In the early years when the logistics industry started taking over the Inland Empire in the 1980s, the region was a warehouse developer’s dream: large tracts of land and relatively few residents to protest against the pollution and unsightliness with which they are associated. Four decades and roughly 4,000 warehouses later, the region is home to 4.7 million residents — and many of them are clamoring for cleaner air.

In addition to previously announced ballot measures (see CP&DR coverage ), California cities are considering a colorful range of ballot measures related to land use November 5. Some are seeking to take on state control over housing; others are expanding or firming up their counties, and still others are wondering about pickleball.

This month’s local land use ballot measures addressed some common issues – tenant protections, open space, and broad notions of local control included – and emerged with little by way of discernible patterns.

In the face of declining attendance at services and the burden of relatively large parcels of land — often acquired decades ago — what some churches want for Christmas is… housing.

2024 might have seemed like a quiet year for  CP&DR news. On the one hand, there was no single mega-story that defined the year or attracted a inordinate number of readers.

This blog is brought to you free of charge courtesy of the paying subscribers to California Planning & Development Report. The mascot of Pacific Palisades High School is the Dolphin, which, unlike most mascots, is nonfictional. Pods of bottlenose frequently accompany morning swims, games of beach volleyball, and sunset strolls just down the hill from campus. That's how idyllic this place is. Or was. An estimated 30 percent of Palisades High’s buildings are now ash. Thousands of homes and businesses were far less lucky. Though the Palisades feels like a world apart from Los Angeles, it is—unbeknownst to some residents—not its own city but rather a neighborhood unto Los Angeles. It's suburb an , but it's not a suburb. Over 100 years ago, it was founded by Methodists looking for a pleasant escape far from the urban core. It was meant to be a happy (and, incidentally, alcohol-free) community. Its primary social club was named, cheerily, the Uplifters. Even over the span of four generations, that intentional spirit of neighborliness persisted. The Palisades was a place where people enjoyed living -- even, and especially, in contrast to other wealthy Los Angeles communities that trade on seclusion. The Palisades did not lack for flaws. To state the obvious, it was expensive, and it was not remotely as diverse as the city it inhabits. But it was a fundamentally decent place. I know firsthand: I lived there for a few years when I was in elementary school, and I have hung out there regularly ever since. Today, I live in Brentwood, just east of the Palisades. From the top floor of my building, I watched flames gnaw away at the hills to the west, not knowing which of my friends’ homes had been consumed. I’ve been on evacuation watch for days. I use the past tense deliberately. As everyone now knows, the Palisades is, essentially, no more. (Altadena, an unincorporated community at the foot of the perennially flammable San Gabriel Mountains, was similarly beloved by its residents and similarly devastated by a separate fire. I've never been there, and I'm sad. I'll never get to go to Fox's bar or the Bunny Museum.) Last Tuesday, the Palisades Fire erupted as quickly as the planning process is slow, progressing from spark to cataclysm in less time than it takes to read the introduction to an environmental impact report. As developer and former L.A. Police Commission Steve Soboroff told the Los Angeles Times, the Santa Ana winds were so fierce and chaotic, “this isn’t just a fire.... this is like a thousand fires." Within 24 hours, the Palisades fell victim to the same combination of human-made and natural forces that devastated Paradise, Santa Rosa, the Berkeley Hills, Redding, and too many other California communities, both urban and rural. Much of the national discussion has focused on preparedness (including sniping about fire hydrants and ugly talk about the L.A. Fire Department’s hiring policies by people who wouldn't know California from Mars). I don't know if any preparation could have prevented the ravagement brought by winds over 80 miles per hour and brush unquenched for eight months. Anyone casting blame this soon, and anyone placing blame on individual officials, do not understand governance. The hot-take cynics are part of the problem, not the solution. My heart aches for everyone who has lost their homes and for everyone who have lost their neighborhoods. What to do? Assumption 1: Urbanists, environmentalists, and financiers can argue forever about whether the Palisades ought to be rebuilt. None of that matters. It will be. Hopefully many residents will return so they can stitch their social fabric back together. Assumption 2: Rebuilding will take longer than anyone wants it to. Assumption 3: The displacement will reverberate throughout Los Angeles. Assumption 4: The materials, technologies, building techniques, and other strategies of 2025 are more fire-resistant than those of any previous era—certainly more than those of the post-World War II era when most of the Palisades was built. A favorite argument of opponents to housing development is that "more units won't reduce prices." By that logic, fewer units shouldn't raise prices. We're about to find out the hard way whether that's true. