Last week's blog about Joel Kotkin and his article in the L.A. Times decrying the supposed "Manhattanization" of Los Angeles stirred up quite a bit of debate. Here's Part 2 of the Bill Fulton blog on Kotkin. Background: The biggest fuss last week came on Curbed L.A . , the website that loves to hate Kotkin, where both Kotkin-bashers and Kotkin-lovers had a field day. A toned-down version of the Kotkin blog – which doesn't mention him by name but suggests that L.A. is Pasadena-izing rather than Manhattan-izing – was published in the L.A. Times yesterday (8/26). Now, on to Part 2. Joel Kotkin is one of the most widely read and widely quoted commentators on cities and urban planning in the United States today. But I have to admit that when I pick up the paper or click to a new web page, I often wonder which Kotkin I'm going to encounter. There's the thoughtful, measured author of The City: A Global Histo r y and co-author of many provocative but nevertheless carefully researched studies about demographic and economic trends. Then there's the bomb-throwing op-ed writer and speechifier who carelessly throws around facts and ideas in the service of his latest contrarian argument. I suppose it's the price of celebrity in America today – even for mini-celebrities of the Kotkin type – that you have to call attention to yourself with flashing billboards however you can in order to get people to take a look at your more serious ideas. But in the popular media (if you can call such venues as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal the "popular" media these days), Kotkin creates an extremely exaggerated version of what he believes -- and gets surprisingly careless with the facts along the way. Let's start with the serious stuff. His recent book, The City: A Global History , is actually a pretty good read. Lewis Mumford the guy is not, as he more or less admits in the text, but it's worth reading for a couple of different reasons. The first is that it's very short – only 160 pages – and for that reason it's kind of a Cliff Notes version of the history of cities. Much of the book consists of bite-sized descriptions of various cities at various points in history, and in contrast to the typical Kotkin attitude on the op-ed pages, it's written in a pretty straightforward fashion. In fact, there's a certain uncharacteristic humility about the entire book; Kotkin readily admits that tackling the whole history of cities, especially in 160 pages, is an overwhelming task. Kotkin also deserves a lot of credit in this book for giving considerable attention – and insight – to Asian cities, which snootier American urbanists tend to overlook. (Kotkin has always been good on Asia, dating back to his business journalism days during the 1980s, when he was among the first to document the strong economic links between Asia and L.A.) The City is also worth reading because – at the beginning and the end of the book, when he's not giving us a Cook's tour of world cities – we get the most thoughtful and most fully fleshed-out version of the Kotkin Philosophy on Cities. The essence of his argument is that cities are shaped by the need to create three different types of space – sacred space, safe space, and space for commerce. He makes the argument that the forces of religion, security, and commerce are intertwined and no city has been successful in the long run without paying attention to all three. There's a lot more religion in Kotkin that he lets on in the typical op-ed piece (for many years he was a columnist for The Jewish Journal in Los Angeles), and the increasing secularization of Western cities clearly disturbs him. Though he's not always obvious about this in the op-eds, his sharp attacks on Richard Florida's "creative class" theory of economic development are clearly rooted in this concern over the loss of religion as a significant urban force in both the U.S. and Europe. I don't agree with his entire argument, but it's a serious one and he lays it out pretty well. (I'll deal with his views on economic development and especially his contrarian approach to Florida's work in the final blog next week.) Similarly, when he is paired on a research project with a rigorous statistical analyst – a demographer like Bill Frey of Brookings or an economic analyst like Ross DuVol of the Milken Institute – Kotkin writes pretty responsibly based on real data. His recent Brookings paper with Frey, The Third California is a good example. It argues that the inland areas of California, especially in the Inland Empire and the Central Valley, represent a completely different part of California than coastal Southern California and the Bay Area, and must deal with problems differently. Knowing that this fine body of work exists makes it all the more frustrating when you read a Kotkin op-ed or hear a Kotkin speech. The outlines of his ideas are still there, but only in the most cartoonish form. And for somebody who once wrote a book called The New Geography , he's surprisingly sloppy with his geographical facts. Especially in speeches, but also in more popular writing, he tends to throw around place-names like a hip-hop artist – playing off cities' stereotyped reputation for shock value, rather than grounding the references in actual fact. In the Planetizen article where he laid out his definition of "The New Suburbanism," he distanced himself from smart growth and instead claimed his ideas were rooted in "market-oriented developments" dating from the '60s and '70s that have accomplished many of the same goals, especially diversity of both land uses and ethnicities. He specifically calls out Reston and Columbia, both in metropolitan Washington; Irvine in Orange County; and The Woodlands in Houston. What Kotkin fails to mention is that both Reston and Columbia were the products of dreamy developers (Jim Rouse in the latter case) who got their lenders in so deep with front-end infrastructure investment that both projects went belly-up at least once. Their current market success would not have been possible without these early, economically unrealistic plans, which created both infrastructure and amenities that later became part of the marketing. And while The Woodlands is now a successful and affluent suburb in one of the most market-oriented metropolitan areas in the nation, in fact it began as a federally subsidized "new community" during the early 1970s. Of the four, only Irvine – which began with an enormous land base on which the owners had no debt – has been a market success from beginning to end. Not only did Kotkin get his facts wrong, but he also overlooked the biggest impediment to better suburban planning – the combined cost of carrying the land and building the front-end infrastructure – which has been the subject of debate in planning for close to a century. In the same Planetizen article, he  refuted New Urbanism by noting that the fastest job