose your security clearance or somethin’?” The second guy colors a bit. “I read about it in the papers,” he says, sounding a bit steamed. “It’s called the New Urbanism. That main street is probably meant to be a lifestyle center, which is basically a shopping mall that’s supposed to look like a street or something.” “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” says the first, also getting a bit ticked. “I know a little something about the New Urbanism.” Attempting to lighten the mood, he asks: “Hey! You know what they call a city full of naked people?” The second one sighs. “The Nude Urbanism?” “I guess you heard that one already,” says the first. Then, summoning his confidence, he says firmly: “This layout makes no sense as urbanism.” “How you figure?” says the second, cool and incredulous. “Well,” says the first, “To the south, you have a strongly defined axis of the street with all the shops. But instead of continuing all the way through to the north, where the office buildings and live-work lofts are, the shopping street stops at those two lakes. If this street is so all-fired important, why doesn’t Mr. Enlightened Developer locate all the commercial buildings on the main drag?” “Because the water is an , dude,” says the second, with a trace of condescension, adding, “It’s about . This is L.A. It’s supposed to look like paradise.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” says the first. “If the water is an ‘amenity,’ as you call it, then why is it stuck in the middle, where it gets in the way of everything? It should be off to the side in a park.” “You’re an idiot,” says the second. “The water is smack dab in the middle so everybody can see the water no matter where they are! It’s brilliant!” “It’s stupid,” says the first, growing similarly uncharitable. “There is no reason for the main street not to have all the commercial space, especially if this street is supposed to be the part of this here master-planned community!” Now it is the second guy’s turn to get quiet. Clearly on a roll, the first guy jabs his fat finger at the screen again. “Plus, what kind of mixed-use development is this? Nothing is mixed! Everything is kept in its own little area — office buildings here, retail there, housing somewhere else. Nothing touches anything else. It looks like one of those sectional plates that little kids eat from, so their creamed corn doesn’t get up mixed up with their peas.” “Anyway,” the first guy goes on to say, “we’ve got to get our report out — we’re under pressure from Upstairs to find you-know-what.” “Say anything you want,” says the second dispiritedly. “I’m hittin’ the can.” He gets to his feet wearily and walks out. The first guy rubs his chin for a minute, and then starts to type. “Suspected suburban development,” he writes on his keyboard. Then, after a moment, he adds: “Weapons plant cannot categorically be ruled out.” He hits the send button, stands up, hitches his trousers and goes to lunch.

Legend records that the dying Julius Caesar looks up to find his friend Brutus among his assassins. “ ” (And you too, Brutus?) is his pathetic and much-quoted response. This tragic scene from the stage has nothing to do with land use politics in Santa Monica, of course - except for the smell of opportunism and something approaching betrayal of Santa Monica residents by their own city government. Santa Monica officials have been rightly aghast at proposals by MaceRich Company, the owner of the Santa Monica Place shopping mall, to build three high-rise towers, each 24 stories, on or near the site where the mall currently stands. This opportunistic proposal comes in response to MaceRich's offer to tear down its existing mall, designed by architect Frank Gehry in 1980. The mall is a klutzy building that even the architect may be pleased to demolish. The mall's removal would open the wildly successful Third Street Promenade to the city's wildly unsuccessful civic center. In this happy scenario, the teeming foot traffic of the shopping street spills out into an area of public parks and civic buildings, including the handsome new headquarters of RAND Corporation, as well as the ugly and obsolete Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. In exchange for the civic gesture of removing the Great Wall of Gehry and connecting the long-estranged Third Street and Civic Center, MaceRich wants a set of princely concessions, including the right to build not only the condominium towers but a pair of 40-foot-tall retail buildings on either side of Third Street. Some local residents have likened the proposed development to a canyon. Yes, Santa Monica city