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's not. I, for one, am grateful that developers have built as many "luxury" units as they have. Displaced Palisadeans are going to snap them up. Once those units run out, they're going to dip into the mid-market. At every turn, we're going to get the vacancy chain in reverse: residents aren't going to trade up and make lower-cost units available for lower-income residents; instead, they're going to trade down and bid up rents. We don't have a housing crisis, or an affordability crisis, a vacancy crisis, or a wildfire crisis. We have an everything crisis. The adequacy of a city's housing supply cannot depend on which way the wind blows. A resilient city is one that has more than the bare minimum for the people who live there and not--as is the case in Los Angeles--a shortage such that invisible under-housed residents are forced to live with entire families in one bedroom and turn dining rooms into dormitories. It's one in which housing is plentiful enough to be affordable and, in times of crisis, plentiful enough to withstand a demand shock such as the one about to emanate outward from the 90272 zip code. So, keep those "luxury" buildings coming. While we're at it, let's build some non-luxury buildings too. Los Angeles just adopted a new zoning code, designed in part to accommodate its 456,000-unit regional housing needs allocation—the magical RHNA number. Critics have rightfully called out the new zoning code, known as the Citywide Housing Incentive Program , for steering dense housing away from single-family neighborhoods. It’s not ideal, but it’s on the books. Fortunately, laws like SB 9 require the city to approve duplexes and lot splits. Gov. Gavin Newsom had pledged to “cut red tape,” and the city will have to expedite all of this. (With what personnel? Well, for starters, plenty of entertainment-industry folks are now under-employed. Maybe they can be trained in the art of permitting.) What about the precious public process? What about property values? What about the sacred rights of single-family homeowners? What about aldermanic privilege that makes it all but impossible to consider the greater good? What about CEQA? These are just some of the questions that opponents of development often ask—and are sure to ask in this case. Well, $250 billion in property damage, health impacts, and economic losses says enough is enough. Before that first spark landed on Tuesday morning, Los Angeles was already facing an imposing set of stressors: the decline of the entertainment industry; the election of a locally unpopular president (who defeated an L.A. resident); the exodus of priced-out residents; a counterproductive transfer tax ; a housing shortage and homelessness crisis; haphazard planning for the world's biggest international event three years hence; and, eight months without rain. Los Angeles has been stagnating, ceding talent, energy, and global prominence drop-by-drop to every place from Las Vegas to Austin to Miami. We are one self-inflicted misstep away from a downward spiral, if we're not already there. We must accept that the envy of the world is not a permanent condition. Beyond that, there's an even more important element to urban resiliency: people. A strong city does not require everyone to agree all the time. But, it does require unity, mutual respect, basic understanding, and a sense of common purpose -- especially when crises arise. Los Angeles generally lacks this quality. It's hard to love your neighbor when you're bitter about how much you're paying in rent, or when you're sitting behind him at a stoplight. We need to get over that. It's time to get over our fear of density. Whatever the new zoning says, we all know that zoning is no match for popular sentiment. So long as Angelenos oppose density, the density we do get will be, very often, unattractive, out-of-scale, misplaced, and overpriced. The destruction of one neighborhood is a call to improve all neighborhoods in this city. This effort requires teamwork: to lobby public officials; to encourage developers; to care for the afflicted; to welcome new residents; to accept that the status quo is expensive, dull, and deadly. This city needs to stop burning and then stop fiddling. It needs to build. What about the Palisades itself? As provocative as Mike Davis may have been about the fact that Los Angeles persists only by the mercy of mother nature, I will not make the " case for letting Malibu burn ," or, as the case may be, the Palisades. If the Palisades is to be rebuilt, it can be rebuilt better. The Palisades’ primary sin was its exclusivity. That's relatively easy to solve for, and it can be a model for the rest of the