growth has taken place not in central cities but in suburban areas around older cities "or in the famously sprawled out multipolar cities of the West and the Sunbelt, including Boise, Ft. Myers, Las Vegas, and Reno." No one would dispute that Fort Myers (on the Gulf Coast of Florida) is sprawling. So to a lesser extent is Boise, which, like Portland and Sacramento, is the rare Western city sitting in an expansive agricultural valley. But Reno is boxed in by federal land and is growing more and more densely. And Las Vegas, also boxed in by federal land, is without question the most densely concentrated and mononuclear city in the entire Sunbelt. In fact, it is just about the only metro area in the nation whose overall density is going up. The Strip is the densest job center in the West and Las Vegas's transit system is one of the fastest growing in the nation. Far from sprawling, Las Vegas is the only city in America that really is – dare I say it? – Manhattanizing. This kind of carelessness shows up in speeches as well. Speaking engagements are where pundits make their real money, and so there's a lot of pressure to be provocative. Furthermore, most speeches are still not recorded or put on the Internet, so there's a natural tendency to play fast and loose with the facts to make a provocative point. It's unlikely that anyone will call you on it. But Kotkin is especially prone to this kind of carelessness. I once saw him say, in a speech in Los Angeles, that business owners are afraid of diversity, which is why they "move to Saskatchewan instead of doing business in Irvine." Afterward, his introducer – a mild-mannered man of Chinese extraction – said, in a stage whisper with the microphone on, "That's very interesting, Joel, I'm going to have to discuss that with my family the next time I'm back in Swift Current, where I grew up." I don't think I ever saw a cleaner touché in front of a planning audience, especially since the Chinese-Canadian fellow had organized the conference, had asked Joel to participate, and would be writing Joel's check. The frustrating thing here is that Kotkin knows better. He knows full well that Las Vegas is Manhattanizing, not sprawling. He knows The Woodlands was federally subsidized at the beginning. And he knows that, all other things being equal, many – if not most – businesses would rather do business in Irvine than in Saskatoon. All too often, however, such facts become inconvenient truths that Kotkin chooses to ignore. Throughout his career he has prided himself on debunking other people's myths about cities. Yet in his pop writing, he doesn't do it by invoking the truth. He does it by invoking his myths about cities instead. Second of three blogs

Concluding that Fontana has dodged its affordable housing obligations since 1987, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has blocked the Fontana Redevelopment Agency from issuing $40 million in tax allocation bonds because the agency has exceeded its debt limit. The court also declined to "validate" a settlement between Fontana and the state Department of Housing and Community Development concerning a $67 million shortfall in affordable housing funds. The ruling issued in late July is complicated, as is situation behind the decision. The bottom line according to housing advocates is that Fontana must return $53 million to one project area's affordable housing fund and halt the diversion of housing funds to a developer. Fontana officials, however, say the ruling will have little affect on their redevelopment practices, and an HCD attorney said the settlement agreement remains in place. The ruling is the latest phase in ongoing scrutiny of Fontana's redevelopment practices. In November 2001, the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) released an audit that said the Fontana Redevelopment Agency (RDA) had underfunded low- and moderate-income housing efforts, failed to account for and produce required low/mod housing, provided inaccurate information, and spent housing money on ineligible neighborhood beautification projects. The basis for much of HCD's concern is an owner participation agreement (OPA) between the city and developer Ten-Ninety of Corona. Under the agreement originally signed in 1982 and amended in 1984, 1987 and 1992, the city turns over all tax increment revenue from the Jurupa Hills redevelopment project area to Ten-Ninety, which provided capital financing for infrastructure for its own 8,000-unit Southridge housing development. The agreement makes no provision for withholding 20% of tax increment for low/mod housing. The audit said Fontana must cease transferring the required 20% set-aside to Ten-Ninety. In a 25-page response, the city said it was too late for HCD to challenge provisions of the OPA because it and several bond issues had been validated in court. "There is simply no legal basis to now set aside those agreements and the lawful expectations of the parties to them," said the response from City Manager Kenneth Hunt. Nevertheless, city officials initiated settlement talks with HCD, and in November 2002 the city and HCD adopted an agreement in which the city pledged $6.1 million to the redevelopment agency's housing fund (although none for the Jurupa Hills project area) in exchange for HCD not pursuing the audit issues any further. A few months later, Fontana filed an action in court seeking to validate the agreement and a $40 million bond issue for the Jurupa Hills project area. The idea behind such validation actions is to prevent questions of legality in the future. Housing advocates at the Western Center on Law and Poverty, and the California Housing Law Project objected, but San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge John Wade ruled for the city. However, a three-judge panel of the Fourth District, Division Two, ruled that the settlement agreement is not subject to validation under the general validation statute (Code of Civil Procedure § 860) or under Government Code § 53511, subdivision (a), which permits validation actions for certain financial contracts. "Therefore, we cannot decide the validity of the settlement agreement because it was not subject to a validation proceeding," Justice Barton Gaut wrote for the court. "We express no opinion about whether defendants may challenge the settlement agreement in an alternative proceeding." Lynn Martinez, a Western Center attorney, said advocates were considering options but would likely challenge the settlement in a new lawsuit. The proposed bond issue was eligible for validation proceedings, but the Fourth District blocked it because the project area has exceeded its debt limit. All parties appear to agree that the project area debt limit is $135 million. The city said the project area currently has debt of $174 million, while the housing advocates and the court seized on the city's statement of indebtedness, which says