council members have been aghast at the idea of the three towers, which would be five times taller than the current height limit of 56 feet. But do not rush to call MaceRich “greedy” or “grasping” or any of the other names that some people frequently attach to developers. You may need those words soon for another party - namely, the City of Santa Monica itself. The city recently bought the former RAND site, which lies immediately north of the new campus, including some inestimably valuable land along Ocean Avenue with excellent ocean views (see , June 2000). Seeking to maximize its public investment, the city wants to build one or two 12-story residential buildings along the avenue. These buildings would not be as tall as the proposed MaceRich buildings, being only two-and-a-half times taller than zoning allows. Of the two proposals, the city's own proposal is arguably worse because it has a chance of actually getting built. The MaceRich proposal, in contrast, is a kind of bluff. California developers know their projects are going to get cut down to the bone, so their opening offer tends to be wildly oversized. (Developers seem to believe that if they were foolish enough to open talks with the city with a realistic proposal, they would walk out of City Council with blueprints for a bird house.) The sudden spate of high-rise proposals is unusual in Santa Monica, which is one of the most regulated places in California. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” a land use lawyer once told me, “Santa Monica gets an 11.” The city has been rigorous, perhaps to a fault, about upholding design standards and limiting development, especially along the city's waterfront. The city, for example, has set a limit on new hotel rooms, and the last two hotels to open in Santa Monica have been rehabs of historic hotel buildings, so as to prevent any net increase in units. If this kind of stringency can make lawyers tear out their hair in hanks, there are benefits, too. High-rise construction has been limited largely to a single street, Wilshire Boulevard, where it belongs, while the rest of the city, including the waterfront, remains no higher than four stories. As a result, Santa Monica has one of the most visible waterfronts of any city in Southern California. The offensive nature of the MaceRich proposal is that tall buildings would block views not only from the north and south, but from the east, as well. However, those towers are unlikely to be built, at least at the proposed heights. Although the city towers are only half the height as MaceRich buildings, they are even more offensive because they would block views from even closer to the ocean. And although I have not conducted an audit of the Santa Monica city treasury, I suspect the city does not really need this real estate windfall. Santa Monica is tourist catnip, and local businesses disgorge plenty of tax increment, sales tax and hotel tax (and soon more, as the city has proposed lifting the existing hotel tax from 10% to 14%). I respectfully - and seriously - propose the following: The City should negotiate with MaceRich, allowing the mall owner to build something like its desired density. But the development should be horizontal along the street in the form of row houses, rather than high-rise towers. To preserve MaceRich's square-footage, the city should redistribute that entitlement along Ocean Avenue, giving the developer a portion of the city's own property, if necessary. Both MaceRich and the city should limit residential construction to two-story townhouses, or four stories at the very most, with two-story units stacked atop one another. The townhouses would provide the city with the housing that it needs, while providing a pleasantly citified edge to Ocean Avenue. The same solid wall of housing would benefit the new public space on the remainder of the Ocean Avenue acreage because a solid wall of built stuff is the best way of defining a park or plaza ( “Urban Space” by Leon Krier). Inside the park, we can create a public garden or ball fields or cultural facilities or any other public use compatible with a heavily used public park. Nobody's ox is gored, especially not the public's. MaceRich and the city can both a make a killing on the absurdly inflated prices that ocean-front condominiums can command nowadays. (I have seen loft units off of Third Street priced at $4 million.) Best of all, everybody's ocean view is preserved. And nobody would be able to write a Shakespearean tragedy about how the City of Santa Monica assassinated its own General Plan in the hope of making a couple of bucks. “ , City Council?”

