The Coastal Commission's October docket in Newport Beach served up a fair slice of Southern California celebrity-involved madness and possibly more items than usual of old business of the it's-never-over variety. The Commission's most widely reported act of the month was to postpone consideration of an appeal on an unpopular proposal by entities linked to U2 guitarist David Evans, known as "The Edge," to build five large new houses in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Malibu Times and LA Times reported the postponement was for lack of adequate notice to stakeholders and the Commission would likely take up the matter again in January. The paper quoted Frank Angel, attorney for the Sweetwater Mesa Homeowners' Association, as calling the continuance "a huge game changer" because the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan (LCP) was to take effect the Friday after the October Commission meeting. (On that approval see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3559; http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474.) In a commentary ahead of the meeting , LA Times columnist Steve Lopez had questioned how Evans managed to get the hearing scheduled just before that effective date. In the staff report , summaries of public comments included celebrity relationship gossip and a mention of a Web site that formerly discussed the project, www.leavesinthewind.com. As of 2011 that site explained the plan as it then stood in some detail, promoting it in terms of environmental responsibility and high-concept design. Rejected in its original form that year, the project has since been reduced and redesigned for a less visible group of sites . The Laguna Beach Independent reported that Mark Christy, proponent of a renovation and rebuilding project at "The Ranch" in Aliso Canyon, brought three busloads of supporters to speak in public comment sessions at the Coastal Commission. It said speakers in Christy's favor included the Mayor Pro Tem and two City Council members. The Newport Beach Independent reported more than 60 supporters of The Ranch appeared, outnumbering participants in the monthly anti-fracking protest. The Commission has had rocky relations with Christy for some time. This month, as reported further at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3595 and in the Coastline Pilot , the Commission determined The Ranch had done unpermitted work on its outdoor landscape, including creation of a 7000-square-foot dance floor. Additional disputes concern whether Christy's proposed additions to the site will cause too much environmental harm, and whether the work he has already done on the mid-century resort buildings constitutes renovation or new construction. And this month the Coastline Pilot published a letter by Christy on an additional issue: the lack of a public trail on the site. He wrote that it wouldn't work for safety reasons because the resort includes a golf course. The Commission granted approval, with conditions , for a plan allowing the City of Los Angeles to sell the last seven house lots it owns on the rim of Potrero Canyon in Pacific Palisades. The plan comes with approvals for filling and grading by the city to stabilize the canyon rim. Proceeds will go into a special restoration fund for the park below the lots. The staff report recounts that the city bought 22 residential lots along the canyon in 1991 following litigation over landslides. Since then the city has been conducting restoration work in the area and selling house lots a few at a time to pay for each next stage of the project. This month's approval allows the city to sell the last seven lots without keeping an earlier promise that it would first complete a new park and riparian "habitat installation." Per the Los Angeles Times ' online archives the original landslide was in 1978 and coverage of city efforts to fix the problem dates back to at least 1985 and 1989 . Caltrans won confirmation of a 2012 approval to move about three miles of Highway 1 inland in San Luis Obispo County near Piedras Blancas. Shoreline erosion and bicycle safety were among the major concerns. The plan also brings the road farther away from a beach that is massively popular with elephant seals, hence decreasing the risk of sofa-sized marine mammals entering the roadway. On reconsideration, the Commission granted permission to the City of Los Angeles to install a seasonal ice rink on Venice Beach . The Commission had denied the permit initially in September because of objections to the city's prior handling of a zipline attraction and maintenance of nearby public bathrooms. San Diego got approval for its LCP amendment to license and regulate food trucks at parks and beaches . The Daily Pilot reported the Commission approved 23 "townhomes" for the former site of a Christian Science church in Newport Beach. The paper wrote, "The site along the 3300 block of Via Lido isn't far from where the former Newport Beach City Hall is to be replaced by a boutique hotel. Officials hope the move will inject life into the area." The Commission was still planning a workshop for December to consider methods of preserving public access to the cheap seaside family vacation. A cheerful mission at first glance, but conflicts over mitigation costs to developers to preserve low-cost access were less than cheerful through the summer, especially in July (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3528). The Commission's meeting agenda, annotated with outcomes, is at http://coastal.ca.gov/meetings/mtg-mm14-10.html. News of the Commission during the rest of October was a mix of grants, enforcement actions and appeals. Napster and Facebook billionaire Sean Parker and his wife Alexandra Lenas got the label of "philanthropists" from a Monterey Herald report on their steps to comply with a Coastal Commission settlement. The settlement is in compensation for environmental damage caused at Big Sur by elaborate preparations for the couple's wedding in June 2013. Parker and Lenas agreed to sprinkle $1.2 million among eight environmental and education nonprofits on the Central Coast as part of a $2.5 million settlement payment. Parker also agreed to create a mobile app for the Commission to help coastal visitors to find beach access points. In another resolution of long-running old business, the Commission announced its approval of a "final plan to restore public access" to the Ontario Ridge trail in San Luis Obispo County.  More details from the Tribune here . Commission staff contributed to an Assembly hearing September 25 , primarily on dangers of desalination to sea life. The city of San Clemente got a $90,000 planning grant to work toward finishing its Local Coastal Program (LCP) certification. Newport Beach is applying for a similar grant. More jurisdictions' pending planning grant applications are posted online , awaiting decisions during the next couple of months. KIEM-TV reported the city of Eureka got a $250,000 grant to prepare a risk analysis on sea level rise. The Orange County Register reported Long Beach officials were moving toward approval of the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, a pricey remodel of the existing Belmont Plaza Pool for use in diving competitions. Columnist Bob Keisser objected that the new pool would be less ambitious than the old one in the scale of competition events it could host; he was among those calling for a bigger effort to potentially host 2020 Olympic trials. The local Daily Breeze reported the city of Rancho Palos Verdes was working on an amendment to its LCP to comply with a Coastal Commission determination that the current 70-foot flagpole at the Trump National Golf Club violated the existing LCP. San Diego's Friends of the Children's Pool filed suit over the Coastal Commission's decision to reserve the Children's Pool beach for seals during pupping season. Beach access advocates were additionally calling on the city to open sluiceways in the seawall to clean the sand. Sadly for an already-contested resource, the pool was reportedly part of an area closed for safety due to an October 14 sewage spill. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Ross Eric Gibson of the La Bahia Coalition filed an appeal with the Coastal Commission against city approval of a plan to partly replace, partly renovate the historic La Bahia Hotel. The project would convert it from a 44-unit apartment building into a 165-room hotel, conference center and day spa.