the city ultimately will owe Ten-Ninety $1.3 billion in principal and interest that accrues at 15.5% annually. The city argued that, under the OPA, debt beyond $135 million is permissible as "reserve debt." The court, however, said there is no distinction between non-reserve and reserve debt. "Quite clearly, both kinds of debts are repayable from tax increment and will finally be paid, if at all, with tax allocation bonds. Both kinds of debt qualify as secured indebtedness subject to limitation," Justice Gaut wrote. "Calling the same kind of debts by different names should not allow Fontana RDA improperly to circumvent the statutory limitations of the Jurupa Hills redevelopment plan." Simply because the previously validated OPA allows additional debt does not mean the debt can be approved now. "The courts cannot validate ongoing illegality," Gaut wrote, in a none-too-subtle swipe at the trial court judge. Gaut's conclusion was equally blunt: "What the record inescapably demonstrates is Fontana RDA's lack of compliance with the required 20% contribution for affordable housing since 1987. Instead, all tax increment revenues appear to be diverted to Ten-Ninety to pay off almost a billion dollars in interest. Any previous findings made in 1981 that payment toward the infrastructure benefited affordable housing were made under the law and circumstances existing at the time, not in 2003 when the new tax allocation bonds were proposed. "The present and future benefits to affordable housing appear to be nonexistent. Although defendants may not be able to challenge earlier actions by Fontana RDA, they should be able to curtail this most recent effort to evade the statutory obligation to provide and promote affordable housing," Gaut wrote. The decision pleased both liberals and conservatives. Martinez said the court properly held Fontana to its affordable housing obligations. "We will be doing everything possible to get this $53 million paid to the low/mod fund instead of to Ten-Ninety, and to get the housing built," Martinez said. Chapman School of Law Dean John Eastman, who filed an amicus brief in the case for the conservative Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, said the court caught Fontana in "a giant shell game" that is ripe for corruption. He questioned why Fontana would still be paying 15.5% interest on bond debt, an interest rate that has not been common since the 1980s. "Whenever you see something that out of whack, something is going on," Eastman said. The city, however, appears less than chastened. Fontana Management Services Director Lisa Strong — who made clear the Ten-Ninety deal predated the current city administration — said the agreement with HCD requiring payment of only $6.1 million to the housing fund remains in place, as does the OPA with Ten-Ninety. "We are contractually obligated to pay all of the tax increment to the developer. If we were to set aside the 20%, the developer would sue us," Strong said. Nor does the city need to set aside the money, she said, because the units developed by Ten-Ninety "were low/mod housing," she said. "We didn't say we wouldn't do the low/mod housing. We think the obligation has been met." According to the state controller's office, the Jurupa Hills project area generated $13.8 million in tax increment during the 2005-06 fiscal year. Strong said the city has paid about $125 million to Ten-Ninety over the years. She contended that the 15.5% interest rate on the Ten-Ninety financing does not matter because the OPA requires the city to turn over all tax increment, and both the city and the developer know the debt will not be paid in full when the project area expires in 2032. Proceeds from the proposed bond issue would have gone to Ten-Ninety as an advance payment. Dennis Beddard, HCD's chief counsel, said that although the 2001 audit uncovered "glaring" disparities, there was little the department could do because of past validation actions. The settlement was a way of ensuring Fontana's low/mod housing fund was repaid in part and assumes Fontana will follow the rules in the future, he said. "The department views this as a success story," Beddard said. Promulgated under a different administration, the settlement between HCD and Fontana is the only one of its type, according to Beddard. "I'm hoping," said the Western Center's Martinez, "that it's a one-time deal and they will never do it again. We really think it's necessary for HCD to have the audit authority. But we didn't want to start the precedent of them settling based on the results of the audit." What HCD should have done, said Martinez, is refer the matter to the attorney general's office for enforcement. The Case: Fontana Redevelopment Agency v. Torres , No. E038366, 2007 DJDAR 11464. Filed July 26, 2007. The Lawyers: For Fontana: Victor Wolfe, Best, Best & Krieger, (909) 686-1450. For Torres: Lynn Martinez, Western Center on Law and Poverty, (707) 373-4572. For Ten-Ninety, Ltd.: Joseph Coomes Jr., McDonough, Holland & Allen, (916) 444-3900.

San Bernardino County has agreed to deal with greenhouse gas reduction in its general plan as part of a settlement agreement in a high-profile lawsuit filed by the state attorney general's office. The settlement requires the county to: • Adopt a general plan policy within 30 months that outlines ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions attributable to discretionary land use decisions. • Prepare a greenhouse gas reduction plan that includes an inventory of greenhouse gas emission levels as of 1990, present day and as projected through 2020, as well as reduction targets and mitigation measures. The settlement requires the attorney general to: • Help the county recoup the estimated $500,000 needed to comply with the agreement. • Provide the county with early comment and consultation to avoid future greenhouse gas lawsuits. • Assist with defense of any legal challenges to the county's greenhouse gas reduction plan. Attorney General Jerry Brown called the settlement a "landmark agreement" and "a model that I encourage other cities and counties to adopt." San Bernardino County officials said they were pleased to keep the general plan in place as adopted while the county works on the greenhouse gas measures. The litigation was the first of its kind filed by the state over a general plan's impact on global warming (see CP&DR , July 2007). A lawsuit filed by environmentalists over the plan remains pending. The attorney general lists as feasible mitigation measures: • High-density development that reduces vehicle trips, • Impact fees on development to fund public transit • Construction of regional transit centers • Designated parking spaces for carpools and overall parking limits. • Convenient electric vehicle charging stations The complete agreement as well as spin from either side is available on the attorney general's website and the county's website .