city. Palisades village consisted of more than just a main thoroughfare. It branched off into side-streets filled with shops, cafes, and small offices that, for lack of a better word, are a lot cuter than California's typical commercial strips are. The result was a matrix of a half-dozen blocks that felt like a real town. It flouted Los Angeles' unwritten rule of urban design: the more impressive the natural setting, the more heinous the built environment must be. In building back the Palisades, we can add 2-3 stories of apartment units to all of those commercial buildings. If European cities are any guide, it can come back even livelier and more uplifting than it once was. Meanwhile, residents who rebuild their homes have the exciting new option of building duplexes and/or ADUs with no questions asked. It can achieve elegant density. (It's worth noting that many homes in the Palisades were under-occupied , with, for instance, empty-nesters staying put in houses where rugrats once scurried and teens once sulked. Those neighborhoods can easily absorb sublettors and mothers-in-law.) It's been said that the Palisades Fire is our "Hurricane Katrina." The analogy is apt. But Los Angeles is the opposite of New Orleans. New Orleans was never famous for its landscape, unless you count suboceanic flatness as a natural wonder. It's famous for its architecture, streetscape, culture, and civic spirit. Those are all things that Los Angeles needs, now more than ever. The best way for the city a whole to recover from this tragedy is to learn from the Palisades. We can't all frolic with dolphins. But, a pleasant urban streetscape needs not, and should not, belong only to celebrities and wealthy folks on the urban fringe. What about other cities in California? Far be it for me to compare Los Angeles to any other place. But every jurisdiction in this state faces its own potential catastrophes. And, unless there's a little Atlantis at the bottom of Lake Tahoe, literally every city faces fire risk. To my fellow Californians: don't imagine that this "could" happen in your cities; imagine that it has already happened. Imagine the devastation. Imagine the displacement. Imagine the costs, financial and human. Then work backwards and think about everything you and your offices possibly could have done to prevent it, mitigate its damages, and create places that will be worth rebuilding if the worst comes to pass.

To state the obvious: wildfires move more quickly than city bureaucracies do.

The name of California’s most storied economic region — Silicon Valley — betrays reality. The San Francisco Peninsula does not mine silicon. And, really, it’s not even a valley. An emerging industrial region in California seeks to trade on the “valley” name. But, this time, the demonym is real. Plans for “Lithium Valley” envision what would likely be the most extensive lithium extraction operations in the United States, accompanied by a range of related industries. If it is realized, this vision would transform what is currently one of the poorest and most climatically inhospitable corners of California — the Imperial Valley — into an industrial center, powered by lithium. And, it’s not merely a valley. At roughly 180 feet below sea level, it lies in one of the lowest depressions in the Western Hemisphere. Under discussion since the 2022 publication of the state-level Lithium Valley Commission’s recommendations and released in draft in February, the Lithium Valley Specific Plan, along with a programmatic environmental impact report, commissioned by Imperial County, would govern 51,785 acres of northern Imperial County, along the southeastern edge of the Salton Sea and just north of the City of Calipatria. Though the plan is on the verge of adoption—with companies including Controlled Thermal Resources, Berkshire Hathaway, and EnergySource eager to break ground or expand existing operations—portions of the plan face at least one legal threat from environmental justice advocates. Roughly one-fifth would be reserved for conservation and open space. The rest would center on a 21st century oil rush: the extraction, via pumping (not mining), of lithium-rich brine from under the Salton Sea bed for processing and inclusion in batteries, including, and especially, those that power electric vehicles. By some estimates, the region’s 17 million metric tons of deposits could contribute to 375 million cars—and, backers say, they can be extracted more easily and with less environmental impact than competing deposits in Nevada, Arizona, and Arkansas, among others. “There's a lot of different places that have discovered that they have lithium, but there is nowhere that is at the level that we're at as a county with creating an entire ecosystem around the opportunity with lithium, said Bari Bean, Deputy County Executive Director for Natural Resources. In conjunction with the area’s existing geothermal energy production, the plan hopes to attract industries that would process lithium and manufacturing lithium-related products onsite (much of which currently takes place overseas). It envisions 70 million to 80 million square