Officials with the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) have created a "new normal" baseline for discussing possible changes to CEQA transportation metrics under SB 743. They've succeeded pretty much by having the stamina to keep discussing their August 6 preliminary discussion draft. Over. And over. And over. For three months. In an extended public workshopping process the key OPR drafters -- Chris Calfee and Chris Ganson -- have spoken before many different California groups to explain their August draft, often appearing with leading experts and spokespeople who raise challenging questions about it. Bill Fulton was already referring to "The SB 743 roadshow" in mid-September. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3576 .) Now in late fall, with public comments on the draft due November 21, the roadshow has returned, well-tested, to Sacramento. Those appearances didn't build complete agreement on CEQA transportation metrics -- nothing could -- but through public debates and informal consultations, it appears OPR has built up a corps of influential loyal-opposition advisor/critics who are at least willing to keep arguing constructively and maybe willing to edge toward consensus. Two chances to take SB 743 debate's temperature Two panel discussions last week showed there's still plenty of disagreement on details, but most of the new conversation is happening within a frame established by OPR: how best to apply a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) standard in California CEQA analysis without undue kerfuffles or litigation. An OPR-sponsored panel discussion November 3 brought together many of the leading figures in the SB 743 debate to argue and clarify the outstanding dilemmas. (Video is online at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php .) (The next day, in a panel discussion at the University of San Francisco, three of the speakers who had argued most fiercely in published essays in August -- Jennifer Hernandez, Ethan Elkind and Amanda Eaken -- made clear that not everyone has bought into the OPR approach, though they did manage to agree on some common ground. See our separate coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3622 .) OPR's loyal opposition on display At the November 3 panel discussion, the two Chris's began with their now-familiar OPR presentation on the drawbacks of LOS congestion analysis and arguments for choices in the August 6 discussion draft. (For prior CP&DR coverage of this evolving presentation see http://www.cp-dr.com/search/articles/node-opr .) The presentation lays out the SB 743 mandate to measure transportation impacts by a standard other than Level of Service (LOS) congestion ratings, and why OPR favors a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) standard to replace it -- that is, a rule based on the number and length of vehicle trips a project causes, not the amount of delay it may cause at any given intersection. It explains the rationales for disputed parts of the proposal: the proposed "no significant impact" presumptions for projects within half a mile of good transit; the recommendation of regional average VMT as the threshold of significance for individual projects; possible interactions between the VMT standard for transportation impact purposes and continuing LOS-based planning rules for purposes such as safety and air quality. As he frequently has, Calfee emphasized local agencies' authority to pick their own methodologies for estimating VMT, and he described many of the draft's practical suggestions for thresholds and mitigations as being recommendations, not hard requirements. Though in explaining local lead agencies' authority to choose their own methodologies, Calfee warned attorneys that the assumptions underlying transportation studies are best included in the administrative record. Calfee repeated his late-September comment that the January 1, 2016 date projected in the August draft for full implementation was "a placeholder" and "probably too quick" so "I would imagine that that date may change." And he had new hints on the rulemaking timetable: he said if the next proposal draft contained major changes, OPR might send it out for further public review, but when "we're comfortable with the proposal" it would go out to the Natural Resources Agency to start a formal rulemaking process, so he expected "that we won't come to resolution on this until some time in 2015." The Kool-Aid When Caltrans Deputy Secretary Kate White, acting as moderator, opened the discussion to panelists, independent planner Terrell Watt announced, "I think we're all up here on the panel because we've drunk the Kool-Aid, we're on the right path, we need to get constructive, roll up our sleeves, and figure out ." The only outright demurrer to that came politely from Jim Moose, partner with the firm of Remy Moose Manley. "I'm not sure whether drinking the Kool-Aid was a prerequisite for being invited," he said, suggesting he hadn't entirely been converted to the OPR draft. He had a few concerns, including that ordinary people dislike congestion, rural county officials dislike taking instructions from "urban liberal elites," and a reduction in CEQA litigation threats over LOS issues might reduce the "fear factor" that could motivate his clients to cooperate with other jurisdictions on reducing congestion. The rest of the panel was a dream team of CEQA transportation expertise: Jeffrey Tumlin, the respected Nelson/Nygaard transportation specialist; Eric