In passing the state budget on Tuesday, the Legislature agreed to begin resolving issues associated with the California Environmental Quality Act and global warming. As part of the state budget deal, lawmakers passed SB 97 by Sen. Bob Dutton (R-Rancho Cucamonga). That measure: • Requires the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to prepare by July 1, 2009 guidelines for how CEQA documents should address the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and requires the Resources Agency to adopt the guidelines by January 1, 2010. • Bars CEQA lawsuits over greenhouse gas emissions from transportation projects funded by last year's $19.9 billion Proposition 1B, or flood control projects funded by last year's $4.1 billion Proposition 1E. Dutton said his legislation ensures that bond dollars are not spent defending lawsuits. "It was clear that billions of dollars approved by the voters were at risk to this type of unnecessary litigation," he said. "I felt it was very important that we get a fix to this problem before the money for these transportation projects was allocated." Significantly, however, the bill implies that global warming is indeed an issue for CEQA consideration. Attorney General Jerry Brown and environmentalists have begun pressing for CEQA documents to address greenhouse gas emissions caused by new development — an effort strongly opposed by business and development interests. Although the bill requires preparation of new CEQA guidelines, the measure does not address concerns about the immediate application of CEQA to global warming issues. Three other potentially significant budget issues for land use: • The approved budget contains Williamson Act subventions to counties. This money is "backfill" for about $39 million in property tax dollars that counties lose due to Williamson Act tax breaks granted to owners of farmland who agree not to develop their land. Although, Gov. Schwarzenegger in May proposed eliminating the subvention, he has reportedly promised not to blue pencil the funding as part of $700 million in last-minute cuts. • The budget cuts $1.3 billion from public transit, partially backfilling the cuts with bond funding. Transit agencies and advocates say the result will be service reductions, fare increases and fewer capital projects. • The budget approves expenditure of $778 million from last year's housing bond (Proposition 1C), as well as $4.2 billion in transportation bond spending.

Almost 30% of Californians name air pollution as the state's biggest environmental problem — far more than any other — and another 10% say the top environmental issue is global warming, which is related to air pollution. Furthermore, a significant plurality say the state government should do something about it, which suggests that there might be political tolerance for air pollution regulation Those were among the findings in the Public Policy Institute of California's annual survey of Californians and the environment, which was released recently. The survey did not ask many direct land use questions, but it did detect a political atmosphere in which the state's residents support additional regulation. About half of Californians say the state is not doing enough to protect the environment, while 67% say the federal government is doing an inadequate job on the environment. The PPIC survey almost always locates inconsistencies. To wit: While 40% of Californians rank air pollution or global warming as the state's biggest environmental issue, and two-thirds say something should be done immediately to counteract global warming, 66% of Californians — and 72% of likely voters — drive alone to work. Who carpools, rides public transit or finds alternative means of commuting? Poor people. Nearly half of people who make less than $40,000 a year do something besides drive alone to work. The PPIC survey also usually locates cluelessness. Thus, while Californians say they are concerned about air quality and global warming, about 70% admit they don't know enough about their regional air quality district to approve or disapprove of the district's activities. Among other findings of interest: • Blacks and Latinos are about twice as likely as whites and Asians to see air pollution as a serious health threat; • 60% of Republicans say immediate action is necessary on global warming; • 60% of Republicans favor more oil drilling off the coast; • Likely voters are evenly divided on whether more nuclear power plants should be built. The PPIC survey is available at http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=760 .

So I've finally had it with Joel Kotkin. Joel Kotkin is, of course, the Los Angeles pundit who loves to be hated by planners. Last week in the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion section . Kotkin flung around a lot of very selective facts and kinda-truths in order to make the argument that Los Angeles is rushing thoughtlessly and without public debate into "Manhattanization". This article is the latest piece of evidence suggesting that Kotkin's arguments are getting old and tired. Increasingly, it seems that the only thing we can count on him for � in newspaper op-eds, anyway � is to disagree with the conventional wisdom, no matter what it is. In fact, as time goes on, Kotkin � ever the contrarian � seems to spend more and more time disagreeing with planners and commentators who mostly agree with him. Which is too bad, because there was a time when Joel Kotkin really was a fresh voice who brought great insight to the debate over how cities should be shaped. As a longtime business journalist, Kotkin has a rare understanding of the role business and commerce plays in the life of cities. He's especially good at explaining small business, immigrant businesses, and the hidden sources of capital in the immigrant community � important stuff in L.A. that nobody much wrote about before Kotkin began to highlight it. He deserves a great deal of credit for pounding on this theme endlessly in front of planning and development audiences. But in the last few years, he's fallen deeper and deeper into the trap of being a contrarian for its own sake. The Times article was prompted by a variety of recent actions by the City of Los Angeles to promote development downtown, including a new housing density bonus ordinance (which is simply an expansion of the current state-required ordinance), subsidies for commercial development around the convention center (nothing new), and new rules on mini-condos of 250-350 square feet (which are already permitted but have gotten some publicity lately). Mostly, however, the piece was little more than a variation on the current Kotkin stump speech, in which he basically argues that Los Angeles is suburban by nature and anybody who wants to create more density in L.A. is trying to turn it into Manhattan. This, of course, is a classic "straw man" argument. It allows him to characterize advocates of higher density � especially planners subscribing to the New Urbanism � as Neanderthals tethered to the outmoded idea that all cities should be overly dense and mononuclear, as New York was in the industrial age. It's hard to believe that a few thousand condos in downtown L.A. could kick up such a ruckus in Kotkin's soul. After all, it's only a small part � though an important part � of a much more wide-ranging evolution of Los Angeles as an urban place.