feet of industrial and related development, including data centers for major tech firms. The goal is to develop a comprehensive energy-based economy rather than an isolated extractive activity. “It’s one thing to take the lithium out and ship it to China,” said Brian Mooney, Principal and Senior Vice President of the Planning and Design Division at RICK, lead consultant for the Lithium Valley Specific Plan. “Why not create the battery manufacturing close to the source?” The sprawling plan includes a host of provisions designed to facilitate development, improve onsite infrastructure, create transportation connectivity, and protect ecological resources. It calls for five distinct, separate zones focusing on, respectively, lithium extraction; processing and manufacturing; warehousing and logistics; “community opportunity areas” including housing, businesses, and services; and conservation areas covering Salton Sea playas. The community opportunity areas would directly abut Calipatria, on the southern end of the plan area. Most of the plan area is currently zoned for agriculture. “We are envisioning a complete urbanization of an area that is all agricultural canals,” said Mooney.

If California High Speed Rail becomes operational, it would create arguably the most massive opportunities for transit oriented development the United States has ever seen. But, even at full build-out, not every city will have a high-speed rail station. And, the way things are going, maybe none will. On the other end of the transportation spectrum, where investments are minuscule by comparison, are mobility hubs. Rather than billion-dollar stations, mobility hubs might consist of a few bike lockers, a scooter corral, or a bus bay. Rather than serve trainsets that go 200 miles per hour, they rely on modes like electric scooters and the humble city bus. Collectively, mobility hubs could serve just as many people across California as do heavy infrastructure like light rail and present many transit-oriented development opportunities. Transportation planning organizations across the state are promoting them enthusiastically. "As we see the future, where we're not going to be expanding freeways, we're going to need a little more transit capacity, and that's how we're going to be able to enhance mobility in the region," said Kome Ajise, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments. "Mobility hubs help to stage that particular concept of transit. It's about bringing together multiple modes into one location."

In recent years, the California Legislature has passed a flurry of bills designed to promote housing. At this point, they number in the dozens, if not hundreds, with more on the way.

The City of Monterey and the surrounding urban area is likely the smallest region to host the conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, but it punches above its weight in terms of the complexity of urban planning challenges and issues. The region lies on the border between the Central Coast and the Bay Area, hemmed in by mountains and the Pacific Ocean. In preparation for this month's conference, which starts September 28 at the Monterey Convention Center, CP&DR spoke to local planners involved in conference planning to give conference-goers a preview of what they might observe on the ground in mobile workshops and in sessions influenced by the host region. Fittingly, we spoke on Admission Day, which commemorates the date when California was admitted to the Union. As the former capital of Spanish and Mexican Alta California, Monterey is the only city in the state that takes Admission Day as a holiday. CP&DR's Josh Stephens spoke with Monterey Community Development Director Kim Cole ; Marina Planning Manager Alyson Hunter; andSalinas Planning Division Manager Grant Leonard . How do you characterize your cities? Alyson Hunter, City of Marina: We're a small city. We're about 22,000 people, and we've got about 3 miles of coastline on Monterey Bay. One of the most interesting and fascinating, and, from a planning perspective, challenging parts about working for the City of Marina is that geographically, half of our city is the former Fort Ord Army Base. In the mid-'90s it was closed down, and several cities and other public entities got the land. Historically, we've been a bedroom community, both to the base and to the other larger cities around, like Salinas and Monterey. But we are trying to create some job-producing development here. We've got exciting Joby Aviation happening at our little Marina airport, manufacturing EVTOL flying machines. We're trying to grow both residentially and commercially, with niche manufacturing to keep up with our big neighbors to the north and south. Kim Cole, City of Monterey: Monterey is a historic town. We were the capital of Alta California, and the State of California constitution was written in Monterey. And before all of that, we were a Native American village. We have layers of history. Building on that today, I think about our town as being focused on the environment and education. I think when you hear the debates in our town, a lot of it centers around