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) won two major takings law victories in late October. Clients championed by the property rights organization defeated a San Francisco law on compensation to tenants evicted under the Ellis Act, and managed to undo a coastal easement requirement that the court said was an unfair permit condition. San Francisco city attorney to appeal San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced he would appeal a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer that struck down the city's new ordinance on compensation for tenants evicted under the Ellis Act. From its effective date in June until Breyer blocked it effective October 24, landlords who took an occupied unit off the rental market were required to pay their evicted tenants two years' worth of difference between the lost rent rate and the market-rate rent for a comparable unit in the city. The ruling in Levin v. City and County of San Francisco accepted arguments by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) that the ordinance violated constitutional property rights. The PLF victory press release said the lead plaintiffs in the matter would have had to pay $118,000 to the tenant of the duplex where they live in order to rent their extra unit to friends or family. The SF Chronicle 's Bob Egelko has details of the ruling . He quotes Breyer as calling the compensation amount "an enormous payout untethered in both nature and amount to the social harm actually caused by the property owner's action." A copy of the ruling is available on PLF's Web site . Coastal property owners vindicated On October 23, the Second Appellate District reversed itself on rehearing in Bowman v. California Coastal Commission . The court had agreed as of April 15 to depublish its initial ruling in March and rehear the matter. The new ruling is a victory for the PLF's clients, Sandra Bowman and her sisters, who inherited a large San Luis Obispo County property, partly along the coastline, from their father, Walton Emmick. The sisters have been disputing Coastal Commission efforts to enforce a public access easement as a condition for a coastal development permit (CDP) to improve the dilapidated house and barn on a part of the property a mile inland. As discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3452, the court's earlier ruling backed the Coastal Commission in finding that collateral estoppel barred the sisters from repudiating a public access easement that the county initially required of them as a condition for a CDP. The March decision gave a somewhat confused account of the facts, saying Emmick did renovation work in anticipation of that first CDP although it was issued after his death -- hence that he and his successors accepted the CDP's burdens along with its benefits. Accordingly the March court agreed with the Coastal Commission that the sisters could not take advantage of the county's decision to grant their application for a second CDP without the easement. The new opinion accepted the PLF's version of the facts: that Emmick did renovation work on the property only under county permits that were exempt from the CDP requirement because they did not "change the use or dimensions of the structure." It stated Emmick "did not make the repairs for which he sought authorization" under the initial CDP, hence that neither he nor his successors accepted any benefit under it. However, the court's new opinion was not based solely on this fresh understanding of the facts. It also said the easement exaction was unfair: "There is no rational nexus, no less rough proportionality, between the work on a private residence a mile from the coast and a lateral public access easement." The court found it immaterial whether the requirement was the Commission's or the county's fault. Regardless, the court said collateral estoppel doctrine calls for equitable results. Because of both the reinterpreted fact pattern and the lack of nexus between the renovations and the easement, the court found the equity requirement was not met. In a statement in April, the court had requested letter briefing on the standard of review. It said "the parties appear to agree" that the March ruling misapplied the substantial evidence rule to the administrative mandate question, in that it chose to consider only evidence supporting the prevailing party rather than "all relevant evidence even if it detracts from the administrative decision," as called for in La Costa Beach Homeowners' Assn. v. Cal. Coastal Comm. (2002) 101 Cal.App.4th 804. The court asked the parties whether the Commission should be treated as the sole authority to determine credibility of evidence, or, if not, how the La Costa case should apply. In the opinion that followed, the court looked to a phrase in La Costa saying "Courts may reverse an agency's decision only if, based on the evidence before the agency, a reasonable person could not reach the conclusion reached by the agency." It then based the decision on its own interpretation of the facts. The new, currently effective opinion is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B243015A.PDF.

News Item: the Los Angeles City Council has rescinded a long-standing ordinance requiring all high-rise buildings in the downtown area to have rooftop helipads . When the ordinance was in effect, all downtown buildings were flat-headed in design to accommodate the helipads. The result was a skyline of monotonous uniformity and "architectural mediocrity," according to the New York Times . There is only one way to provide an adequate commentary on this situation: A Greek tragedy. SCENE: LATE NIGHT IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. A GREEK CHORUS, MADE UP ENTIRELY OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS, CHANTS IN UNISON. CHORUS OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Oh, misfortune! Our reign has come to a sorry end. Gone is our skyline, unique in all the world, of uniform flatness. Gone, alas, are the days when ‘copters swarmed us The way butterflies swarm poppy fields. No more to hear The sweet sound of chop-chop-chop-chubba-chubba-chop-chop. Goodbye, copters! Goodbye cops! Farewell, first responders in MedEvacs! For the Chief Fireman has said, in his annoying nasal voice,    ‘Go not to rooftops any more, oh thou office workers of LA! People in emergencies should stay put, and wait for help.'  What kind of poppycock is that? Does this mean That choppers are never more to land on our flat, bald heads, Each with a target for helicopters marked "X" in the center,  Seen by none but birds, planes, God and Google Earth? No more will high-rise buildings look like us, the flat-headed tribe. The next generation won't have that special look -- that is to say, The look of a bunch of wooden boards at the hardware store, Standing upright, that nobody has bought. Enter THE TRANSAMERICA TOWER, a famous pointy-headed building from San Francisco. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Oh, go ahead and moan, you inane band of overgrown cigar boxes. Snivel, if you want. You're through. The future belongs to sharper shapes. Just as skyscrapers with syringe-like tops were the toast of Manhattan In the Golden Age, so once again pin-head buildings will come to rule Your snoozefest of a skyline. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Insult added to injury! You pyramidal monstrosity, come to torment us Just when we're feeling totally like we can't deal. TRANSAMERICA TOWER (being really obnoxious) But deal you must. This is progress, enlightenment, artistic freedom! Face it, anvil-brains, you don't stack up when compared with Tokyo Or all those Chinese cities with their pointy tower things. Boring, boring! FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You can laugh and scorn, you irresponsible pinhead! You, who never shouldered any social responsibility. Our very heads spoke of preparedness. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Yes, and for that reason, you get no standout buildings by the Starchitects, Those favorites of Zeus and Hera, who got them jobs with the other gods. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: What bosh! Know ye not that we are of the International Style? Just as the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe, and its wife, the green-skinned Lever House by Skidmore Owings Merrill, The legendary New York pair that gave birth to all the office buildings that came after them, were both flat of brow? What say you of that, you much-derided pinhead! TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Don't remind me of my poor reception when first built! Though I stand by the Bay, I was by designed by an Angeleno, The hard-partying Bill Pereira. Now I am a symbol of San Francisco! Take that, you derivative clump of banalities! ENTER the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, a recent building in Baku, Azerbajian by Zaha Hadid. This exquisite building, widely portrayed in published photos during recent months, is elliptically curved in profile. HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURE CENTRE (with a slightly husky voice): Hey boys, stop fighting. You're not just wrong, you're stuck in the past. Look at my beauty and be struck speechless as Buster Keaton. Flat, pointed, who cares? It's irrelevant. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You look like a woman in a head-scarf Standing in a strong breeze. I think we are in love. TRANSAMERICA BUILDING (to HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER) You call us irrelevant? You're from Azerbajian, for crying out loud. The client is a dictator who builds what he wants, regardless of cost. Plus, you're a cultural center, not an office building, so you don't count. And you were designed by Zaha Hadid. Her office buildings On the whole, have flat tops! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: All true. I'm just making a point, you pecan-brained dinosaurs. The future can be flat, pointed or free-form like me. The point is that LA can enjoy some variety, and catch up With the skyline of a second-tier Chinese city, maybe, if it tries. As for Tokyo or Dubai, however … oh, just give up now.  CHORUS OF FLAT-TOP BUILDINGS (highly offended): You decadent hussy! Irrational product of extravagance and waste! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: Don't try to fluster me with your bluster, bub. Like the song says, you ain't so big, you're just tall, that's all.