� What's emerging in L.A. is a�series of downtowns and activity centers of various densities strung across the landscape. And it seems odd for Kotkin to get so exercised about it, because�this seems to be pretty much exactly what Joel himself has been calling for in speech after speech and article after article over the past several years. In fact, this is exactly what the Los Angeles General Plan of the 1970s � the famous "centers concept" plan � called for. L.A. is not so much Manhattanizing as Pasadena-izing. A few years ago, partly as a marketing ploy for a respected planning firm he was working with at the time, Kotkin tried to stake out some ground in the whole New Urbanism/smart growth debate by coining the term "New Suburbanism".� When pressed about what he meant, Kotkin wrote in an article on Planetizen �that he envisioned a future involving "a heavily wired �archipelago of villages,' with relatively compact and economically self-sufficient communities spread across our landscape," and warned against a return to "the dense, centralized, transit-dependent past". There's nothing here for even the most passionate New Urbanist to disagree with. In describing New Suburbanism, Kotkin was just setting himself up up as a 21st Century Ebenezer Howard. Long a fan of smaller cities anyway, he essentially staked a claim to the Garden City. This is no different than most New Urbanists and smart growthers, who understand that most cities are polycentric and that development must be concentrated into a series of villages. Hardly anybody is arguing�that an extremely dense mononuclear city � New York, circa 1930 � is the solution. In fact, when New Urbanists have been criticized (by everybody except Kotkin), the argument has usually been that they aren't really urbanists at all but simply architects who want to build better-designed suburbs. In other words, the rap on New Urbanists is that they are nothing more than New Suburbanists. Yet Kotkin keeps setting up these folks as his straw-man opponents � obsessed with overcentralized overdevelopment in downtown areas and therefore in bed with big-time developers. He can't seem to fathom the possibility that � especially in a metro area that already has close to 20 million people � his archipelago will inevitably contain a few extremely dense, transit-oriented downtowns along with dozens and dozens of less dense and less transit-oriented village settings. Last week's Times article does contain one interesting new twist on the old contrarianism. In reviewing recent development plans for downtown L.A., Kotkin claims to be shocked � shocked! � that powerful developers have undue influence over the planning process these days. His comments on this topic embody a breathtaking naivet� for somebody who has always set himself up as being a street-smart pundit on cities. Instead of sounding like Joel Kotkin, in this new incarnation he sounds a lot like the newly elected president of some San Fernando Valley homeowner association. In the Times article, Kotkin argues that in the good old days, like the 1980s, L.A. city councilmembers like Zev Yaroslavsky and Ernie Bernardi bravely held the line against too much developer influence, and that little guy developers had more of a chance. He lays the blame at the doorstep of term limits, which he claims have forced local politicians deep into the pockets of big developers. It's true that Bernardi � who represented the East Valley on the L.A. City Council for more than 30 years � was always a thorn in the side of the redevelopment establishment. And it's probably true that, 20 years ago, the deck was stacked a little less strongly in favor of deep-pockets developers. But to say that developer influence is stronger than ever because of term limits is ridiculous. Even during Kotkin's good old days of the 1980s, developers had an enormous amount of influence. More than now, downtown developers appropriated large amounts of public money for their projects; and, Bernardi aside, they did so with far less public scrutiny than today. (Bernardi never had many friends on the City Council, and his leveraged derived mostly from maverick lawsuits, not council action.) Up until the late 1980s, it was possible to get approval for a 20-story skyscraper in the City of Los Angeles over the counter. And while Yaroslavsky was vigilant in opposing big development when it backed up to his constituents'neighborhoods, he was shameless � as I pointed out in my book The Reluctant Metropolis � in facilitating such projects when they backed up to a neighborhood represented by some other politician. In other words, Joel seems to have developed a pretty selective memory about this kind of stuff. And the culprit isn't really term limits. The culprit is that L.A. system of enormous council districts � each councilmember represents close to 300,000 constituents � that requires candidate to raise big money in order to run a campaign. If there's one logical theme in Kotkin's recent op-ed ranting, it's a Bernardi-like resentment toward the power of big downtown developers who use political influence to get public subsidies. This is a fair enough complaint, but it's not new. In fact, it's about 60 years old, as historian Robert Fogelson pointed out in his recent book, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall . So Joel can cast himself as the cranky reincarnation of Ernie Bernardi if he wants to. But it's not exactly cutting-edge urban commentary. And it's disingenuous to make the Bernardi argument in the guise of attacking New Urbanists and smart growthers for wanting to recreate Manhattan all over Los Angeles. But when you've based your whole career on being a contrarian pundit, it must be tough to wake up in the morning and face the brutal fact that everybody agrees with you. - Bill Fulton First of three blogs. Read Part 2 here .