how to preserve the National Marine Sanctuary and the city's relationship to the sanctuary. And in terms of education, we have the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a junior college, and two of our three military bases are focused on education: the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language Institute for the Army. That creates a really dynamic environment to work in. Grant Leonard, City of Salinas: We're the largest city on the Central Coast and in Monterey County. We're an ag town, principally, also a bedroom community. We actually contribute commuters to the Bay Area. Many residents leave as early as 5 a.m. to get to work in San Jose. But we're enjoying a moment of revitalization in our downtown, which is really thriving. We're expanding our industrial and business parks, including a new Amazon warehouse and distribution center. We're also, like Marina, trying to maximize the use of our airport through new aviation technologies. And we're a growing city. We have three future growth areas with 10,000-15,000 homes. Two of the three planning areas are entitled, and we’re currently doing the specific plan for the third one. Those are all based on New Urbanism: more walkable communities, balance of shops and commercial and recreation opportunities, schools, but also principally housing.  Our main priorities continue to be, from the community and council, economic development and housing. We're the first city in the area to have a certified housing element this cycle. A major right now is on rent stabilization, tenant protection rights, and then “expanding the pie,” as the politicians like to say, for economic development. How do the state’s housing shortage and affordability constraints play out in your region and cities? Hunter: Like Salinas, Marina was also certified early for this cycle, because we are one of the few cities on the peninsula proper that has actually built a couple thousand homes over the last 15 years. Our RHNA number was very low because we're already building a ton of housing. We're trying to encourage commercial development to help meet the job–housing balance. We have our third big master plan project just coming online under construction right now. But our number one constraint is water. We're all under different water rules, even in this small geographic area, which is another planning challenge/nightmare. Coastal cities have had particular challenges with RHNA because of geographic constraints. How has RHNA treated Monterey?  Cole: The city has a current housing stock of about 13,000 housing units. We received a RHNA allocation of 3,654 units. We're working on implementation of all our programs, but despite all that, we're not really seeing housing growth. The reason is infrastructure constraints. The City of Monterey and a couple of our adjacent jurisdictions are subject to a cease-and-desist order from the State Water Resources Control Board. It's been well over 20 years of our region trying to find water. We are not part of the State Water Project. There's no importing of water from outside the region. Our region has been looking at recycled water. And we're actually importing water from the Salinas Valley, cleaning that water, and ultimately injecting it into our aquifers. The first round was successful. Our local water district is trying to expand that service.  The third arm to that is a very controversial regional desal plant in Marina. The Coastal Commission has approved it. The PUC recently made a big decision. What our region has to show is that it produces enough water over a two- or three-year period that survives drought conditions that the State Water Resources Control Board will lift the water moratorium. What has it meant for the last few years? Monterey cannot set a new water meter in our city. Every sink and toilet in our city for residential construction is counted by our regional water district, and other uses, like commercial, typically are limited to square footage. If you have an existing retail space, you're limited to that square footage. You can't increase. So the only development we've really been doing is where they can squeak out an additional bathroom from a house, maybe take out some other extra fixtures and build ADUs. Our big project is converting an old office building on Garden Road from office to 64 residential units, 12 of which are dedicated towards our inclusionary housing program.  So, even though we received a very large RHNA number, we're unable to produce housing because of the cease-and-desist order. So every glass of water at the conference is precious. Cole: Yeah, so you better drink it! How different, or similar, is the situation in Salinas? Leonard: Kim mentioned Monterey has about 13,000 housing units total. Our future growth area has 12,000 to 15,000 housing units yet to be built, so quite a different scale. Housing in Salinas is really a story of one farm field conversion to a subdivision after another. And home values are a little lower—you can get a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home here for probably 50 to 70% of the cost of what it is on the peninsula. So instead of a million, it'll be $700,000 over here. What we have a real issue with is overcrowding and habitability. Our lower-income community members end up doubling up, tripling up.  