In brief California land use news this week: Curbed and the LA Times reported that the legendary La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association and attorney Robert Silverstein may have reversed the opening of a 22-story, 299-unit residential development in Hollywood. Because of the neighborhood challenge, developer CIM group may have to displace the first 40 tenants who have moved into its Sunset/Gordon tower. A judge found CIM's construction permits invalid after the association objected that demolition of the prior building on the site was improper. Potential applicants for HUD's $1 billion in resiliency money may be interested in a large, varied calendar of webinars discussing the program and its goals. For prior notes on the program see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587. Environment California held an event in Santa Cruz to remind the public of the November 14 comment deadline on EPA's "Waters of the United States" proposed rule. The comment deadline on the proposed rule has already been extended twice . If approved, the EPA's proposal would extend the definition of waters that the Clean Water Act regulates to include smaller bodies of water and even wetlands. The EPA has given the proposed rule its own Web page at http://www2.epa.gov/uswaters. The Cupertino General Plan is nearing final approval. A recent Mercury News item lays out the remaining short timetable and (unsurprisingly) notes density levels in the housing element as an outstanding issue. Los Angeles County's running conflict over large solar arrays flared up in the San Fernando Valley. The LA Times reported a lawsuit was filed by PHL LLC and Foothill Solar, LLC  alleging the North Valley Area Planning Commission unfairly rejected a project application as incomplete. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported a conflict over airport zoning "derailed" the city's General Plan update process this week. Two City Council members held up the plan by refusing to join a vote overriding the local Airport Land Use Commission's "safety zone" limits on development at the south end of the city. The General Plan itself can't pass until a deal is reached or the Council changes membership -- but that membership may change at the upcoming November election. The Tribune had editorialized that the airport body was inexplicably over-limiting construction in "the logical place for residential development to occur." The Tribune also reported that environmental advocates sued the Cambria Community Services District under CEQA, alleging the district tried to build "a permanent desalination plant intended for long-term operation under the guise of a temporary emergency facility." In another case of what seem to be frequent small-airport control issues lately, the city of Ontario was in litigation with the City of LA and its Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) entity. The Bakersfield Press-Enterprise reported Ontario alleged LAWA was neglecting the Ontario airport's marketing but also wouldn't cede control to local managers. The SF Business Times reported Mayor Ed Lee has a "housing working group" trying to negotiate incentives to get private developers to add affordable housing to the city. Also this week in San Francisco, the Chron reported the developer of "what will become the highest condo tower west of the Mississippi River" agreed to pay $1.26 million per unit rather than build 11 units of below-market-rate housing. Last summer in San Francisco the MonkeyParking app startup was cease-and-desisted , parodied , and finally left town . Now it's having a similar time in LA County. The League of California Cities spotted news that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills banned the app, which helps people to sell the news that they're about to leave a public parking space. West Hollywood was considering a ban , and the LA City Council's transportation committee has voted to draft an ordinance banning private sales of public parking. The LA Times quoted Councilmember Mike Bonin calling it "the stealing economy masquerading as the sharing economy." Large-scale San Francisco housing development has finally branched out into the low-rise residential Inner Sunset neighborhood. J.K. Dineen reports in the SF Chronicle that Westlake Urban of San Mateo has proposed to replace the 86-unit Kirkham Heights apartment complex with 460 units of housing likely to serve medical staff and students from nearby UCSF. Sacramento Bee water writer Matt Weiser visited the Carlsbad desalination plant for a news feature on the project as a test case. He writes that it's being widely watched to see if its physical, environmental and financial challenges can be met in ways that work for the rest of California. His article makes a helpful companion piece to an earlier, more legalistic Latham and Watkins review of the Carlsbad project as "a case study of permitting and approvals." The Metropolitan Water District raised incentives for SoCal water agencies to recycle, recover or desalinate water. It's now offering $340 per acre-foot . (Item via League of CA Cities.) The Santa Barbara Independent reports the Arroyo Toad may soon no longer be officially endangered. The San Diego U-T reported the city of Escondido rejected a shelter for immigrant children "for reasons including traffic, safety, parking and community character." The San Francisco Planning Commission is expected in November to continue review of a Reasonable Modification Ordinance for disability accommodations. The measure would create a process for an individual with a disability to request reasonable modification to a building to remove a barrier to fair housing access. The LA Daily News reported the City Council gave Anschutz Entertainment Group "an additional six months to find a football team to play in the developer's proposed downtown stadium." Per most recent glance at the CalEPA Environmental Justice page , there's still no word on the designations of "disadvantaged" census tracts that were due by the end of September. As we've noted before, it's a tough, highly political decision . Early this month the Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a thoughtful extended news feature on The Sea Ranch and its lasting effects on regulation of California coastal development.