The Salton Sea sits likes a time bomb in the desert, serving up a brew of bad smells, turgid waters and the potential to increase air pollution in an area where thousands of homes are planned. But under a proposal making its way through the Legislature, some of the sea's lurking hazards may be stopped. Instead, the Salton Sea may be shrunk to a third of its current 240,000 acres and revived as a recreational lake for sport fish and migrating birds. All it will take is billions of dollars and at least 75 years of maintenance. The sea, created accidentally from an overflowing diversion of Colorado River water 100 years ago, is Southern California's largest body of water. But for the past half century, it has been dying as its water supplies have been cut off and channeled to agriculture and growing cities. The lake will be officially considered dead by 2017, after about 300,000 acre-feet of agricultural runoff that now flows into the sea will be diverted instead to San Diego. This is not the first plan to save the lake, but the plan maybe the final hope. The state Resources Agency in May released a programmatic environmental impact report that has been embraced by stakeholders in the region. Before the end of the legislative year in September, action is expected on a bill, SB 187 (Ducheny), that would approve the plan, provide initial money and chart future steps. The cost � as much as $8.9 billion over 75 years, including millions of dollars a year for maintenance � may prove the most daunting part of the restoration. Only about $200 million will be available if the Legislature acts this session, leaving future outlays to be provided by money from a proposed redevelopment district, federal funding and future state bond measures. The EIR proposes cutting the existing 376-square-mile sea into a horseshoe shaped waterway with a 52- mile-long rock jetty. The jetty would be hugely expensive, costing an estimated $5.7 billion to construct. The northern portion of the lake would be reinvigorated primarily as a recreational lake with fish, while the southern half would be dried out in portions, ringed by a watery shoreline of smaller ponds for fish, plants and migrating birds. The southern half would include 64,000 acres of wetlands that would be stocked with small fish and worms on which birds feed. Cutting the lake in two and, therefore, having a much smaller area to replenish is one aspect of improving the water quality. The primary cause of poor water quality, however, is phosphorus from untreated agricultural runoff, according to Rick Daniels, executive director of the Salton Sea Authority, a local joint-use authority. A project-specific EIR is expected to address how the runoff would be treated. Work needs to be partially completed on the most critical areas by 2017, when runoff from Imperial County farmers that now flows into the lake will decrease because irrigation water will be transferred to San Diego, under terms of a 2003 agreement on the Colorado River among several water agencies (see CP&DR Legal Digest , August 2007; CP&DR , November 2003). "The sea is on its way to dying," Daniels summed up. The sea is dying as it grows more salty and its freshwater sources are cut back. The sea has 44 parts of salt per 1000 today, compared with 43 parts per 1000 in 1999, according to Daniels. In contrast, the Pacific Ocean's salinity is 35 parts per 1000. (See CP&DR Environment Watch , February 2000). That saltiness makes it hard for fish to survive. Eight years ago, for example, the sea was home to such fish as croaker and a sport fish named the corvine. But those fish, Daniels said, stopped reproducing. Today, only the hardy tilapia remains, and it too faces problems. Tilapia came to the sea after being added to nearby irrigation canals to eat vegetation growing there, and it adapted to the saltwater of the Salton Sea, he said. Today there are 200 million tilapia in the sea, but three million a year are dying off due to the increased growth of algae, which is fed by phosphorus in agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley. And things could get worse. Under the state's preferred alternative in the EIR, a total of 62,000 acres of sea will be dried out, potentially creating more dust and decreasing air quality in the region. Daniels noted that dried up lakes in the Owens Valley have led to huge dust storms that make Owens Valley one of the most polluted air basins in the country. "We're afraid it's going to be worse" in the Salton Sea area, he said, The dried up land is called "exposed playa" in the state's EIR, but it's no day at the beach for future recreationists. The land will be off limits to the public, and it will be planted with salt tolerant vegetation and covered with gravel. The state plan anticipates that dust mitigation will be an ongoing expense. According to Dale Hoffman-Floerke, chief of the Colorado River/Salton Sea office of the California Department of Water Resources, a crust will form on the surface after the water evaporates, minimizing the dust. She disagreed with Daniels' contention that the state proposal will harm air quality. "Our goal is to insure that air quality is not made worse as the result of any restoration activity," she said. Daniels said the Salton Sea Authority continues to work with the state on its plan, but the authority has developed another plan that does not require as much of the sea to be dried up. Meanwhile, development continues in the region. More than 800 homes were built in Salton City, in unincorporated Imperial County, in the past two years alone, Daniels said, and other developers are waiting to start building thousands of approved housing units just north of the lake in Riverside County. Some may wait to see what the future holds for the lake before they begin building. "My belief is, as this progresses, there will be many more houses built there, as the water improves," Daniels said. Money for initial work on the sea is expected to come from $30 million in federal funding, along with $47 million from Proposition 84 bond funds approved by voters in 2006. Those funds will be used to restore and upgrade habitat along the New and Alamo rivers, which drain into the sea from the south in Imperial County. Also, as part of 2003 settlement on Colorado River water, Coachella Valley, San Diego and Imperial Irrigation Districts put $40 million each in a mitigation fund for the Salton Sea. Another $1 billion might come from a $10 billion water bond that State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has proposed. Daniels said there is also talk of creating a redevelopment district around the lake to raise another $1 billion. The Legislature authorized creation of the district in 2000. The redevelopment plan would capture increases in property taxes as land values begin to rise due to improvements to the sea, Daniels said. State officials are also expected to ask Congress to allocate another $1 billion next year, he said. Environmental groups, so far, are in favor of the state's EIR. "It's not perfect," said Kim Delfino, California director of Defenders of Wildlife, which represents a coalition of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society through an organization called the Salton Sea Coalition. But the plan, she notes, does have the basic elements the groups are seeking: habitat for wildlife, and protection of air and water quality. Delfino and Hoffman-Floerke both said a key issue awaiting resolution is who will become the governing body for the sea's restoration. The organization will need to involve state, local and federal officials. Delfino said she is researching whether a partnership being used by state and federal governments to restore Florida's Everglades may be a good model for the sea. But, like Daniels, she said something must be done to restore the sea � and soon. "We're running out of time," she said. Contacts: Rick Daniels, Executive Director, Salton Sea Authority, (760) 564-488. Kim Delfino, Defenders of Wildlife, (916)313-5800, ext. 109. Dale Hoffman-Floerke, Department of Water Resources, (916) 651-7052. Salton Sea EIR: http://www.saltonsea.water.ca.gov