I think one thing that's maybe not talked about enough in California, is people are retiring, and they're holding on to their houses when their kids move out. You have a lot of housing stock built for families that now has one or two people in it. In Salinas there are neighborhoods that are much less populated and have very nice homes, and then you have neighborhoods that are really overcrowded. One of the things we're working on with our general plan update, Salinas 2040, is increasing the allowed density throughout the city, so everywhere can basically be upzoned. That'll speed forward some redevelopment projects that we're looking at. Our revitalization plans for East Salinas and also Chinatown all have housing as a key component. Are you going to be annexing at all to accommodate those 13,000 units, or can it all be done by upzoning and infill? Leonard: The future growth areas are already annexed. They were identified in the late 1980s with a memorandum of understanding with the county. They were then annexed in 2008, right as the Great Recession was happening. The planning for them for two of the three locations was finalized in 2019 and 2020, just before COVID. So, it's been a series of planning steps, and each one has seemed to be hit with a large outside factor that delayed it, whether it was no savings and loans in the 90s, and then the recession in 2008, and then COVID. But they're already annexed into the city, and we don't have plans for any future annexations, except for one business park on the north side of town. Our main focus with the new general plan for 2040 is infill and upzoning. Is HCD sympathetic to Monterey’s water constraints?  Cole: HCD has been very proactive in their enforcement of the housing element. They’re reviewing all of our rezonings, and they’ve already required one amendment.  As far as sympathy goes, RHNA doesn’t look at water supply. The City of Monterey received more units because of socioeconomic factors. Our original allocation was about 1,600 units, but when the regional government looked at equity issues, we got double that number. Everyone knows Monterey, Pacific Grove, and nearby cities can’t build that  many units until the cease-and-desist order on water is lifted. The real issue is environmentalism. Our region is very environmentally forward, and there’s strong concern about desalination in the National Marine Sanctuary. Desal would give us a stable water supply and allow us to lift the cease-and-desist order. But politically, it’s controversial. Many people want to protect the bay and live only on our existing water resources. In the next two years, we’ll likely see whether desal is constructed or not.  Leonard: Salinas has similarities to other mid-sized cities and ag towns. Our water issues differ from the peninsula’s—we rely on groundwater and the Salinas River Basin, since we’re not on the state aqueduct system. A new state law created the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which must bring our aquifers into balance by 2050. That could mean pumping restrictions, new fees, or an “extraction barrier,” essentially a light version of desal, because seawater contamination is already moving inland. Agriculture uses 90% of the water in the valley; urban areas use 10%. The expectation is that agriculture will take the bigger hit. We face aging infrastructure for stormwater, sewers, and roads. Building new highway interchanges, even for safety, is prohibitively expensive. Economic development is another challenge—we’re working to retain and expand businesses, but there’s uncertainty about federal funds and real impacts on the local economy. In East Salinas, immigrant communities are fearful, which has hurt local businesses. Our United Business Association is really struggling this year.  Hunter: I've been in public planning for 28 years in Coastal California, dealing with the Coastal Commission and their various idiosyncrasies. I'm finding it fascinating now that HCD has grown into this whole different, massive thing that did not exist a few years ago. Housing elements a few years ago were kind of like a checkbox thing, no big deal. And now it is the biggest thing.  I'm observing this clash of the titans between these two state agencies, where previously nobody messed with the Coastal Commission—they were in charge, and whatever they wanted happened. I'm finding this new dynamic fascinating, and I'm curious what this group thinks. Hopefully this will come up at the conference, because it's a critical component for coastal communities trying to deal with their housing requirements. Cole: I would expand it in terms of the clash of the titans at the state level that we're experiencing. It's the Coastal Commission, it's HCD, it's the State Water Resources Control Board, and now it's fire regulations.  