A new template for land use and preservation is forming across some 1,800 square miles of Los Angeles County's high, dry northeastern backlands. Its first increment could establish some key development permissions by mid-November, especially affecting the large Centennial new-town design, other construction plans, and solar energy arrays. The Antelope Valley (AV) Area Plan is tentatively scheduled for a vote by the LA County Supervisors on November 12. That approval, if granted, will be significant -- especially for the currently rural site along Highway 138 where the Tejon Ranch Co. has for years been laying regulatory groundwork to build a master-planned town it calls Centennial. There are also General Plan revisions afoot in two areas that affect the AV Plan area most: changes to boundaries and rules for Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) and a renewable energy ordinance. (A plan to develop transit-oriented districts (TODs) is part of the same General Plan update process but affects more urban areas. The north edge of its "overview map" is in Pasadena.) The Antelope Valley plan area (see map ) covers rugged northeastern Los Angeles County, from the southeast-slanting San Andreas Fault to the Ventura, Kern and San Bernardino County lines, excluding incorporated areas around Lancaster and Palmdale, and applying as a limited overlay to federal property such as Edwards Air Force Base. It extends south of the fault to include the whole mass of the San Gabriel Mountains (including the new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument ), and the north half or so of the Angeles National Forest above Santa Clarita. The Centennial site is near the current northern limit of suburban development that looks toward Los Angeles. Above it are mountain ridges that, for the present, occupy a gap between the footprints of greater Los Angeles and greater Bakersfield. Mark Child, deputy director of advance planning with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, said the proposed SEA designation and governing ordinance changes would most affect the Antelope Valley area rather than other parts of L.A. County, especially now that sensitive habitats in the Santa Monica Mountains are being separately regulated by the new Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan and, farther inland, the Santa Monica Mountains North Area Plan. He said some SEAs are affected in the San Gabriel Valley and Puente Hills, but they are small in comparison to the Antelope Valley. Environmental and community activists' concerns have included keeping rural places rural, ensuring "heavy agriculture" upzoning doesn't allow solar arrays as of right (Child said it doesn't), and, especially, limiting density in three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs) that the AV Area Plan designates for concentrated development. They have also questioned whether enough big-picture environmental regulation is in place to avoid harmful cumulative effects. Major affected landscapes include the western tip of the Mojave Desert with its wild poppy fields and Joshua trees, and the knot of the Coast, Transverse and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, including condor habitat, where I-5 climbs over Tejon Pass toward LA from the foot of the Central Valley. Landowners, from owners of single-house lots to managers of mining and ranching concerns, have been asking nervously how certain they can be of future requirements under tiered processes that the program-level rules are designed to set up but not resolve. In addition to Centennial and other housing developments, major affected industries and projects under the AV Area Plan and General Plan amendments include aggregate mines, cattle ranchlands, oil and gas wells, and solar energy businesses. For L.A. County's rural lands at present, it isn't easy to parse what will be decided where, how conclusively, and when. There are multiple rulemaking tracks; there are tiering provisions in the proposed rules that defer major decisions selectively, and there's uncertainty yet to resolve on how the new rules will take up the threads of older planning processes. The AV Area Plan and Centennial As previously reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587, the Regional Planning Commission approved the AV Area Plan September 27. Its accompanying Draft EIR remained open for comment until October 6 -- viewed as procedurally possible because the Commission's action September 27 was only a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors; the Supervisors bear responsibility for definitely approving the plan and certifying its EIR. which will probably occur at the same time. (Sitting as the Airport Land Use Commission, the Regional Planning Commission approved the plan's compatibility with relevant airport plans.) The AV Area Plan, updating the existing 1986 General Plan component for the area, has been under review since 2008 in what has also been labeled the "Town and Country" planning process. However, new versions of the plan, and an extensive new Draft EIR, were published on a brisk schedule this summer, with the DEIR Notice of Preparation (NOP) posted June 12, revised planning documents posted July 23 and August 22, and the extensive DEIR documents posted August 22. (Comments on the AV Area Plan leading up to the September 27 hearing are labeled as "correspondence" and "supplemental package" documents as part of the meeting materials .) The new plan would encourage the proposed Centennial development by establishing policy statements in favor of upzoning at the intended town site. However, it would not allow building permits to be granted for the new densities as of right. Centennial's proponents would still have to bring a more detailed proposal through a full specific plan review process -- and it's not clear when they will decide the time is ripe for them to follow through. According to Child and Supervising Regional Planner Susan Tae, out of the three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs), only the west EOA, which includes the Centennial site, has a strict provision to ensure future review is coordinated. Any proposal to build more than five units of housing in the west EOA would trigger a requirement to begin a full specific plan coordinating infrastructure and environmental protections for the whole area. The county could also choose to begin a community plan there in the next five years. The published summary of September 27 changes to the AV Area Plan says affected properties in the west EOA are those of two particular owners: the Tejon Ranch Company and Bruce Burrows. In the west EOA, the AV Area Plan sets as general policy the possibility of zoning levels up to maximum caps described in the Plan's Map 2.1 . The green-veined yellow patches of H5 zoning (five housing units per acre) as shown in the map's upper left corner would be defined as generically appropriate for the east half of the proposed Centennial development site. Later on, the actual zoning changes would need to be adopted legislatively as part of a future specific or community plan, and their exact values would depend on the overall design of the project as then proposed. (In a choice that confused some activists, the DEIR's Figure 3.7, at Page 27 of Chapter 3 , sets out the lower A-2-10 "heavy agriculture" densities that would apply without a specific plan.) The Center for Biological Diversity has objected starting at the NOP stage to the use of any H5 zoning on the Centennial site. As of a Tejon Ranch Co. amended 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last March, the company was still discussing plans for 23,000 units of housing at Centennial. County planning staff say the maximum buildout under zoning envisoned by the AV Area Plan would be less -- more like 17,000 units -- but either would be a long way from the site's current population of zero. The Tejon Ranch Co. as of its March report held a 72.83% interest in the project's proponent entity, Centennial Founders, LLC, with minority partners Tri Pointe Homes (formerly Pardee Homes), Lewis Investment Company and Standard Pacific Corp. . (For prior discussion of Tejon Ranch real estate plans in the context of the Kern Water Bank EIR ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3597.) SEA boundaries changing by stages Proposed new SEA boundaries are important for Centennial and for the AV area plan in general. Although the new SEAs are larger, it's disputed whether they actually increase environmental protection. Where former SEAs required buffer zones to surround them, the new approach is to expand the defined boundaries to include buffer zones within them. Similar changes were already adopted in 2011 for the Santa Clarita Valley area, which includes the Newhall Ranch planned-town site. (See http://planning.lacounty.gov/sea/proposed.) The Commission's September 27 action removed the SEA designation from a major area of the Centennial town site, between its east boundary at a farm road incongruously named "300th Street", and the west branch of the California Aqueduct, which forms a north-south divider across the site. (A separate SEA pullback limited barriers to development in the Central Economic Opportunity Area southwest of Edwards. For details see the September 27 summary document .) Child wrote that the west EOA changes "aim to strike a balance between habitat conservation and environmental protection, and economic development that is important to the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles County as a whole. As the most valuable habitat and habitat