Ruehr, chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' SB 743 task force; Ron Milam, director of technical development with Fehr and Peers and an expert on VMT analysis; Viktoriya Wise, San Francisco Planning's lead on VMT analysis; Curt Johansen of the Council of Infill Builders, and Amanda Eaken of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who frequently invokes her role as a key figure in shaping SB 743 in the first place. The panel did raise criticisms and uncertainties. Among them: - Concerns for rural VMT analyses, about incentives for transit in small towns, and about oppositional attitudes of rural planners and developers toward instructions from central government. - A question whether projects that don't meet the threshold of current regional VMT average would or should get built anyway via mitigations or statements of overriding considerations. - Two objections Eaken has been making since August: First, that it's too lenient to grant a "less than significant impact" presumption to projects within half a mile of good transit because mere presence near transit doesn't guarantee transit-oriented design. Second, that when projects are analyzed individually, the threshold of significance could be stricter than OPR's suggested rule to generate less than the existing regional average VMT. Eaken argued projects should do better to reach 2050 climate protection goals. (Wise said San Francisco was already using stricter thresholds, and would want to continue doing so, in part "to accommodate all the infill growth that we are taking." - Calls for consistency between CEQA VMT rules and other requirements, including Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) and Air Resources Board pollution reduction targets. - On thresholds of significance -- an area where Calfee has already indicated willingness to change the draft (http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3582), Tumlin suggested projects should be considered acceptable if they fell 15% below any one of four standards: the expected average VMT for new development in municipal general plans; the regional average; Air Resources Board goals, or the local SCS. He suggested projects can often reduce their VMT by as much as 40% and 15% should be possible for most. - Calls for preserving local agencies' flexibility by lifting the more specific or technical requirements out of the guidelines themselves and moving those into technical advisory memos or possibly OPR's revised General Plan guidelines. This persistent recommendation came in light of disagreements running since August about whether OPR's "recommendations" could carry the force of law -- especially due to objctions by the Holland & Knight law firm about possible mitigation measures listed in the OPR draft's Appendix F (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3560 ). - Answering a query about case studies in VMT reduction -- White and Johansen recommended TransForm's GreenTRIP analysis tools. (See http://www.transformca.org/landing-page/greentrip .) - Some panelists questioned whether the proposed transportation metric guidelines ought to include recommendations on safety rules at all. Tumlin said "I can't believe that I'm actually arguing against safety," but for the sake of avoiding unintended consequences and litigation, he urged against definite road safety rules in a CEQA context. This was in part, he said, because of current controversy over conflicts between the overlapping road design manuals of CalTrans and of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). (White said CalTrans was now encouraging use of the NACTO manual in urban areas.) - Audience member Tom Pace, from the City of Sacramento, asked that "things like queuing on ramps" not be counted as a safety consideration, for fear that infill projects might be harmed by mitigation requirements involving the highway ramps that surround downtown Sacramento. Calfee closed by saying "our hope is to be very transparent about some of the conflicts that we see in this process and some of the policy choices that need to be made." Comments on the August 6 transportation metric guidelines draft under SB 743 are due November 21 to CEQA.Guidelines@ceres.ca.gov . The OPR presentation is available on video at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php .

After the intensity of the last few election cycle — nationally and locally -- if ever there was an off-year election, November 7 was it. Only four cities statewide decided on land use measures. All of the cities are relatively small, and three of the measures relate to issues of hyper-local concern. A total of 26,000 people cast ballots in the four elections combined.

ULI Los Angeles, in partnership with VerdeXchange , announces FutureBuild 2016 . This assembly of the land-use thinkers and innovators in business and government, local and worldwide, will be Tuesday, January 26, 2016, 7:30 am to 1:30 pm, at L.A. Downtown Hotel, 333 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071.

Only a few significant planning and development bills made to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk by the end of the legislative session on Sept. 11 -- most significantly SB 774, which requires local governments to cut parking ratios for transit-oriented development.

Senate Bill 827 and its author, Scott Weiner, dominated planning news so thoroughly this year, we could make an entire category of top stories dedicated just to it and him. And so we did.