If you look at Monterey, we are a heavily forested community. A huge portion of our city is in a very high fire hazard zone, or in a sea level rise zone. And my question is, for the state, who's going to win, or who's going to arbitrate? I don't know if we can achieve it all. Right now, each state agency tries to achieve perfection in their own area, and they all have jurisdiction over Monterey. The question is: how are we going to find some middle ground? Some days the Coastal Commission area may lose out, other days housing may lose out. And the Caltrans Division of Aeronautics. We have an airport in our city. We're 8 square miles, and when you layer and layer and layer, it's really hard to push development forward. There's going to need to be some middle ground. Hunter: That makes me wonder about regional planning, and how we might need to divest ourselves of our small municipal boundaries, and really start—especially with sea level rise, coastal hazards, wildfire—we might need to have that conversation. A lot of planners would not go on the record saying “divest power.” Hunter: Infrastructure-wise, things are regional. Kim's talking about their regional airport. In Marina, just outside our city limits, we have the regional sanitary landfill attached to the regional wastewater treatment facility—a gigantic operation that serves the whole region. I think we're going to have to talk about it eventually. Which new state regulations have affected you?  Leonard: Just on state regulations—where it’s really affected Salinas has been on the housing front. ADUs are being allowed by-right; we’re processing hundreds each year. We’re getting SB 330 applications to streamline or circumvent local regulations, making everything objective design standards, removing discretionary review. We’re even seeing some SB 9 applications. It might have taken a couple years, but we’re seeing the full effect of those 2019–2020 housing laws now. Hunter: For Marina, we’re fortunate. We’re not under the thumb of HCD as much, since we’ve already built our RHNA numbers for this cycle. But it’s still a struggle—there are only two planners in Marina right now, myself included. Staffing is difficult everywhere, and implementing new laws constantly coming at us is very challenging. Cole: ADUs are working because they don’t require new water meters. SB 9—we allow up to six units on a single-family parcel, exceeding state minimums. But we’re not seeing that development because we can’t set new water meters.  You’ve got a couple hundred planners coming to the region, all interested in these issues. What would you like them to notice about your area as a whole and your respective cities? Cole: We've been talking about rough patches, but we've had regional successes too. The groundwater replenishment program is a major success. The busway that's about to start construction, two regional bike paths, the coastal trail, rental assistance programs, historic resources. There’s a lot to see on the peninsula, between all the cities. And then there’s the agricultural powerhouse of the Salinas Valley, plus the military bases. There’s a great classroom for planners to see what has been done. Leonard: There's going to be one mobile workshop to downtown Salinas. Salinas has a lot of history—John Steinbeck, Cesar Chavez, the labor movement. In the 1930s, because agricultural technology advanced, even though it was the Depression, Salinas was a very wealthy city. We've got a lot of architecture from that period—Craftsman, Queen Anne Victorians, Art Deco. We had three movie theaters in a two-block radius downtown, two of which still exist and are designated historic. Plus, we'll present our East Salinas District Identity Master Plan, which combines neighborhood branding, public art, economic development, and streetscape improvements to create a unique feel for the neighborhood. It's not about gentrification—we want to revitalize what’s there so the community stays and benefits.  Hunter: There’s going to be a bus ride mobile workshop through the former Fort Ord, touching on some of the Marina development. Marina is super-interesting. We are a young city, incorporated only in 1975. We came up as a service community to Fort Ord, similar to Seaside but much smaller. After just 20 years, the Fort Ord closure doubled our size and caused tremendous growth. It's safe to say Marina has had some growing pains, but we’re moving forward, modernizing, and getting our feet on the ground with new master plan developments. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.  Contacts   Kim Cole,  Community Development Director, City of Monterey, Alyson Hunter , Planning Manager, City of Marina,  Grant Leonard , Planning Division Manager, City of Salinas,  Image Credits Marina State Beach: California State Parks  Salinas Arch: Wikimedia Commons Monterey Harbor & Downtown: Wikimedia Commons 