linkage within this landholding is on the western end where the SEA designation remains, the area removed seems not as critical to the overall viability of SEA protections in the area." But Greg Medeiros, vice president of the Centennial Founders LLC development entity, asked the Commission on October 8 to also remove SEA status from the area west of the Aqueduct, saying, "Both commercial and residential land use remain within the SEA overlay within the west EOA boundary. This commercial development is critical in developing a balanced community that can provide necessary services and jobs." He assured: "Removing the SEA designation does not mean that biological resources will be ignored. Project-level environmental review during site design within the EOAs will require avoidance and mitigation if necessary to comply with both CEQA and Fish and Wildlife permitting requirements." Countywide, the proposed SEA changes have been divided among three different regulatory calendars: Some SEA boundary revisions that form part of the AV Area Plan will be before the Supervisors for approval November 12. SEA boundary changes elsewhere in the county go to the Regional Planning Commission as part of a General Plan update item December 10. Revisions to the current Draft 6 of the SEA Ordinance, which calls for protective measures to be determined in part by environmental reviews of each building site, were taken off calendar as of the Commission's October 8 meeting to allow more discussion. The issues taken off calendar as "ordinance" matters include issues such as whether existing uses will be grandfathered. For example, at the October 8 hearing, Jeff Mace of ERA Energy asked if his company's 3000 acres of oil and gas wells and grazing land would be subject to new SEA requirements with effects such as new fencing requirements. Some landowners saw the proposed environmental review process as a source of uncertainty. At the hearing, land use consultant Peter Gonzalez said he couldn't clearly advise a landowner on building rights in an SEA zone if a county biologist's review still had to determine each parcel's level of sensitivity under the proposed SEA ordinance. Marta Golding Brown, representing the Building Industry Association for Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, told the Commission that the proposed mitigation ratios were excessive in requiring up to four acres open space for one acre of disturbed land, and the SEA boundaries themselves were oversized: "The SEA expansion virtually walls off all unbuilt or remaining lands in the jurisdiction. As a result, future population growth will need to be accommodated by dramatically increasing densities in the existing developed areas." She urged the Commission to combine SEA and CEQA mitigation processes in a single procedure and closed with the comment, "Please reduce the SEA overlays in the county to those areas having biota to protect." Environmental advocates weren't happy with the proposed SEA ordinance either: some said it had the unintended effect of elevating mitigation into a first choice for developers instead of encouraging them to avoid doing harm in the first place. Gary George of Audubon California told the Commission, "It's kind of a free pass straight to compensatory mitigation." Another environmental concern was whether single-family homes ought to be exempted from SEA requirements, or whether they, too, should be required to reduce their footprints. High SEAs A perennial concern in northwestern LA County has been whether the SEAs in the high desert and mountains provide sufficient "connectivity" or "linkages" for wildlife to travel among the several types of habitat that converge in the area, especially where I-5 traverses the Grapevine. (A slightly dated but informative "connectivity and construction" map from April gives a sense of the principles guiding SEA designations.) Child said a key purpose of updating the boundaries was to allow for linkages -- not necessarily to maintain land in "pristine" condition, but to allow for wildlife movement -- for example, by maintaining a corridor of grassland that might not itself be valuable habitat, but that would allow wildlife to move between developed areas. For the Centennial site an added uncertainty for activists is whether currently envisioned planning processes will make use of the work already done in an SEA-related environmental advisory process on a prior Centennial specific plan effort that was begun in 2008 but then deferred. As suggested by a 2008 Center for Biological Diversity press release , the SEATAC was sympathetic to critics who questioned not just how development might be made more eco-friendly at Centennial, but why any new project had to be built on the site.  The September 8, 2008, minutes of a SEATAC meeting on Centennial, still available on the county's site , shows a level of concerned review that gets literally into the weeds. The board discusses protection of grasslands, creekside habitat, watersheds and linkages, concerns about "leapfrog" developments surrounded by open space, the fortunes of species including badgers, lizards, owls, pumas, and the Tehachapi Pocket Mouse, a request to hear more about the futures of antelopes and raptors, and possible relocation of the Pacific Crest Trail onto the Tejon Ranch lands. Child wrote: "The future level and scope of environmental/biological review in this area would not be less careful than the review by SEATAC in 2008. The project is still subject to CEQA requirements and the County's consultation with responsible and trustee agencies would ensure that the project identifies and mitigates for any and all potential environmental impacts, including biota. Comments received from SEATAC regarding the project specifically, and the general region as important habitat land, would still be applied in the review of the project." Tae wrote that where SEATAC review is currently required for all SEA Conditional Use Permits (CUPs), the new ordinance would direct some projects to the county biologist, and others to SEATAC, with SEATAC "considered the higher review". Centennial's design was publicized more specifically before about 2008. The project stressed its environmental smart growth aspirations, discussing ways the project could be environmentally responsible and partly self-contained, even if residents commuted to jobs elsewhere. Now Centennial's main link from the Tejon Ranch Web site is a "Coming Soon" placeholder page. More detailed prior materials on the plan , including previews of the town's design , have been taken offline since last September . The Centennial Scout, a weblog formerly maintained for Centennial Founders, LLC by its community development manager, last posted in August 2011. It remains uncertain when the Centennial Founders management may decide the time is right to go ahead with their specific plan. So it's clearly enough in the project's interest to lock in as many permissions as possible for the 20-year duration of a General Plan update. In the meantime, the Ranch's interest sounds warmer with respect to its more recently proposed Grapevine development in Kern County. The Tejon Ranch Co.'s amended 10-K as filed in March 2014 stated, "California regulatory dynamics may impact the future ability to entitle new development so we began the land planning and entitlement process for Grapevine during 2013 to take advantage of the existing favorable pro-business and political climate in Kern County." The Tejon Ranch is the subject of a 2008 settlement in which five environmental groups, including the Sierra Club but not the Center for Biological Diversity, agreed not to oppose future development on the ranch in return for a conservation program affecting much of the Tejon Ranch land. Opposition to Centennial and other projects has been less widely expressed in the six years since then. The March amended 10-K stated, "The Conservation Agreement we entered into with five major environmental organizations in 2008 is designed to minimize the opposition from environmental groups to these projects and eliminate or reduce the time spent in litigation once governmental approvals are received. Litigation by environmental groups has been a primary cause of delay and loss of financial value for real estate development projects in California." Solar up next On a slower schedule, hearings are expected this winter on a renewable energy land use ordinance for projects such as solar arrays. Tae wrote that the draft EIR would likely appear in November, with the Regional Planning Commission to take it up in January. Tae and Child wrote that the ordinance has to reach the Supervisors by March to help the county qualify for a grant out of the Renewable Resource Trust Fund related to Assembly Bill X1-13. Child said there had been anxieties that a large-scale upzoning of about 190,000 acres to A-2, "heavy agriculture," in the Antelope Valley Area Plan would allow large solar arrays as of right. In fact he said that while A-2 zoning is a prerequisite for solar arrays, the ordinance would regulate such approvals and they would require conditional use permits to go through. The county's public tally of proposed utility-scale renewable energy projects to date shows most such projects are solar; there have been a few wind turbine schemes. The renewable energy ordinance review will need to interact with the California and federal EIR/EIS for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan , which was posted for review September 26. Major solar energy developers are among the commenters on early stages of the energy ordinance.