Even Orange County is going urban. The latest evidence is Lennar's "Central Park West" project – almost 1,400 condominiums, plus a little retail and office space, on a 43-acre site just off the Jamboree offramp of the 405 Freeway in Irvine. I visited the construction site on Monday (8/13) as part of an event sponsored by the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Association. On its own terms, Central Park West ( www.cpwliving.com ) is a pretty good example of emerging Orange County urbanity. The math works out like this: an overall density in excess of 30 units per acre, a smattering of retail (20,000 square feet) and office space (90,000 square feet), as well as more than 4 acres of park space, plus roads and so forth. About 5% of housing consists of affordable ownership units. There's a variety of building types, including two- and three-story buildings; four- and five-story podium buildings; and two high-rises. Even the smallest buildings contain more than 20 units per acre. Most of the units go for close to a million. The market is clear: Young professionals and empty nesters who work in the nearby office buildings and don't want to fight the traffic. (The high-rises have great views of the eternal traffic jam on the 405.) Lennar proudly states that the company has followed all the rules of urban development: walkability, verticality, integrated retail, a community center, and no walls. No walls, at least, within the project itself. In the way it relates to surrounding areas, Central Park West is still what planners used to call a "pod" – completely walled off. The site – the former location of a low-rise manufacturing plant – is surrounded on all sides by high-rise structures, mostly office buildings. But it's bounded by the freeway on one side and by Jamboree and Michelson – very wide arterial streets – on two sides. The fourth side is along a little-used street, but it's basically a wall of parking garages that serve nearby office buildings, and Central Park West is walled off from that as well. There is some talk of building a pedestrian bridge across Jamboree to the nearby retail. And though there's some underground parking, especially for the high-rises, Central Park West pretty much sticks to suburban parking ratios (2+ per unit) and, for the smaller buildings, it sticks to the connection between all parking spaces and the unit itself. This may be a practical reality, but it really boxes in the designers, especially in the smaller buildings. The most luxurious low-rise condominiums have tandem parking spaces, simply because to do otherwise would force the density way down – if you want to maintain a connection between the unit and the parking. Unbundling the parking may work in downtown L.A., but apparently even developers thinking urban are still afraid to do it in Orange County. Then, of course, there's the name. The marketing idea, of course, is mid- and high-rise living overlooking what Frederick Law Olmsted used to call a "greensward". However, the grassy part of "Central Park West" is 2.2 acres. Just for the record, the real Central Park is 382 times bigger than that.

Director, Community, WRO The Urban Land InstituteLos Angeles, CA The Urban Land Institute is searching for a high quality Director, Community Outreach, for its new West Region Office. The incumbent must have strong internal consultative skills. We offer very competitive benefits and matching 401(k). Please send your resume and letter of interest to jobs@uli.org . ULI is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES: Work with ULI district council leadership and staff in the Western Region to adopt and adapt community outreach program models like Reality Check, Urban Marketplace, Inner City Advisors, and Smart Growth Alliances, which are underway in other District Councils. Develop and implement community outreach program models in workforce/affordable housing and sustainable development. Work on tasks to support projects funded through Foundation grants. Develop and implement strategies and products to transfer ideas and experiences among district councils, including writing guides, case studies and articles; organizing seminars and forums; and developing web-based communication tools. Develop and implement strategies, which link local district council outreach activities with ULI's national and global priorities and programs. Staff ULI Advisory Services panels. REQUIREMENTS: Masters degree in urban planning, public administration, real estate or a related field. Seven years experience doing comparable work with increasing responsibilities in related fields. Knowledge of and experience in affordable housing, state and local land use policy, smart growth, urban and community development and public/private partnerships, sustainable development. Experience providing technical assistance and outreach to state and local organizations, developing outreach programs to support local housing, urban development, and sustainable development and land use policy programs. Experience in working in membership organizations. Ability to work effectively and collaboratively with others. Strong written and oral communication skills. Must be able to act as an internal consultant. Ability to manage several projects at once. Facilitation skills a plus.

The California Environmental Quality Act has been blamed for holding up affordable housing, economic development, urban revitalization and public works projects. This year, however, marks the first time that CEQA has ever held up the state budget. We reported in July about efforts of environmental groups and Attorney General Jerry Brown to make global warming a consideration during CEQA reviews, and we followed up with a blog entry about how business and development interests were requesting "urgent legislation action" to head off the enviros. Democrats who control the state Legislature have no interest in such legislation, but Republicans apparently do. Republicans in the Senate are refusing to vote for a budget unless there is CEQA "litigation reform." The Republicans insist that global warming should not be a CEQA issue until the state adopts regulations implementing AB 32, last year's greenhouse gas reduction bill. Check out the Republican press release, "CEQA Litigation Reform Protects Taxpayers." Democratic Sen. President Pro Tem Don Perata counters that Republicans are only trying to protect "developers and oil refineries." Check out his press release, "I Will Not Bargain On California's Environment." I haven't a clue who might win this one. Both sides appear to have their heels dug in pretty well, and Gov. Schwarzenegger, who appears more estranged from his party all the time, is not even in town. What is clear, though, is that the sides recognize the stakes. The pro-development side argues that if global warming becomes a routine item for CEQA consideration, the environmental review process is going to get more complicated, longer and more expensive. The pro-environment side argues that such considerations would encourage projects that rely less on automobiles, which generate most of the greenhouses gases in California, and that fewer auto-dominated projects would be a good thing for multiple reasons. Yes, this really is a big deal. Too bad such an important policy consideration is caught up in secret negotiations and party politics. - Paul Shigley