1986 was a lousy year for urban planning but a relatively great year for journalism. Back then, when I was growing up in Los Angeles, my family received daily deliveries of the Los Angeles Times, the Herald-Examiner, and even the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, which, as its name implied, was quaintly printed during the day and distributed in the evenings—often by teenagers on bicycles, the newspapers hand-wrapped with rubber bands. I am not sure that truth has ever fully been spoken to power in Los Angeles—the metropolis being the city of noir, deceit, and scandals aplenty—but there was no shortage of outlets, reporters, and discussion fostered by what was then an incredibly healthy journalism industry. California Planning and Development Report was but one specific, unusual, and much-needed addition to this thriving ecosystem. At the time, those mainstream outlets seldom covered land use, a subject that was hardly an object of discussion the way it has become today. At a time when the state and much of the country was sprawling at a steady, inexorable pace y, there wasn’t much in the way of intrigue. Under the legacy media’s watch, sprawl crept across California’s landscape, smog alerts remained common, BART was the state’s only major rail system, and downtowns were as dead as disco. In November 1986, Los Angeles voters passed Proposition U , a slow-growth measure that haunts the city to this day.  That very same month, Bill Fulton had the radical idea of covering land use and planning as a serious journalistic endeavor, and he has done so ever since. Indeed, when Bill founded CPDR, he did so in part because planning was in such a sorry and beleaguered state.  Back then, I was not remotely attuned to the niceties of urban planning and policy. But, by coincidence, I lived (part-time) in the exact same city as Bill did: West Hollywood. While my parents dragged me to stores at the Beverly Center and the theater performances on Melrose Ave, Bill was plugging away at his newsletter. I was 11 years old, but I intuitively appreciated living in a dense, lively area, compared with the dullness of the suburbs or the Valley, where many of my friends lived.  How times have changed—in both urban planning and journalism. We celebrate the 40th volume of CP&DR at a time of relative triumph for the approaches and values Bill has long promoted. What were once fringe ideas—smart growth, new urbanism, and transit-oriented development—have now themselves become the dominant ethos of planning. The rapidity with which modernist planning took over in the 20th century has been rivaled only by the glacial pace  at which we have attempted to undo the problems it introduced. But undo it we must. The smart-growth build-out is far from complete. Still, we hope our state is better for these efforts. Perhaps we can credit some of the changes to this newsletter, to Bill, and certainly to Bill’s contemporaries, colleagues, and students. I wish we could say the same for journalism.  As cities have come roaring back, their nerve centers have atrophied and disappeared entirely. You don’t need to be a journalist to know that newspapers have folded at a staggering rate: 3,200 since 2005. Some of the influences are obvious: they did not keep up with the transition to digital media and did not figure out how to monetize it. Their ad revenue was siphoned away by sites like Craigslist. They competed for attention with social media. Much of these journalists’ hard work was given away for free. Most nefariously, many papers have been eviscerated by private-equity schemes that view newsrooms not as civic resources but as distressed financial assets—worth more dead than alive. They are taking a wrecking ball to public discourse—not unlike what planners did to American cities after World War II.  We are now accompanied by many other urban-related media services. Entire websites are dedicated to urbanism, among them Planetizen and Next City, while sites like  Atlantic Cities and Curbed have come and gone. Many journalists—not just one or two—have made urbanism their beat. We have Substack newsletters ( Bill’s included ), Twitter/X feeds, and impressive citizen journalists use social media to cover and comment on urbanism Despite traditional journalism’s decline,  urban planning and the new media ecosystem surrounding it are arguably healthier than ever.  In the next 10 or 40 years, I don’t know how  that combination will play out. Where was once Bill’s humble newsletter, CP&DR has aged into a vital legacy publication--that’s good for us, I suppose. And yet,I fear the loss of civic discourse, investigative reporting, and placemaking expertise that come only with robust papers of record. Sniping on Nextdoor and holding hands on Bluesky will not suffice.   What I do know is that Bill and I, supported by our talented contributors, are going to keep trying. We e want our readers to keep trying as well. What does that mean? It means reading actively. It means participating in discussions. It means making the time to be interviewed, sharing tips when something is newsworthy, and doing all the things required to facilitate a civil society, even if other venerable institutions have failed to step up.  So, while we celebrate this 40-year milestone for CP&DR and all of the great city-building that has taken place during its watch, let us redouble our dedication to a free, fair, and vibrant press -- for the sake of cities and of democracy itself.