In brief legal news this week: The State Supreme Court confirmed a victory for high-speed rail by declining to review the Third District's ruling in California High-Speed Rail Authority v. Superior Court (Tos) . The case upheld the High-Speed Rail Authority's authorization to issue bonds for the project. The Sacramento Bee had details on immediate reactions. For details of the ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3546. Planetizen has more context at http://www.planetizen.com/articles/node-71723 . Prominent developer-side firms had asked the State Supreme Court to order publication of Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) v. County of San Diego , but the high court refused . What remains on the record is only the Fourth Appellate District's unpublished ruling in favor of the EIR to replace a city-owned historic warehouse building with mixed-use development. The State Supreme Court denied requests for both review and depublication of the Fifth District's ruling in North Coast Rivers Alliance v. Westlands Water District . That ruling upheld the application of a grandfathering rule to exempt a two-year interim water contract from CEQA review because its predecessor contract was set up in 1963, before CEQA was invented. For details of the Fifth District decision see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3539. (And in separate news, the LA Times ' Bettina Boxall wrote a stemwinder of a water feature on a proposed deal to let the Westlands Water District off from a $360 million debt to the Bureau of Reclamation for its part in the extension of the Central Valley Project.) Judge Timothy Frawley confirmed his rejection of both of the CEQA lawsuits against the Sacramento Kings basketball arena project. For prior recent moves in the case see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3599. Local coverage in the Willits News celebrated the North Coast Rail Authority's CEQA exemption victory last month over two environmental groups who opposed increased use of an existing rail system. The paper reports the First District appellate decision (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3584) may allow lumber to be shipped from Willits by rail for the first time since the 1990s. Encinitas homeowners Thomas Frick and Barbara Lynch, whose effort to build a seawall has been blocked by the Coastal Commission and the Fourth District state appellate court, have now requested review from the California Supreme Court. The attorney filing their appeal was Paul J. Beard of the Pacific Legal Foundation. Beard told the San Diego Union-Tribune , "We are asking the California Supreme Court to hear this case so that these homeowners, and all property owners along the coast, can be protected from the Coastal Commission's obsessive crusade against seawalls." For detailed coverage of the Fourth District's decision, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3572. The Fourth District's online docket shows it denied a request for rehearing in September. The landlord of the "Friendly Village" mobile home park in Milpitas has appealed the city's federal court victory (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3567), which blocked it from raising rents by 50 to 90 percent. The Mercury News reported the city has already approved $30,000 for attorneys' fees to fight the appeal before the Ninth Circuit. (Item via League of CA Cities.)

When is a historic structure not historic – or, at least, when it is not historic enough to warrant environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act? When a local government says so, because local governments are accorded deference by courts in reviewing their CEQA actions – at least in cases like this. At least that was the conclusion of the Sixth District Court of Appeal in a case involving a century-old railroad trestle in the Willow Glen neighborhood of San Jose. The case involves interpretation of a confusing section of CEQA regarding when an historic resource is subject to an EIR. In making the ruling, the court had to go deep into the rabbit hole of substantial evidence and fair argument. San Jose is planning to tear down the scenic trestle and replace it with a steel structure. In the process, the city concluded that the trestle was not an historic resources and therefore not subject to an EIR. San Jose adopted a mitigated negative declaration instead. Neighbors and historic preservationists sued over the CEQA action, claiming that there was a fair argument that the trestle was a historic resource and therefore an EIR should be required. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Joseph Huber ruled in favor of the neighbors, saying that a fair argument standard should apply. The city appealed but the neighbors tried to have the case declared moot because the city had already prepared an EIR, which it then used to re-approve the project. The court went ahead and considered the case anyway, saying the city’s could be still be required to vacate the approval depending on the outcome of the case. At issue was whether the city had to apply the “fair argument” standard to the question of whether an EIR was required under the CEQA – that is, is there a fair argument that the project would have a significant impact on the environment (in the case, on an historic resource), as required under one section of CEQA, Public Resources Code Section 21084.1. The law further says that just because a building or structure is not included in any state or historic register and doesn’t meet other criteria for historic significance doesn’t mean that the lead agency can’t still designate it as historic. The neighbors argued that this last provision should apply and the trestle should be considered a historic resource for CEQA purposes even though it had not been designated as historic in any other way. The court noted that the lead agency has to make a decision about significance based on the “preponderance of the evidence” and therefore the standard of review “logically must be whether substantial evidence supports the lead agency’s decision , not whether a fair argument can be made to the contrary.” Continuing, Justice Nathan Mihara wrote for the court: “Since the standard of judicial review for a presumptively historical resource is substantial evidence rather than fair argument, it cannot be that the Legislature intended for the standard of judicial review for a lead agency’s decision under the final sentence of section 21084.1 to be fair argument rather than substantial evidence…. “We conclude,” he wrote, “that the Legislature did not intend for the fair argument standard to apply to a lead agency’s decision that a resource is not a historical resource under the final sentence of section 21084.1.” He added: “To construe the statute otherwise would be inconsistent with the Legislature’s explicit provision authorizing a lead agency to find that a resource that was presumed to be a historical resource was not a historical resource if the lead agency found that a preponderance of the evidence supported its finding. We therefore conclude that the deferential substantial evidence standard of review is the correct standard to apply to the City’s finding that the Trestle is not a historical resource.” The court remanded the case to Judge Mihara to determine the merits of the MND’s determination that there was no substantial evidence that the trestle is an historic resource The Case: Friends of Willow Glen Trestle v. City of San Jose, No. H041563 The Lawyers: For Friends of Willow Glen Trestle: Susan Brandt-Hawley, Brandt-Hawle Law Group, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com  For City of San Jose: Katie Zoglin, Senior Deputy City Attorney, mailto:katie.zoglin@sanjoseca.gov