So not everybody thinks downtown Long Beach is a better place than downtown L.A. But at least everybody agrees Fresno has the worst big-city downtown in California. We stirred things up recently when we ranked California's big-city downtowns . People in Long Beach loved us, while advocates of the new urban scene in L.A. were not happy. "How could anyone be so ignorant as to rank downtown Long Beach, which is like a northern extension of suburban Orange County, ahead of the downtown in the country's second largest city?" No one, however, has quibbled with our listing of downtown Fresno as the worst. No one. Poor Fresno. Now CP&DR is taking the next step: We're scrutinizing the downtowns in California's mid-sized cities. These are some of the most enjoyable downtowns anywhere — the sort of districts that planners take photos of while on vacation so they can show their city council back home. Think Santa Barbara and Pasadena. But are the downtowns in those ballyhooed and extremely expensive cities really the best? What mid-sized city might be commonly overlooked? What city is on the right track toward downtown greatness thanks to effective planning and thoughtful development? Conversely, what mid-sized city has a hopeless case for a downtown? Tell us what you think via comments at the bottom of this blog, emails or phone calls. If you speak up now, you just might influence the list that we intend to release in a few weeks. - Paul Shigley

Mathematicians often take delight in Cat's Cradle, the age-old game of making string figures on one's fingers. In the most familiar form of this game, one person starts out with a simple rectangle of yarn or string, and then makes a simple figure by looping different parts of the yarn around his or her fingers. This figure is then passed to the fingers of a second player, who introduces another layer of complexity into the figure before passing the increasingly complex string figure to a third player. And so on, until the figure becomes so complex that it becomes impossible to go further, at least with a two-foot length of yarn. Cat's Cradle is being used here as an analogy, admittedly an artsy one, to describe two different kinds of suburban planning. These two planning types – let's call them the ideal new urbanist village and the "builder vernacular" mixed-use neighborhood — do not look like one another, at least at first glance. The new urbanist village, in the hands of artists like Peter Calthorpe or Stefanos Polyzoides, is often a handsome design. Owing something to the traditions of the French Ecole des Beaux Arts, these designs set up a hierarchy of bigger spaces and major avenues that are broken down into smaller spaces and smaller streets. The intent is to create a sense of pervasive order that, in the minds of the most idealistic practitioners, gets translated into social order. In the builder vernacular version of the urban village, such as the 493-acre Fancher Creek project in southeast Fresno, the site plan would not end up under glass on your wall, unless you were a land developer or a home builder. Elegant it is not. This is the image of land as commodity, even if the land parcels are not subdivided into neat, regular blocks the way the old-time commodifiers did during the 1800s. The red ink-blot on the left-hand side of the plan will be a shopping center, while the pink triangle on the right will be a commercial-industrial park. The squidgy blue parts in the middle are housing; Centex Homes is already developing two subdivisions in Fancher Creek. The yellow rectangles represent schools, one existing and one planned. The pink rectangle at the bottom center of the plan, which is the most promising part of the plan, is a mixed-use shopping district. Although this area has not yet been planned, it might be reasonable to expect some loft housing, perhaps some live-work units, some retail-and-office hybrids and the like. Hopefully, social services—the dentists, doctors, child-care agencies and marriage counselors—may find places to work in this quadrangle. One disappointment of the plan is the relatively small amount of open space – a tiny park that serves as a buffer between an existing school and the mixed-use quadrant, and a second park that serves as a similar buffer between Fancher Creek (the actual waterway) and the existing neighborhood of labyrinthine suburban streets. (One good way to haze a new UPS driver would be to send him on deliveries in this neighborhood.) Another letdown of the plan is the minimal acknowledgement of the natural waterway, which many planners and landscape architects would seize upon as an organizing device, as well as a way to create a linear park that connects to larger parks along the way. Here, the creek serves little purpose beyond providing a natural barrier between new retail development and the existing neighborhood, or providing further separation between the new master-planned development and older housing. Those objections aside, this is a very workable plan that preserves most of the virtues that the new urbanists like to crow about: Residents can walk to shopping and services. Children in a majority of households can walk to a park without crossing a major arterial. (The exception is the baseball/community park, sequestered north of busy Belmont Avenue.) And the "four-corners" intersection of Fancher Creek Scenic Drive and Fowler Avenue would be a great place for a transit station, if one is not already planned. The new urbanist crowd may not be wowed by the curving configuration of residential streets with their many cul-de-sacs. Yet a close look at the neighborhood suggests that traffic planning has been done thoughtfully to allow neighborhood functions such as driving to school or the market to occur primarily on neighborhood roads, while regional traffic is held at bay on the periphery of the project. As future regional destinations, the shopping center and the "office-technology-industrial park" belong on the outer edges, where their potential traffic and air-quality impacts will have minimal effect on Fancher Creek residents. The closer one looks at the Fancher Creek site plan, in fact, the more it resembles an old-fashioned, hierarchal layout: The neighborhood-serving retail and services are in the middle, while the first concentric circle is made up of housing and schools. In the outermost circle are the big, "regional destination" shopping center and the tech park. The priorities, for the most part, are in the right order. For all its clumsiness, Fancher Creek could shape up to be a viable, mixed-use neighborhood. The obvious problem is that there is no necessary relationship between the employment centers and the residential neighborhoods. The unfortunate likelihood is that Fancher Creek homeowners will get in their cars and drive through hot, dusty streets of Fresno to far-away jobs, while other suburbanites will schlep from distant places to jobs in the pink triangle adjacent to Highway 180. That's not the fault of Fancher Creek's developers, a local venture of Fresno developers Tom Richards and Ed Kashian. The fault lies with lawmakers who preach the doctrine of jobs-housing balance but fail to encourage a stronger spatial connection between residence and employment. Klutzy or not, Fancher Creek is a big improvement on the previous suburban model, and may even turn out to be a good place to live.