When Donald Trump announced his team of economic advisors – the first group, the one that was all men – it consisted, not surprisingly, mostly of real estate guys from New York. In fact, there was only one Ph.D. economist in the group: Peter Navarro, a longtime business professor at UC Irvine, who apparently captured Trump’s attention with his book and film, Crouching Tiger , which talks about the possibility of war with China and how to avoid it. And for those of you with long memories of California growth control wars, yes, we’re talking about that Peter Navarro: The guy who ran for mayor of San Diego in 1992 – and almost won – on an anti-growth platform. Navarro has been all over the place in defense of Trump’s economic policies lately – for example, with this spirited attack on Moody’s negative analysis of Trump’s economic plan. And while Trump may have stumbled across Navarro’s work on his own, it’s far more likely that he was led to it by Dan DiMicco, the former CEO of Nucor Steel, who’s been Trump’s leading who helped persuade his company to provide financial backing for the film version of Navarro’s book. So what’s a guy who once ran for office on an anti-growth platform doing as an economic advisor to a real estate developer running for president? As it turns out, this makes more sense than you might think. At first you wouldn’t think Navarro has much in common with the supposedly business-oriented Trump, but the common theme of Navarro’s thinking has been to use governmental power to create limits and walls, the better to manage things for the benefit of those inside the walls. This was the fundamental concept of 1980s-style California growth management, which often allied left-wing neighborhood anti-growth activists with right-wing anti-immigration activists. And it’s the fundamental concept of Trump’s campaign. Another way to look at it is simply that Trump and California slow-growthers are win-lose folks, not win-win folks. A lot of economioc theorists -- free-traders, for example, and real-estate development free-marketeers -- believe that the more there is, better it is for everybody. But Trump clearly doesn't believe this. To him, there are always winners and losers -- so you'd better box out the other guy if you want to be a winner or else make him pay through the nose. And the California slow-growthers feel the same way: More development creates losers as well as winners, so you'd better box out the bad development or at least make those developers pay through the nose. Navarro’s apparently a Democrat, though he has jokingly said that his political party is “economist”. He first emerged in San Diego during the anti-growth backlash to the real estate boom of the late 1980s, when a citizen initiative was adopted limiting the number of housing units that could be built per year – even though previous growth management measures sought to align infrastructure and development. In spite of the fact that he was a trained economist who taught in a business school, Navarro seemed to me like a pretty typical California anti-growth guy of that era. I first met him at a Realtors forum on growth management in Irvine around that time, and he advocated pretty standard growth control policies. When the real estate folks tried to ask him about “affordable housing,” he waved his hand in the air – as if to swat the topic away – and said, “Separate issue.” By which he meant that, to him, affordable housing was a thing you had to create via government subsidies, not something you could create via the market by reducing regulation. Navarro ramped it up in 1992 when he ran for mayor . He platform was, again, standard-issue California growth control for the time: limited growth, tying development to infrastructure and services (for example, no additional housing without an increase in police officers) and, tellingly, immigration restrictions. He deliberately rejected the Construction Industry PAC endorsement and finished first in the primary against County Supervisor Susan Golding and City Councilmember Ron Roberts, an architect who was the odds-on favorite (and is now on the Board of Supervisors). But he lost to Golding in the runoff by four points and later lost races for city council and Congress. If he had defeated – and he had managed to navigate the notoriously treacherous political waters of San Diego City Hall (trust me on this one) – he might have been a seminal figure in the history of California planning. Instead he moved to Laguna Beach, kept teaching at UC Irvine, and focused on providing corporations with assessments of geopolitical risk. Which led him to China and to Trump. He does seem to believe that the United States has to use a lot of military muscle to keep things even with China – and it’s never clear where Trump is on that question – and he does believe in better trade deals and apparently still in immigration reform. He recently argued – a la the supply siders – that Trump’s proposed tax cuts wouldn’t increase the deficit all that much because of the economic growth it would stimulate. But so far, neither he nor Trump has weighed in on the question of whether the number of housing units should be restricted or tied to the provision of infrastructure and public services. Though it’s kinda believable that they don’t agree on that one.

California has suffered plenty of perverse effects of Proposition 13: cuts to school funding, ossification of neighborhoods, general constraints on cities, etc. Most of those effects are by design or were, at least, foreseeable by Howard Jarvis and the measure’s supporters.  In Los Angeles County a new unintended consequence has arisen that, though it might prove great for the county, probably has Jarvis spinning in his grave.  This week, Measure M officially made it on to the countywide ballot for November. The successor to 2008’s Measure R, Measure M would further the region’s long-range transportation plan by augmenting and extending the county’s half-cent sales tax indefinitely (30-plus years at least) to generate tens of billions of dollars for transportation projects. Like Measure R, which paid for popular projects like the Expo Line to Santa Monica and Gold Line extension to Azusa, Measure M is a Christmas tree of projects, sprinkled around the county so that the measure will appeal to just enough voters to make it pass. And, at an estimated $800 million in annual revenue, Measure M is one big Christmas tree — Rockefeller Center big. It includes 27 highway projects, 33 transit projects, and a good deal of local return monies. Many people are excited about these projects, and with good reason.  In some ways, though, the number of projects and amount of expected funding is a direct consequence of the number of voters that Measure M has to woo. That number is two-thirds of the electorate. That’s the margin needed to pass a new tax in California. Thanks to Proposition 13. The Jarvis people thought that this provision would curb public spending and ease Californians’ tax burden. At the very least, they sought to ensure that proposed taxes were structured sensibly enough to appeal to a broad swath of voters. Measure M, though, is different.  The great thing about planning is that plans on paper cost nothing. Therefore, it costs Metro nothing — at least not up-front — to heap on project after project to appeal to different jurisdictions and different interests groups. Measure M has something for everyone: drivers, transit advocates, bike advocates; city people, valley people, South Bay people, even high desert people. Metro’s hope is that if people don’t vote for the interests of the county as a whole, they’ll at least vote for their own parochial interests. That’s why even small jurisdictions and institutions — some as as specific and localized as Cal State University, Northridge — are keeping score . As the Los Angeles Daily News reports , not everyone is happy, especially cities in south and southwestern L.A. County. Metro just hopes that enough people are happy. (Note: Now that it's on the ballot, Metro cannot directly lobby for the measure.) You could call it politicking, but Metro is doing nothing if not playing by the rules.  It’s not hard to imagine, though, that if the rules required a simple majority, the Measure R package would look much different. For starters, package that had to appeal to only 50 percent of voters would likely be smaller. It also might be more efficient. It might, for instance, omit a rail line from Torrance to West Hollywood or a highway to Palmdale, willfully sacrificing voter support in favor of projects that will be more cost-efficient and/or serve more people. It might be able to put more money into active transportation in the urban core and less money into highways serving the suburbs. I'm not making value judgements about any of these projects. I'm just saying that Metro's strategy might have been different in a non-Prop 13 world. In other words, Prop 13 compels Metro, and anyone else seeking to raise revenue via a vote, to come up with not necessarily the best spending program but rather the spending program that has the best chance of passing.  While we can be sure that many Prop 13 advocates will want nothing to do with Measure M, we can be equally sure that over the next few months transit advocates in Los Angeles will be crying “All aboard!” to rouse support for Measure M's proposed trains. Or at least, “Two-thirds aboard!”  Image credit: L.A. Metro

As this week’s DNC guests are discovering, Philadelphia is no San Francisco. It's not New York, Boston, or D.C. either. It’s not even Cleveland . But delegates who are stuck in traffic  getting out of the Wells Fargo Center would do well to take a peek down the side streets as they drive up Broad Street to their hotels and discover some of the delights of the host city. That goes double for the California delegation. Most Californians have probably never seen a rowhouse. For the uninitiated, they are a form of townhouse (or terrace house in Europe), two or three stories, often with basements. They share side walls with their neighbors. Rear overlook face small yards or patios, and front walls face the street. They’re taller than they are wide, and they’re about as deep as they are tall.  They basically look like boxes of instant oatmeal aligned on a grocery shelf.  Rowhouses superficially resemble typologies like Brooklyn brownstones and San Francisco Victorians, insofar as they too are packed tightly and share side walls. But the beauty of true rowhouses  is that they have none of the trappings of those fancier cousins. No gingerbread flourishes or imposing stoops, and no dumbwaiters or maid’s quarters. They are blue-collar shelters that came of age when East Coast cities were industrial powerhouses. Workers made decent wages — enough to enable them to escape from tenements, but not enough to move into anything fancy. Rowhouses typically have flat brick facades, occasional details like cornices or porches, and an utterly functional design. They are the Model T of urban shelter. Unlike a 100-year old car, though, those 100-year old houses still run just fine.  While rowhouses are popular throughout the East Coast, particularly in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, and parts of New York City, Philadelphia probably has more of them than any other city in the world. It has row upon row of rowhouses. As California cities agonize over how to house everyone, they are missing out on a typology with countless reasons to recommend it. Fundamentally, no typology so exquisitely balances the urban virtue of efficiency with the American virtue of individualism. Efficiency lies in the massing and use of space. Even two-story versions have floor-to-area ratios greater than 1. Shared walls mean that blocks are compact (and that heat dissipates slowly in the winter). A block that houses ten families in tract homes homes can house 100 in rowhouses. Unlike typical multifamily units, every rowhouse comes with its own address, advertising themselves as “home” to the people who live there. Rowhouses dispense with the gratuitousness of front yards, but their exteriors can express as much individualism as any lawn or feat of topiary. Some rowhouse residents plant tubs of flowers or even vegetables that put any lawn to shame. Some paint their shutters, doors, and other trim in imaginative colors. Some paint their entire facades. Others let their facades stand unadorned, in quiet conformity with their neighbors.  Suburban residents might protest that families need four walls to call their own and a freestanding structure to fawn over. Families in New York City and Los Angeles, among others, counter that two walls are better than zero. That’s essentially what you get in the multifamily dingbats and mid-rises of L.A., the mini-resorts of San Diego, and the walkups and high-rises of New York. Rowhouses promote a special kind of urbanism. The chance to walk out your front door and step immediately on to a sidewalk — in view of every other house on the block — creates a neighborliness that no apartment building ever could. Just like in the suburbs, residents are associated with their buildings and buildings with their residents. But rowhouse neighbors aren’t just fuzzy dots that scramble from front doors and into SUVs. Residents live close enough to be recognizable, but not so close that they feel obligated to each other. In very poor neighborhoods – of which there are too many in Philadelphia – squalor is contained on a house-by-house basis. It does not consume entire apartment buildings as it can in places like high-rise public housing complexes. Far from being monotonous or oppressive with their continuous facades and uniform roof heights, rowhouse streets are cozy — European, even. Streets are well framed and often lively, with subtle design flourishes that appeal to pedestrians, not to speeding drivers. There are no curb cuts to mar the sidewalks. There few streetscapes as pleasant as a rowhouse street with a canopy of mature trees. Appropriately, in the city where the United States liberated itself from England, rowhouses liberate their owners from another form of tyranny and taxation: homeowners associations. Rowhouses confer all the communal benefits of condominium living with none of the expense of HOA dues or headaches of creating and conforming with HOA regulations. Of course, if your roof leaks, you have to fix it yourself.  If entire East Coast cities are built on rowhouses, why does California have, essentially, zero? Surely culture is one reason. City founders in California weren’t about to emulate the tired, oppressive old East Coast. But those attitudes are changing. Many California cities are embracing density. Rowhouses might be perfect for low-density urban neighborhoods that really should be medium density. Except for those darn regulations. Rowhouses are basically what you get when a city wants to provide single-family homes and goes full-on libertarian. If you get rid of setback requirements, floor-to-area ratio maximums, buffer zones between structures, and height restrictions, you almost inevitably end up with rowhouses. California isn't quite there yet.  You need one more thing: no parking requirements.  When you live side-by-side in houses no wider than a car is long, there’s no room for a garage (unless you have generous alleyways). There’s also little need for a car. Rowhouse neighborhoods are generally dense enough to maximize the use of public transit. and because they’re dense, they’re usually not afraid of neighborhood-serving commercial, like restaurants, bars, and convenience stores. So they’re walkable and bikeable. If rail transit is nearby, so much the better.  For all the fleeting political proclamations that are likely to come out of Philadelphia this week, we also know that the city is capable of spawning universal, enduring institutions. We could do worse than to add a certain modest, functional, and efficient housing type to that list. Goodness knows, we all could use some modesty these days.  Photo credit: Eric Fischer via Flickr  creative commons.

A Los Angeles native and longtime journalist, Josh Stephens has covered planning, land use, and architecture as an editor and freelance journalist for the better part of a decade. He succeeded Paul Shigley as the third editor of the California Planning & Development Report in February 2010. He is now a Contributing Editor of the publication. Stephens previously edited T he Planning Report and Metro Investment Report , monthly newsletters covering, respectively, land use and infrastructure in the Los Angeles region. As a freelance writer Stephens has been a regular contributor to  CP&DR , and he contributes frequently to, among others,  Planetizen.com, Common Edge Collaborative, Metropolis, Next City, Sierra, InTransition , and Planning  Magazine.  He also writes for Planetizen's Interchange blog and contributes to its annual list of the top books in urban planning. He is the author of The Urban Mystique : Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond , published by Solimar Books, and of Planners Across America , published by Planetizen Press.  Stephens holds a bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a master's in public policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.  He formerly taught high school journalism, English, and AP Geography at the Archer School in Los Angeles. He serves on the board of the Westside Urban Forum and on the Brentwood Community Council. 

Editor & Publisher WILLIAM FULTON, AICP, founded in 1986. A former newspaper reporter, Bill has worn many hats: principal in the consulting firm now known as Placeworks , Mayor of Ventura, Planning Director of the City of San Diego, Vice President for Policy at Smart Growth America , Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research , and most recently Visiting Policy Designer at the UC San Diego Design Lab. Bill is the author of eight books, including three considered classics in their field.    L.A. Times  best-seller, uses novelistic storytelling techniques to trace the way a leading metropolis grew and developed co-authored with architect Peter Calthorpe, is a pathbreaking work that has reshaped understanding of how metropolitan regions should be planned and designed. Three decades after its original publication,   remains the standard textbook for urban planning classes. His most recent book is Bill was a member of the Ventura City Council from 2003 to 2011, serving as Mayor from 2009 to 2011. In that capacity he led Ventura’s innovative effort to promote sensitive infill development. He was active in the incorporation of the City of West Hollywood in 1984 and was one of the first appointees to the West Hollywood Planning Commission upon its creation in 1986. Bill holds a master’s degree in journalism/public affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C., and a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.